To Blog or not to blog….

A video to explain about blogs and blogging can be viewed by clicking this link -   

Blogs in Plain English

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To Blog or not to Blog, that is the question.

OK, so blogging is not everybody’s cup of tea, what is the point I hear you say.  Something I wondered myself with the proliferation of blogs, twitter, bebo, flickr, facebook, etc. etc.  Lost you already?  Well, in truth there is nothing complicated about it although I would be the first to agree that everyone seems to be living his or her life in the virtual world.  Whenever we pop back to the UK our grandson seems to have yet another gadget that he understands perfectly but I do not.  I am hopeless at electronic gaming and whilst he does his best to help me, in the end he switches me off and plays without me….   : – (

So, not to be outdone by a seven year old I try to keep up a little bit with rapidly changing pace of things, I am sure you know how I feel.  In fact I do know how you feel as I have had one or two comments about the new Old & Bold blog as I did ask for some feedback, for example: –  The only thing I know about Bloggs is that many years ago we had a black and white cat that we called Captain Sir Arfur Bloggs.  (he was called Arfur because he was quite small so to start with he was Arfur Cat.)  Seriously, I am finding all this new stuff that’s available all too much to cope with.  I am lost, Digital TV, Digital Radio, MP3 Players it’s nearly all Double Dutch.  I was given a Password for the O & B Blog site but have now lost it, I couldn’t make it work.  All I know is that it is supposed to be for talking to each other, but how? how do I find it? how do I get into it, if I find it?.   It’s all beyond me.

So there’s the rub, (which happens to be a phrase from Hamlet and also includes,   ‘To be or not to be– that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And, by opposing, end them’….. etc.), sorry I do go off at a tangent at times, but I refer to the title of the piece and do not wish to infringe copyright…

So, why bother to blog.  I will try and make this as painless as possible but the explanation is, in fact, more difficult than the act of blogging so please bear with me.  I’ll start with a quick ‘glossary of terms’.

• Virtual world – is an online community through which users can interact with one another.
• Blog - a contraction of the term “web log“, a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events.  “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.  The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format, (a format which allows the user to directly impact the materials’ content, pace, and out-come), is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual.
• Online community –  is a virtual community that exists online whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership rituals.  An online community can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a bulletin board system or one where only a restricted number of people can initiate posts, such as weblogs. Online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life.
• Social Web is currently used to describe how people socialize or interact with each other throughout the world wide web. Such people are brought together through a variety of shared interests. Sites promote the person as focus of social interaction. To do this an online  identity (and a profile) is constructed by each user. In many ways the profile is similar to a passport.  There are also two ways in which people socialize with each other in the Social Web. The most general and most common type is always at a distance and only on the World Wide Web. In such socializing there is never face to face personal contact.  In short, the social web can be described as people interlinked and interacting with engaging content in a conversational and participatory manner via the Internet
• Posts are the principal element (or content) of a blog. The Posts are the writings, compositions, discussions, discourses, musings, and, yes, the rantings, of a blog owner and contributors. Posts, in most cases, are the reason a blog exists; without Posts, there is no blog! 

So all these new fangled buzzwords when related to a blog like the Old & Bold blog mean nothing more than a website to enable easy interaction between a group of people, an online community notice board in effect.  So nothing to worry about there.

In fact, it could be argued that the Old & Bold newsletter is nothing more than a blog the difference being that with a blog anyone in the group can ‘post’ a comment and anyone can ‘comment’ on the ‘post’.  What is the difference?  A post is where you decide to introduce a new subject into the blog.  For instance, ‘I think this blog sucks’, maybe your title and you ‘post’ your subject on the blog.  However, someone else may disagree, (hopefully), so they can comment on your post which then becomes attached to the original post.

Now I did say that the explanation is more complex than the act of blogging so if you wish to know more click on this link which will take you to the WordPress help page with videos to assist – http://wordpresstraining.com/training-index/

There are over 22 million WordPress publishers as of February 2010: 10.6 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com plus 11.4 million active installations of the WordPress.org software.

It has amazed me how the older generation has adapted to the use of computers and the Internet, (including me as I am 65 this year), nothing ventured, nothing gained.  So, I hope you think it is worth getting involved with.  The easiest way to find out how the blog works is to have a go; the blog needs interaction from O&B members for it to thrive.  Please do not be shy, have a go, it is not difficult and you cannot do anything that will cause any problems.  The content is for you to dictate and you can post whatever you wish, (within reason of course).