Conclusions & References

I've been using iBlog for about a month, and it's definitely a fully-functional application. It is easy to use and leverages the strengths of OS X and its development environment. There are a few places that are rough around the edges and some missing features that will probably show up in time:

Coordinated Authoring: It is currently impossible to edit a blog from multiple computers. The application data are stored in the user's home directory (under the Library folder) and my attempts at using aliases to relocate the files have been unsuccessful. (Lifli admits to this being a primary feature that will be added in the future.)
Weak Multimedia Linking: The designers have put in some effort to make it easy to access your iLife (iTunes, iPhoto, etc.) data to make it easier to add pictures, music and movies to your pages. It's a good idea, but some quick experimentation in adding music and movies led me to conclude the developers have a long way to go. The music file I inserted didn't show up on the published page and the movie ended up being nothing but a simple anchor (<a>) link to the movie file. As a web designer I know there's a lot of code required to smoothly embed music and movies into a web page. iBlog isn't even close to getting this right yet.
Reconfiguration Bugs: I've had trouble modifying my iBlog site's configuration (look and feel) and having those changes get propagated to pages I've already published. This is supposed to be handled with the "Reset Publish State and Publish" option, but in version 1.3.1 it wasn't working. It works better in 1.3.2 but I haven't given it a proper shakedown yet.

A Built-in RSS Browser Included!

iBlog is actually two applications in one. If you flick a switch (literally, a button with a light switch icon) iBlog goes into Reader Mode and you have an RSS browser. I could write a whole separate article on RSS syndication feeds and browsers. (Check the reference section below.) Briefly, you can configure iBlog to pull quick listings and abstracts from several know blogs and browse them. If any article sounds interesting you can quick on the item and Safari will load up the corresponding blog site and your article of interest.

(Note that iBlog provides an automatic feature of generating an RSS feed for your published blog so other people can quickly access your site in the same manner.)

Really, iBlog is two applications in one package. Some people would conceivably use iBlog exclusively in Browser mode. (I don't use the browser at all, but its functionality is good.)

Conclusion: iBlog is worth the money.

Despite my criticism about these features and the horrific security problems, I would say iBlog is overall a decent application. It is capable of hosting my web site quite well, it is easy to use, and for only $20 (or free to .Mac users) it's a bargain.

References

Here's a small collection of references you might find useful. It is in no way exhaustive or comprehensive. If you have a suggestion that in your opinion really belongs here send me an e-mail and I'll consider adding it to this list.

History & Definitions

Weblogs: A History and Perspective. A slightly outdated (September 2000) essay written by Rebecca Blood, author of The Weblog Handbook giving a decent history of the origin of the weblog.
Weblogs Compendium. A site with lots of references to the art of blogging.

iBlog Specific

Lifli Software. Website for the authors of iBlog.
iBlogger.net Dedicated to the iBlogging community. Lot's of tips and tricks for customization.

Examples of Personal Blogs

WWDN (WilWheaton.Net). One of the most famous personal blog sites. WWDN was my first real exposure to blogging.
Blog-City.com. A provider and community of hosted weblogs. Provides free and for-pay services for anyone who wants to start a blog.
Of course I should list my own personal blog. There are two versions to compare: my hand-crafted homepage and my iBlog test.

Other Blogging Applications

Macworld Article: "Put Weblogs to Use". Reviews iBlog and compares it with a few other Mac-compatible solutions.
Movable Type. A popular server-side (dynamic) blogging application. This is what Wil Wheaton uses for his famous blog site.
Geeklog. A powerful (but complex) Open Source server-side (dynamic) blogging application.

Blogging Directories

There are too many to list. Here's the Yahoo! directory of weblog directories. Happy hunting!

Feedback

I obviously don't have time to try out every blogging package out there, so there are many solutions I may not have mentioned. I've got some feedback from Carole E. Mah about the subject of some interesting options out there. If anyone else would like to point out additional suggestions, please drop me a note!

Carol writes:

For dynamic packages, the best I've implemented is Geeklog. It was easy to implement and did everything the people for whom I configured it wanted. It was nice enough (and handled the RSS feeds without trouble) that I installed it on my home computer just to avoid having to go to a bunch of sites separately to read news links. And of course, the user comments on Slashdot are so annoying it is really better just to follow the links anyway. Plus this helped me avoid the temptation or accident of reading Spoiler items on Whedonesque.
For static packages, my co-workers swear by Tinderbox, It is extremely powerful, let's you hand-edit the underlying XML if you want to, and is very Mac-friendly since it was first developed only for OS X (but I suppose they are working on a Windoze port). The only drawback I found was that the learning curve for some of the more esoteric features to be a bit steep. But many people do love it.
You say that for static packages, "another disadvantage to this solution is that it may become difficult to extract your blog data from the application if you decide down the road to move to a dynamic server solution. Of course, data portability is not easy for any solution, but with a static page generating application you must hope that there's a decent data export functionality." If you are handy with XML, this isn't a problem at all for Tinderbox, since you can just save your data as XML and do what you want with it.
For hosting sites, by far my favorite is Livejournal. And with their new emphasis on memcaching, the site is speedy now (it was slow before). It is open source, XML-based (you can download all your entries in XML form, which I find very handy), and generates an RSS feed as well, so that you can incorporate your LiveJournal entries right in your static web pages using the feed. The best part about Livejournal is the community feedback and adjunct email notification. My main problem with a lot of hosted sites is that you never know when people have responded to the comments. Livejournal now also embeds a response form in the email notification message (if you decide to turn this feature on), so that replying to comments is completely trivial. Livejournal is also extremely cheap (free or $25/year depending on what features you want, and many get by fine with free accounts).

Murray is an actor/filmmaker/writer/computer geek in Los Angeles, CA. He's become a fanatical OS X user since its early prerelease days. Before that he worked hard on "that new-fangled thing called Linux". Perhaps the biggest feather in his "Macintosh cap" is being co-author of the Wrox Press book, "Early Adopter Mac OS X Java".

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