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Non-Tech : Binary Hodgepodge -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ~digs who wrote (505)	11/17/2002 12:58:21 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6763

Publish Your Heart Out with Easy-To-Use Web Tools By Eric Auchard November 17, 2002 07:07 AM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - The often neglected vision of World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee was to create a two-way communications medium that gave Internet users the ability to publish text and pictures and other media, not just view them. From a physics lab in Switzerland, Berners-Lee envisioned the Web as a tool that would enable scientists around the world to collaborate on research -- reading each other's work and editing, annotating and rewriting it were part of the plan. A decade later, grass-roots publishing tools are putting the power of authorship in the hands of millions -- although ease of use often comes at the expense of creative control. There's still a lot of hype in the idea that "anyone can publish a Web site." "It's a lot closer now than it ever was before," said Tim O'Reilly, founder and chief executive of computer book publisher O'Reilly & Associates, who is also a top industry evangelist for wider public access to Internet technology. If basic Web pages are all you want, simple text-publishing tools have been available on all the major online media sites since the mid-1990s. Building a single page is easy when how-to templates are provided. Established online community sites such as Yahoo's GeoCities (http://geocities.yahoo.com/) and Terra Lycos's Tripod (http://www.tripod.lycos.com/) offer step-by-step guides to create a standard Web page in a matter of minutes. The trouble is that these free pages have become flooded with teenagers venting about how much they hate school or how much they love pop sensation Justin Timberlake...still. Adults, and many children, may seek something more. For those willing to pay as little as $4.95 a month, sites such as Tripod allow you to build more complex sites with links to sophisticated design tools and other features. BLOGGERS POUR THEIR HEART OUT Another approach is the Web log, or "blog," a phenomenon which has attracted hundreds of thousands of self-publishers looking for an easy way to create sites that can be updated with text and pictures but require little or no technical know-how. "Blogging has made a huge difference in the ability of ordinary people to publish," said O'Reilly, publisher of the nuts-and-bolts guide to blogging entitled "Essential Blogging." For non-techies, Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) or LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com) allows Web writers to set themselves up on the Web for free, with additional features available for a fee. Radio UserLand (http://radio.userland.com/), another popular blogging tool, comes with a free 30-day trial and costs $39.95 to purchase. MoveableType is a fourth such blog software alternative. But not all blog software is easy to set up, users say. "Installing (the software) can be a bit of a, uh, character-building experience," a MoveableType user testifies on the company's own site. "We wouldn't have known where to start," said Gina Perino, a Manhattan advertising sales broker and repressed creative writer, a year after she and her friend Jen began a mutual online diary, or "blog," with help from a mentor. Perino found the courage to set up her blog with the assistance of unemployed Web designer Glenda Bauptista, whose experience grew out of creating her own highly visual site at agendacide.com. "I still don't have a clue how to set up a Web site," admits Perino, who uses MoveableType to publish to her site. "If I could do it, a monkey could do it." Her site at bitch-sessions.com is characteristic of the form, mixing personal revelations with social or political commentary and lots of links to other blogs. Perino's blog is a Web equivalent of "Sex and the City." She features confessions of boyfriends gone bad, fanatical music reviews as well as the strange goings-on inside women's bathrooms, and lots and lots of pictures of friends. PERCHED ON THE EDGE OF THE TECHNICAL ABYSS Creating full-blown Web sites with nifty graphics, loads of Web links and original style and presentation is, depending on your technical know-how, either the gateway to a career in self-publishing or the quickest descent into virtual hell. For those willing to take the plunge, Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O sells its FrontPage publishing tool while Macromedia Inc. MACR.O offers its slightly more sophisticated Dreamweaver publishing software. Each retails online for a little more than $100 and is geared toward semi-pro users. FrontPage does its best to conceal the complexity of Web publishing inside software that looks and functions a lot like Microsoft's widely available Word text-processing software. Users can successfully use FrontPage for months before they cross the technical abyss and start to understand the basics of the underlying HTML code at the heart of such programs. Bauptista, the Web designer who helped Perino get going, says the virtue of the blogs she sets up for friends is that once they have a Web address and learn a few things about how to post new material, the writers pretty much run things themselves. "Have fun!," Bauptista demands in one of the technical advisory e-mails she sends around to the network of blog writers she's helped get started. "And uhmmmm...keep me posted if you hear about anything regarding something like...a JOB!" reuters.com