Blog tips

I've been looking at the blogs done by Southern Maryland participants in "23 Things." It is amazing the variety in styles, content and quality. Some blogs are excellent and reflect a lot of work; others, not so much.

Here are some tips that will help make your blog better:

*Name each post appropriate to the "Thing" you are blogging about, i.e., "Thing 5: Flickr".

*Short is not sweet. Don't write single line entries. Write about your learning experience. So, don't just write, "I tried Flickr today. The End." Write about what you thought about the "thing" (likes and dislikes), how you might use the product or knowledge in your personal and/or professional life. Think about how each product can be used in the library setting.

*The best blogs include tidbits of the personal among the professional discussions.

*Use pictures and graphics to spice up your blog. You don't have to use pictures of yourself or family members. You can pull graphics from the web to jazz up the topic.

*Spell check.

*Don't forget that you can always edit your post after it has been published.

*Have fun!

Some good Southern Maryland "23 Things" blogs:

http://23librarian.blogspot.com/

http://brianreal.blogspot.com/

http://mwhoolery.blogspot.com/

http://grabbag37600.blogspot.com/

Thing 18, part 2: More musings

I actually think that it might be better to use an online productivity tool to write blog posts. It was quite easy to create a document and then download it to my blog.

Zoho has many more options when it comes to formatting text than Blogger and I like this more "Word"-like ability.

I will have to seriously consider this option when creating my next blog.

Thing 18: Zoho ho ho!

Well, I'm writing this blog post using Zoho Writer. This is my second attempt at doing this because the first time I got an error message that just flashed, flashed, flashed, flashed, flashed... I finally had to use my Task Manager to close the program.

I decided to open up the website using Explorer rather than Netscape and see if that makes a difference.

Anyway, I like the idea of free "Microsoft Office" style software. It seems like it helps a bit with the digital divide--people who don't have computers can use this software in the library to create resumes, letters, and so forth and then can save their documents online to retrieve when needed.

Let's test some of the Zoho "Word" capabilities:

• Bullets:
• Italics;
• Bold
• Insert picture

So far so good!

Now I'll try to download this entry into my blog! Wish me luck!