reinvention

from bramilo.weblogs.com

Since returning from the Philippines in late February 2001, I have been having weekly videochat sessions with my family over there. While in Manila, I installed a Logitech Quickcam Pro (parallel port version) and iVisit software on my sister’s 233Mhz Pentium. I also showed my cousin, my sister, my niece, and my brother-in-law how the system works. I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked but we were all busy as well at the time. Anyway, I thought, I could guide them on the use of iVisit through email instructions or over the phone if need be (I’ve done this with my classmates when we were setting up videochats using ivisit previously).

Teething Problems

True enough, we had some trouble hooking up and chatting on the first session. Part of the problem was their lack of familiarity with ivisit. We managed to see each other’s video for a few minutes and have text chat going on that first session. My sister was the main operator and she emailed me questions after that session, which I responded to with details on ivisit procedures and other stuff she asked about.

The second session was much better. We were using a passworded room in the first session but had also bookmarked each other (for direct point-to-point links); someone got into our room and was being a pest so we used the direct bookmarked links and stayed with that for the rest of the session. We would use the bookmark system in the next sessions. We also tried out audio chatting, which I doubted would work, as it was difficult when I tried it with my classmates. To my surprise, the audio wasn’t too bad. Transmissions were sometimes choppy or garbled but, if we spoke clearly and slowly, much of the speech was understandable. So we’ve used audio chat as well in the next sessions.

Benefits

The Sunday morning videochats bring my parents and my sister’s brood together at my sister’s house. At our end, its my daughter Bing and I mostly online and my wife occasionally. My father, I think, enjoys these sessions very much as he likes my daughter and her cheeky tricks — watching her on video, no matter how jerky, seems to give him a kick. Before these videochat sessions, we talk on the phone every Sunday morning and he always looked forward to talking to Bing; he’s not missed a session yet.

Bing on iVisit

The videochat sessions keep me a lot more in touch with my sister and her family as well. Previously I limited calls to Manila to Sunday morning chats with my parents and I’d call my sister from time to time. With the videochat, which my sister seems to be fond of as well, I get to talk to her every week.

The original plan was to move the 233Mhz Pentium to my parents’ house (next door to my sister’s) and for my sister to get a newer system (which she had been planning to do anyway). That way, we thought, my father could also dabble in other Internet things (which he’s wanted to do, he said, for a while now) but also give us a possible three-way conference. After five sessions, however, they’ve decided that its better to keep using my sister’s pc at her house because it brings the family over there together. My father says that’s fine; he’s busy with SMS (or texting, see Texting Capital of the World) at the moment so he doesn’t mind waiting until later to surf the Net.

My sister Joanne

My father, Andy, and Joanne

It’s also possible that we may get my other sister in New York to join us Sunday mornings. She has an iMac and has borrowed a web cam but she hasn’t been online yet. She’s busy, probably, or she may be having some trouble configuring her system. I’ll contact her through Dialpad (http://www.dialpad.com, offering free calls from the Internet to phones, mainly in the USA), which I’ve done previously, to sort out connection stuff and schedules.

Videochatting is getting our diasporic clan connected relatively cheaply (I used to spend more than a hundred dollars on overseas phone calls a month), and also provides a better communication mode through video — there’s this theory that communication is supposedly only complete when one sees the face of the other, and with video- and audio chat we certainly see each others’ faces, and more. We also enjoy chatting in this way I think partly because of the novelty of the technology. We’re also learning to get business (if any) done quickly, being conscious of the ever-present threat of computer crashes disrupting our sessions (we’ve had our share).

Other uses of the Internet for family stuff

We’ve used other Internet technologies to communicate prior to using videochatting such as email, eCircles, and ecards. Videochatting, however, is proving to be the most regular way at the moment (at least between my family in Manila and I, as links with my sister in New York are mainly through email still).

I’ll write some more about cyberspatial technologies and diasporic experiences. I’ll also write about non-Internet technologies such as texting (SMS) and single side-band radio that the family has used to keep in touch.

from bramilo.weblogs.com

Something I wanted to work on while I was in the Philippines in January-February 2001 was to reconnect with friends and comrades to explore possibilities for using Internet technologies for maintaining and building communities of interest (that, hopefully, make interesting art as well) online and offline. I felt I still belonged to these communities of interest even as I lived overseas and I saw the Internet as a way of not only promoting online CCD among community-based organisations (that I was connected with) in the Philippines but also as a way of keeping me involved with these communities and organisations, although virtually.

