not why, but How I blog.

I use a couple of tools to build this blog, but mainly rely on three big players. All of which are free. All of which are extremely widely used. I use Blogger, Flickr, and YouTube, all on a daily basis, and love each of them.

I am sure there are better hosting capabilities out there. I'm sure there are flashier blogs, faster photo sites and sleeker video hosters. However, I choose to stick with the most common, most reliable options instead of the latest and greatest. This way I increase compatibility and minimize the worry that one of my tools will fail or go out of business. I don't see YouTube shutting down anytime soon, so I feel good.

Blogger
Google owns Blogger, which tells me a couple of things, just from what I know from Google as a company. I know blogger will be reliable, frequently searched for, and free. Blogger has only gone "down" a few times in the last year. And by down, I mean everything worked but you couldn't post photos for 15mins or something. Because Google owns Blogger, I know that Google will "scan" my blog for searchable material on a regular basis. Google provides all of this wonderful service for free. I love Google, therefore I love Blogger.

Here's an example of the "scanning" my blog for searchable material. If you remember back a few months, I did an entry on renting a video camera. I had a video shoot and needed an HD camera, which I rented from a small company I discovered up North. After the rental I posted a nice little entry talking up how great their company was, because they really did a fantastic job. If I was some guy wanting to rent this Canon camera from ATS Rentals, I would do a Google search to check them out. If you want to, go open up a new Window or Tab in your browser and do a Google search for something like "ATS Rentals Canon A1" and see what you find. Here's what I found.

First Hit: Flickr Photos of the camera, most of which are mine
Second Hit: My album of photos of the camera, posted to Flickr
Third Hit: The ATS Rentals Website
Fourth Hit: My blog entry

If I was just building this blog on my own, Google would NEVER scan it for material, and you would never see it come up on a search. But, because I use their own stuff, Google loves to pull my blog up in searches, which makes me smile just a bit.

After all, of the three of you that read this blog, I'm sure 2/3 of you will never rent a Canon A1 from ATS Rentals. And, I don't write all this junk just for Phillip to read, so this way other video nerds can read the posts through Google searches.

Step One: import photos into iPhoto
Step Two: upload to Flickr using their "Flickr Uploader"
Step Three: type the blog content in Apple TextEdit
Step Four: maybe upload and post a YouTube video, sometimes
Step Five: combine Text, Photos and Videos into Blogger, and post

I love it. I'm not the best blogger in the world, I'm not the most faithful, I'm not the funniest or the smartest, but I do enjoy writing all this, and I'm glad the five of you enjoy reading it. I get all kinds of feedback from different people on whether the blog should have more personal information about fun stuff like dates with Aubrey, or more tech stuff. Some say not to post all the private stuff, some say nobody cares about the nerd stuff. Some say they only read half the posts, whether they're a nerd or a stalker. I never really know what to post, or what direction to take the blog. I just write what's on my mind at the time, and hope somebody cares. We'll see where the future goes, but you can count on it not being too random. I've got a couple of things lined up for the rest of the summer that hopefully aim to please! Thanks for reading! -Cameron