Mr. Joey Alarilla (Palanca award-winning writer, Pinoy blogger, gaming enthusiast, and editor of Inquirer’s YOU online) posted a feature on the J Spot on the regular YOU BLOG ADDICT column.

Read more here: J marks the spot

An excerpt:

It can be argued that the online Filipino community has indeed found a new, perhaps better, way of reaching out to the world. It’s also a good way to publish “news” based on the experiences of the average (or not) Juan de la Cruz. Quite some noteworthy stories have been extensively discussed online through blogs and comments thereof.

I emailed him my responses to the BLOG ADDICT questionnaire late last year, so some of my statements may be dated (i.e. on my use of Blogger), but the feature still does reflect my sentiments about blogging: most notably that ”… blogs allow freedom in online personal publishing.”

Thank you Joey!

Copy of the feature is cited below:

YOU BLOG

ADDICT


J marks the spot


By INQ7.net

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LOOKING forward

MEET our

Tuesday YOU Blog Addict, J. Angelo Racoma.

Got a blog? Interested in being

featured? Just e-mail joeyalarilla@gmail.com.

You could be the next YOU Blog Addict.

When and why did you start blogging

and who got you hooked?

I set up a Blogger account at Blog*Spot

in August of 2003. However, as anyone viewing my blog

archives could see, I had only been able to post a total

of one entry that year! And it was a “welcome to

my blog,” message—a one-liner! I guess at that

point I was quite busy with everything else (my family,

my studies, my work). Blogging seemed so complicated.

Anyway, I then preferred web forums

(BNC, Esato, Club Siemens) as a means of reaching out

online. Blogging seemed complicated. Then come August

2004, I saw an ad for Globe’s G-Blogs. I started my

own G-Blog account (I’ve owned a MyGlobe account for

as long as I can remember), and posted a welcome note.

But looking for customization options,

I wasn’t content with the features and flexibility this

blogging service offered. The only novelty it offered

was the ability to read and write blogs through SMS.

It was here when I remembered about setting up a Blogger

account almost exactly a year back. And that’s when

I got hooked. I resumed maintenance of my Blogger account.

I changed and re-designed the theme, posted links and

articles, and voila! I was an addict.

What makes a blog better than

a regular website? Did you try putting up your own site

before you started blogging?

From the perspective of an online

publisher, being CSS-based, a blogging system allows

an individual to post his or her thoughts online without

having to worry about formatting or encoding (here,

content rules, although great formatting would also

help). From the perspective of the reader, one could

expect fresh content without having to wait for regular

updates (this is especially true with RSS feeds, where

one could syndicate as many feeds as desired).

The one most important difference

is that blogs allow freedom in online personal (or otherwise,

as in team/group blogging, which may both be personal

and professional in nature) publishing, unlike regular

news sites, publications of which are usually centralized

or mostly based on print versions.

Before I started blogging, I had

already attempted to maintain my own personal websites

from way back in 1995, right when I started getting

into the Net. It was quite difficult as one had to learn

a lot of techniques in designing and encoding for a

website. Here, I experienced problem with content, since

having to design and re-design my site each time I wanted

to include new content meant more time focusing on the

encoding and less time thinking up things to write.

Would you say that blogging is

very addictive? How many people have you convinced to

also start blogging?

Well, it is addictive, in the sense

that when I think of something to write while I’m away

from my keyboard, I feel as if my fingers are itching

to log on to Blogger and start typing away. Of course,

I could do this offline, but having the world at your

fingertips with Google, web forums and other blogs is

definitely better.

Oh, and as I write this, it’s almost

5 a.m. Addictive or not? (Yeah, I’m submitting this

via e-mail, but I spent almost a couple of the past

hours surfing and bloghopping)

I don’t think I’ve convinced anyone

to also start blogging, but I’m getting to that.

How has blogging made a difference

in your life?

I’ve made new friends and contacts,

and got to meet old ones (from way back). I’ve also

found a new way of expressing myself. I have always

wanted to reach out to the world in ways that are uniquely

mine. I’ve established quite a considerable online presence

through web-based forums and e-mail-based discussion

groups. But I’ve found blogging to be one of the more

personal ways I could relate online.

It’s also a great “after-hours”

activity, especially that it lets me write down those

precious thoughts and ideas I wanted to share somewhere.

A few years down the road, I could get to retrieve and

relive my thoughts wherever I am. No diaries to lose.

No passwords to forget. No hard disks to crash.

What kind of an impact has blogging

made on the Filipino online community?

It can be argued that the online

Filipino community has indeed found a new, perhaps better,

way of reaching out to the world. It’s also a good way

to publish “news” based on the experiences

of the average (or not) Juan de la Cruz. Quite some

noteworthy stories have been extensively discussed online

through blogs and comments thereof.

Check out my November 2004 archives

for a discussion on the “Faye San Juan” story

(when I posted a version and made follow-ups, my blog’s

readership surged—from referrals by other blogs and

even Yahoo! And Google).

What blogging software do you

use? What makes it better than other blogging services?

I use blogger. I also use third-party

add-ons, such as FeedBurner (a friendlier way of publishing

feeds than Google/Blogger’s Atom), TagBoard, BlogRolling,

Bloglet. But for me, nothing beats some knowledge of

good ol’ HTML.

I also once tried Blogdrive’s service,

since I thought it offered more features, but I found

some difficulty in personalizing my site. And as I mentioned

before, I didn’t like G-Blogs for its lack of customizability.

I found Blogger to be more flexible than these other

sites. If I needed to publish while on the road, I could

simply use Blogger’s e-mail service (via GPRS, for instance).

No ads too! I’m not sure about others, though, but I’m

not about to shift. Joey G. Alarilla, INQ7.net

Visit J. Angelo Racoma’s blog

at http://jangelo.i.ph/.

Got a blog? Then drop us a line

at joeyalarilla@gmail.com />
and we’ll check out your site. You could be our next

YOU Blog Addict.

You may e-mail comments to joeyalarilla@gmail.com

and visit www.alarilla.com.

RELATED SITES:


The J Spot


http://jangelo.i.ph/

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