My interest in keeping my place in communities overseas is consistent with my view of communities of interest or intentional communities particularly in virtual environments as legitimate arenas for CCD. It also builds from my commitment to international cultural exchange as a way of fostering CCD in Australia, something I’ve done since I migrated to this country in 1986. The net facilitates and expands cultural exchange possibilities either to assist the planning and execution of real-world events or CCD projects in cyberspace, maximising the boundary-less nature (i.e. interaction across international boundaries) of interaction online.

I had attempted to moderate an online community of Filipino poets living both in the Philippines and overseas through a newspoetry style email list or egroup (through the Philippine Educational Theatre Association’s young writers group) since last year. Like many other egroups, it had contributions in the beginning which tapered off with time. haven’t dissolved the list, hoping that it may become useful later on; I moderate a similar egroup called Darwin News and it too suffers from periodic lacks of participation but one or two writers keep contributing to it so it stays open (I recently opened it up to other writers during the online workshop held at the NTU Digital Media Centre on 3 March 2001 so I hope more writers will keep it alive).

For the groups I wanted to work with, I avoided setting up a poetry mailing list or something outrightly artistic in the beginning as I was aware, having worked with them previously while I was based in the Philippines in 1996-98, that art was not high up on the everyday agendas of these groups. There was interest in the arts as a developmental tool but they have more pressing everyday tasks. I thought then that the technology or technologies for online community building should be attractive for their everyday use as well as provide avenues for artistic expression further down the road — blogs suited this criterion, so I proposed blogs to them. I particularly promoted Manila (hence the term “Manila site”), a web logging (blogging) technology developed by Userland in the USA, as I thought this style of blogging would suit their current needs but would also provide room for expansion later on. Both groups liked what they saw and I built blogs for them while I was in Manila.

Some information on the groups and the blogs we set up follow.

PRRM

The Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM) is the oldest development non-government organisation (NGO) in the Philippines. It was set up in 1952 to promote rural development using various approaches, the latest and most successful being the sustainable development model. The sustainable development model for rural reconstruction was introduced and developed in the mid- to late 1980s by Horacio Morales Jr, Isagani Serrano, and other left-wing development activists (Morales and Serrano were political prisoners under the Marcos regime).

I worked at PRRM as popular education specialist in 1997-98. Part of my work was to develop ways of deploying music, theatre, and the other arts for education and training among PRRM’s development workers and the community groups they worked with — these communities included fisherfolk, farmers, and indigenous people. One of my first assignments was to set up a rock and roll band (which still plays!) that would write and perform songs about issues surrounding sustainable development. I also presided over the reorientation of the popular education program into a community education program which included elements of cultural action as significant strategies. The idea of arts in a community education context was therefore not new but, as I gathered from my brief initial discussions with friends at PRRM, not very prominent on the agenda.

I worked mainly with friends and former colleagues in the Department of Advocacy, Research, and Technical Services (DARTS), my old department. They knew (vaguely) of what I had been doing this past year (I kept in email contact with them) and were also grappling with how the Internet can help with their work. The PRRM website has looked the same since 1998 and is not updated regularly, partly because the webmaster migrated to Canada last year and no one has been trained to continue this job. The DARTS workers were interested in using the web, mainly for advocacy, but had no skills or training in the area. They were familiar with email and browsing the net (and the Manager was on an inter-NGO egroup) but not much else. I showed them my blogs and talked a bit about some possibilities with blogging. We then organised a workshop where I could demonstrate the technology to the whole Department. At this workshop (in February), they agreed that a blog would be useful and we set it up. The blog is at http://prrmdarts.manilasites.com. The blog — rather its maintenance and growth — was also included in the department’s strategic plan.

The workshop, however, was very short and provided only an introduction to blogging using Manila. We did not have time to go into much detail or training on how to make the most of blogging. I banked on the workers’ enthusiasm for this new tool and their proven resourcefulness (which I had seen so many times while I was working there in the past) and hoped that they’d find their way around this thing sooner or later. After a month, the site’s still the same so I gather they have not done much with it. One of the DARTS workers did send me a message (with a promise to follow up with email) about “Internet things” so they probably have not forgotten about the blog (and other possibilities) but may be busy with other things, especially the coming national elections in May.

