Life
By Katie Sullivan
|
October 14, 2002
Young girls associate the word "diary" with
emotional outpourings, and most of all,
secrets.
But in this age of the digital revolution, not even this time-honored tradition has been left untouched.
The new, digital form of diaries, called blogs, or Web Logs, enable the user to post his or her innermost thoughts on the Internet for the whole world to read.
Bloggers link to their friends' blogs, creating a chain of links in which people closely follow the lives of others they do not even know.
And starting your own blog is just as easy -- and cheaper -- than buying a diary.
Blogger.com boasts that you need only three minutes to set up a blog using their templates.
According to fourth-year College student Amy Hawkins, there's also no need for prior computer knowledge.
Hawkins started her own blog with no Web programming experience whatsoever.
Third-year College student James Layman, who has held jobs involving Web technology similar to that used in blogs, said he finds the templates provided to be adequate for his blogging needs.
"All I added was a comments section," Layman said.
Hawkins said she finds maintaining an Internet journal much easier than a written diary.
"I never wrote in a private journal on a regular basis," she said.
First-year College graduate student Katie Bowers has been updating her blog almost daily for the past two years.
"It gets addicting, like caffeine," Bowers said.
