Bloggers are, by nature, expressive people. A whole host of accessories
have emerged that can be used with a blog:
-
Imood: Imood is a clever
little service that replicates the mood icons of LiveJournal
for other blogs or any webpage. You create an account and log
into imood and then set your mood. It then generates the HTML
code you need to include your mood on your website or blog.
The disadvantage of this service is that you need to go to imood
to change your mood while with LiveJournal you set your mood
in your journal; however, imood also has an interesting advantage.
It uses the collected moods of its users to determine the mood
of the internet. As of this writing, the internet is feeling
tired.
-
Weather Pixie: A web
service that fetches your local weather info to generate an
avatar-like graphic for your blog. You can select from several
stock graphics of people (covering many different genders, races,
and styles of dress) and then the clothes on the graphic adjust
to reflect your current weather conditions.
-
Blogger Code:
Blogger code follows in the footsteps of the geek code and the
bear code (for hairy gay men into hairy gay men) by generating
a nearly incomprehensible code that details you as a blogger.
Typical blogger code looks like: B7 d++ t+ k- s- u- f i o++
x+ e+ l c.
-
BlogAmp:
This is a plug-in for the popular MP3 player Winamp. BlogAmp
works from within Winamp to publish the songs that have been
playing to your blog or website.
-
BlogBack: BlogBack
is a hosted commenting service, meaning that users can add comments
to a blog maintained by a service such as Blogger and those
comments are stored by BlogBack. However, currently it is no
longer accepting new users because of the enormous demand for
this service.
-
BlogKomm: BlogKomm is
a commenting script written in PHP, a computer language (like
Perl) that was created with the web in mind. Since it is a script,
it takes some knowledge of script installation and configuration
to use.
-
Enetation: This is a
service similar to BlogBack, offering hosted commenting for
blogs. The service is free and appears to be relatively easy
to set-up and use.
-
MozBlog: MozBlog is
an offshoot of the open source development project, Mozilla.
Mozilla was started by Netscape and is a community-driven effort
to create a web browser with open code that anyone can view
and help develop. MozBlog allows you to blog while surfing the
web with the Mozilla browser.
-
BloggerBot:
BloggerBot is similar to MozBlog in that it allows remote posting
of blogs. In this case, it allows you to blog from AOL's Instant
Messaging program, AIM.
-
Google:
Blog Hosts: Most blog services such as Blogger and LiveJournal
offer hosting; however, Google has a lengthy list of sites that
offer hosting for blogs.
-
Bloglet: Bloglet is a
syndication service. Your blog visitors can register to receive
your blogs via email.
-
BlogTree: BlogTree is
an interesting and ambitious project that allows users to create
a genealogy of weblogs by designating parent, child, and sibling
blogs. If someone starts a blog because of your own blog, they
become a child blog. If more than one person starts a blog because
of your own blog, those child blogs are related to each other
as siblings.
-
BlogChalking: BlogChalking
is another fascinating project. It's related to the development
of warchalking, which took the idea of the visual, ephemeral
language used by hobos to map out free wireless networking.
BlogChalking is a an effort to map the virtual space of blogs
just as warchalking maps the real space of networks and hobo
language mapped locations of danger and survival.
-
BlogHop: BlogHop is a
blog rating service. After inserting the BlogHop code into your
blog, visitors can rate the quality of your blog and its entries.
-
YACCS: YACCS
is another free commenting service for blogs that don't have
commenting built-in.
-
ZonkBoard: ZonkBoard
is a free "blabber board." This service is similar
to commenting in that it allows visitors to leave messages on
your page and allows you to respond. However, these messages
are not related to any one specific blog entry.
- BlogSkins.com: BlogSkins.com
is a collection of templates you can use for your blog. In order
to use a skin, you download it and then install it manually in
your blog service, which may require at least a passing familiarity
with HTML.