Of other Internet things, the band members at PRRM were also very interested in RocketNetwork, a virtual studio system that allows collaborators to work on songs together using MIDI and digital audio that is processed through free client software (Logic Rocket, a good simple sequencer) and a system of servers managed by RocketNetwork in the USA. They were keen to explore the possibilities of joint songwriting with me using this technology but we didn’t get the time to play around with it.

So while I am happy that I was able to introduce tools that could be very useful to PRRM, I regret not having enough time and resources to provide a bit more information and training. As with any technology, adoption takes time and effort. I will try to encourage and support — virtually at the moment — the use of the prrmdarts blog for their current needs as well as promote the arts-for-development approach using online technologies in the coming months. No guarantees that it will work but, as with other online community building technologies (including the really simple egroup), I’ve found that there must be moderators or persons looking after the process of exchange and regular usage. I need to find ways to do this remotely.

My personal interest in trying to get the blog, RocketNetwork, and other things happening is to provide ways with which I can continue to work with these friends and colleagues, eventually to make art with them, as an online community of workers (and community-based artists) interested in sustainable development and other issues of common concerns. I feel I belong to this community and as I live in Darwin, I wish to be more actively involved in this community even if mainly through the net.

KAKAMMPI

I also revisited old comrades at KAKAMMPI, a NGO dedicated to advancing the interests of Filipino migrants and their families. I had known KAKAMMPI since the early 1990s and have worked with its members on some projects in the Philippines and overseas since then. The leader of KAKAMMPI, Rene Raya, in fact worked with Filipino migrants in Australia for a time and maintains good contacts in Australia still. KAKAMMPI has members world-wide and services families of migrants left behind in the Philippines. A large part of their work is advocacy for legislation that benefits Filipino migrants and the provision of services such as facilitating legal assistance, a day care facility, information dissemination, and organising.

They also knew of what I was up to through our email exchanges, and they too were keen on cultural action although, again, this was not too prominent on their everyday task lists. As with PRRM, they wanted an Internet presence, especially as they have a global audience in a sense (there are more than three million Filipinos overseas). They have a web site, which a Dutch supporter built for them, but they didn’t know how to update it as none of them have tried webmastering before. They were considering hiring a webmaster but this would cost a lot in the Philippines. I described blogging to them as an alternative and highlighted the push-button character of web site maintenance (where you only need the browser to manage the site and where templates or themes provide a ready-made structure to accept their particular content. They were very keen on it and we set up their own blog one hot Thursday evening in February; their blog is at http://kakammpi.manilasites.com.

The blog will start out as a newsletter for KAKAMMPI members and friends; we agreed it would not be a strictly news-oriented publication and that creative expressions of migrants should be given space in the blog. They welcomed the possibilities for creative expression, particularly the recording of migrants’ stories.

Again, like the PRRM blog, I didn’t have much time to work with them on this blog, no time for looking at detail or training on using the blog. After a month after setting it up I checked and there were no updates to it yet. Same issues as with PRRM as far as moderation, support, and actual training is concerned. I’ve volunteered to edit the blog from Darwin (I am a card-bearing member based here anyway) initially and we agreed to talk about growing the blog with other Filipino migrants’ contributions later on. They too are busy with the coming national elections in May.

This is a community I feel I belong to naturally. being a Filipino migrant myself. I am also keen on growing this initiative because it can serve a global audience (of overseas Filipinos) and the possibilities for encouraging and publishing migrants’ artistic expressions (even if only through the sharing of their stories through the blog) are exciting. I must, as with PRRM, find a way to encourage and support this initiative using online technologies.

The Art Will Come

While I did not push for the blogs as artistic media for PRRM and KAKAMMPI at this initial stage, I believe the art will come eventually (or the blogs and other technologies will be used for creative community expression). They need, however, to see that these technologies are useful for their other needs too, so I have to assist them in running generalist blogs for now. But this approach is not not unique to virtual community arts; with some communities, we need to spend some time doing non-arts things to gain their confidence before even attempting to do arts projects. This is how organic or endogenous community arts are; artists also need to consider their community’s other needs.

from bramilo.weblogs.com

On 27th January 2001, I joined my former classmates and other alumni at Don Bosco Technical College, Mandaluyong, Metro Manila for the annual homecoming. It was also our class’s (1976) 25th Anniversary and we were hosting the homecoming. I haven’t been to an alumni homecoming since 1978, I think, and I decided to attend and contribute this time.

