These are the tools I am using to run this blog:
1. WordPress as blog
I have decid
ed to use WordPress for this blog, because it includes a few tools that are not immediately available in Blogger: e.g. the statistics tool or the possibility to upload documents directly to the blog.
Blogger is easier to use and it’s great if you already have a Google account – only one login needed for all the Google tools! The downside with Blogger is, that if you want to upload documents you need to go through Google Docs. Similarly, if you want statistics on your Blogger site, you need to use the Google analytics tool.
Both sites, WordPress and Blogger, however allow you to add statical pages to your blog, which I find really useful (e.g. have a look the page on this blog about the 201o workshop series or the clickers page).
Another fine feature of WordPress is the creation of shortlinks – very handy for sending out emails with a link to the specific blog entry.
I also like the fact that people can subscribe by email to our blog – makes it easy to update people.
One big disadvantage of WordPress is the fact, that you need to upgrade your account to upload audio or video files. We only upgraded our account to be able to upload podcasts for 10 USD a year (have not yet found a useful site to stream podcasts).
2. Videos / Vimeo
Because WordPress doesn’t allow you to upload videos, I am using Vimeo instead. While YouTube limits you in the duration of videos that you are allowed to upload for free (max. 10 minutes, but 1 GB per week!), Vimeo doesn’t care how long your videos are, as long as they don’t exceed 500 MB per week – which is fine for us. WordPress has a specific format in which you have to include your Vimeo videos.
3. PPT presentations / Slideshare
On WordPress you can either upload your ppt presentation as a link or embed your presentations from Slideshare. Slideshare is a website, which allows you to upload ppt presentations. It then creates an embedded presentation, which you can scroll through without having to download it beforehand. It’s a very nice tool, if you want to give your readers the possibility to look at a presentation without necessarily downloading and saving it (saves on precious Internet time). Also a nice tool, if you have external presenters, who have uploaded their presentation to Slideshare. All you need is the title of the presentation to find it. Slideshare will give you a bit of html code, which you can include in your blog entry and which will display the embedded presentation. Slideshare will also offer you examples of similar presentations to yours from its database.