The Source for Trucking News, Opinions and Trucking Jobs | Blogging and Trucking

Blogging is a major phenomenon on the world wide web. Everyone from actors (William Shatner) and politicians (Bush, Kerry) to the guy next door has a blog. Political bloggers are being invited to the Democratic National Convention as journalists. There are industry specific blogs, news blogs, political blogs, personal blogs, blogs about anything and everything. Blogging is huge.

What’s this got to do with truckers? There are several truckers that have personal web sites that aren’t necessarily blogs. Most blogs are hosted by a blogging service like typepad or blogger. I believe AOL has a blogging service for their members.

Blogs can be used to keep in touch, where you’re at what you’re doing, keep in touch with other drivers and family members. Even when you can’t get online you can still post an entry to your site. Post entries from email, an email capable cell phone, upload a picture with text to your blog from your picture phone. I use mine to rant about the trucking industry news that I come across and I have a personal site that I’ve sent pictures from my cell phone to.

There are a lot of trucking sites with php forums, yahoo groups and a few journals being kept by truckers. The difference between blogging and a forum (like Bozo’s) is there is a lot less maintenance involved. Blogs are more informal than having to register at every yahoo or msn group or forum site. And easier for the everyday person to administer and control. But they both have the same goal in mind of people getting together and discussing whatever they want.

The major advantage of blogs is RSS. Which stands for Really Simple Syndication. Forums don’t have RSS feeds. Reading news and blogs in a RSS Aggregator is becoming popular (mainly in geekdom, but it’s catching on) and is an integral part of blogging. Instead of subscribing to a zillion newsletters that clutter your inbox and your address becomes a spam magnet (also see mailblocks post about how to fight spam) or having to go to each blog you like to read and check to see if it’s been updated, you subscribe to the sites you want, your RSS reader does your surfing for you, bringing news content and updates from your favorite news sites and blogs to you, all in one place. You know which sites have had updates and you can browse through the new headlines, read which entries you want in more detail at your leisure and go on with your life. Without having to needlessly go to every forum or group or web site to see if there’s been an update. Yahoo is starting to support RSS. You can have some RSS feeds delivered to your My Yahoo page and some Yahoo groups support RSS. If you have a website, you can list RSS headlines on your site as news feeds.

There are several RSS readers available for free. RSS Reader, FeedReader and BlogExpress are just a few. There are also web based RSS readers that perform the same function but are accessed on the web without having to download another program. I’ve been trying out BlogLines, a lot of features and it’s free. Clicking on this
will not only take you to BlogLines, but it will automatically setup your subscription with my site. It really is pretty cool!

If you want to get started with your own blog, an excellent resource is 10 quick steps to Blogging. Downloadable PDF or MP3. From 10quicksteps.com. This guide will teach you everything from terminology and all about RSS feeds. It has excellent resources to get started and is very easy to understand and designed to get you up and running with your own blog quickly and easily.

Originally posted 2008-08-09 04:00:00.