Blogging

With this being my first blog that I have ever created, I found blogger.com extremely user friendly, and easy to use. I could easily change the font and the colours, add a background, add pictures and a polling station with absolutely no hassle at all. The different settings/gadgets are clearly labelled and easily accessible. Blogger gave direction every step of the way, I believe if you did encounter a problem blogger help would easily guide you to a solution. I found it really neat that blogger.com not only keeps track of your page views, but can tell you from where in the world people are accessing your blog. Strangely enough I found someone in the USA had been viewing my blog within the first few days I had created it. 

This was also my first time really looking at blogs in general, and I was pleasantly surprised at what I found:
My favorite magazine, Women's Health, has their own personal blog page which is almost exactly like their magazine, if not better !(http://www.womenshealthmag.com) Now I can save myself $5.99 + tax every month at the grocery store/drug store. The blog posts workout routines, healthy meal ideas, health articles, and even daily ab routines!
It's amazing the things you can find using the 'Google' blog search engine. I could type pretty much anything into search and sure enough there would be a blog about it. I find this fascinating.... where have I been all these years! 
Another new found love of my is running, I thought to myself...there must be a blog about running! Sure enough I found the perfect blog, http://www.womensrunning.com, awesome! I found the blog extremely helpful, offering daily tips on running, and how to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
And of course I cannot forget about my love of shopping, there were too many blogs on fashion/shopping to include in my first entry, but those I did find were amazing! The three I found that really interested me were; http://www.rantingsofashopaholic.com, http://www.torontostreetfashion.com, and http://www.collegefashion.net. All three of the blog's were equipped with picture's of the latest fashion, and fashion advice. My favorite blog out of the three was the college fashion blog. This blog gave helpful hint's on which stores carry the season's latest 'must-haves' without blowing a hole in your wallet.
Lastly, I will conclude with an interesting blog I found for user's who are new to blogging...a.k.a...me. After noticing there was a blog about pretty much anything and everything, I decided to search for a blog about blogging! To my pleasant surprise...of course they have a blog about blogging, http://www.iamnewtoblogging.com, just my cup of tea! This blog was extremely helpful to me, being someone who is unfamiliar with blogs/blogging. I even think it would be helpful for those who read blogs and blog regularly. Some of the blog's most popular post's included 'Blogging Goals', 'Setting up a Blog', 'Blog Marketing', and 'Blog Topics'.

From my own personal (first-time) experience I would say that blogging can be extremely helpful. There seems to be an endless array of blogging topics out there for people of all ages, the availability of information seems endless. One of the biggest advantages about blogging is the fact that they are Eco-friendly, as opposed to their distant cousins magazines and newspapers.  Blogging is also a cost efficient way to read about sports, fashion, healthy living, essentially whatever your heart desires. Another beneficial aspect of blogs/blogging is that you can electronically access blogs from anywhere, whether it be your smart phone, laptop, tablet or PC, the blogger can also update their blog from anywhere in the world. Blogging is also an excellent way to spread the word about something that may be of great importance to you, such as the environment or government issues.
One of the major disadvantages of blogging would be the fact that the majority of information seen on blogs are personal opinions. The problem with one's personal opinion is that the viewer may take the information factually, it may be taken out of context, and/or it may be offensive to the viewer. Another disadvantage is the fact that ultimately anyone can be viewing what is posted on the blog, as I learned from my USA viewer. Personally, I feel some things are not meant for everyone to see or read about. 
In my opinion it is hard to compare magazine's and newspaper's to blogs. Blog's are unedited information, in most cases coming from one source, and are usually not factual information, more or less one's own opinion. Newspaper's and magazine's are generally edited in order to be acceptable in the eyes of it's viewers in regards to being age appropriate, gender appropriate and multicultural, along with the appropriate use of language. With this said, they are blogs that appear to be edited such as my women's health magazine blog. I would refer to this blog as a commercial blog as it is financially supported by ad company's, in-turn making for a more 'hi-tech' blog.