My contribution was to webcast the event through http://www.spotlife.com, and to host a videoconference using iVisit (http://www.ivisit.com) to allow alumni to attend the homecoming online.

Preparations for the webcasting and the videoconferencing was arranged months before through email, through our class’s egroup, and through a test videoconference (also organised through the egroup). I also worked with some classmates (and others) face-to-face when I got to Manila in mid-January.

I worked with Vic Munarriz, a classmate of mine, and the Don Bosco Computer Centre to set up and implement the webcast and videoconference. Vic organised the Computer Centre’s involvement. The Centre then organised the computers and the Internet connections for the project. I brought along two webcams (a parallel version Logitech Quickcam Pro and a USB Kensington VGA webcam) and the software and set up the system for webcasting and conferencing.

Don Bosco Computer Centre

On the homecoming night itself, I operated the two computers and moderated the webcast and videoconference. In the photo are two of my classmates, Jojo Santos (standing) and Ben Sucgang (chatting with another classmate on iVisit).

Ben, Jojo, Me: Ben Sucgang, Jojo Santos, and I at the webcast

The webcast was done through www.spotlife.com who offer four hours of live webcasting per month (among other services) to members. Membership is free. I had my own account with spotlife.com which I used to test the facility but I set up another account (in Vic’s name) so that we could have up to eight hours of webcasting time using both accounts if need be. Webcasting quality on spotlife is typical of webcasts using telephone lines: image is slow and jerky and there is a delay of almost a minute sometimes in transmision; sound quality is not great but acceptable; buffering interrupts webcasts. On the night itself, the connection was dropped a few times but restored within minutes. Classmates who were watching and listening online commented that the sound was okay but the vision as expected (jerky, etc.). I was unable to find out how many persons actually watched the webcast.

The videoconference was done with iVisit. I had another computer running iVisit as a dedicated conferencing terminal so that alumni at the homecoming in Manila could see and chat with alumni who were online that night. Five classmates were logged onto the iVisit session that night: Rene Moral from Melbourne, Rollie Mapa and Gerry Galipot from Sydney, Jimmy Patena from Texas, and Gerry Castillo from Toronto. Many classmates at the homecoming chatted on the iVisit terminal.

The webcast and videoconference were the first ever for an alumni homecoming at my old school — in fact, it was the first time even for the Computer Centre (who were very happy with it and will explore doing more of it in future). Our classmates who were coordinating the homecoming were happy with the webcast and videoconference project; they were especially happy because they counted alumni who attended through videoconferencing in the official attendance, which won our class the record for highest class attendance at a homecoming.

Class of 1976

This was my first “real” webcast as well as prior to it I’ve only done tests. I webcast and moderated the videoconference for about three and a half hours (I only stopped because the Computer Centre needed to take their computers away). It was a good technical and organising exercise for me, but also a good exercise in deploying technology to enhance a physical community event with virtual participation.

from bramilo.weblogs.com

After the ouster of Joseph Estrada as President by another People Power Revolution (aka EDSA 2) in January 2001, one of the comments that circulated was that he was the first President to be overthrown by text messaging.

Text messaging, or simply “text” as it is referred to in the Philippines, is SMS (Short Message Service) that is available on digital cellular (mobile) telephones. With SMS, you can send messages of up to 160 characters to other SMS-enabled mobile telephones. Messages are input using the phone’s key pad then sent through a message centre number (allocated by the service provider) to the specified phone number. Depending on the load of message centres and cellular phone networks, the message can arrive almost instantly or the next day (although messages usually arrive within a few seconds). The technology has been around for a number of years along with the GSM digital cellular telephone service.

SMS is very popular in the Philippines — reputedly “the text capital of the world” — to the extent that it has been credited with an important role in the EDSA 2 revolution. I had a taste of the power of text while I was in Manila observing the events of EDSA unfold. I brought my mobile telephone along and, with a SIM card borrowed from my brother-in-law, was initiated into text. I got messages from my sister (and others) about what has happening at EDSA (my sister and her family were on site), and we were coordinating possible meetings at EDSA through text. From reports in the local media, the build-up of protestors at EDSA and other places in Metro Manila (and other cities) was facilitated by messages indicating actions (e.g. noise barrages, motorcades, demonstrations) as well as time and place for events.

Texting (and voice calls) on mobile phones were so popular in fact during the EDSA revolution that the cellular network failed to cope at the height of the actions at EDSA. At a talk show shortly after the EDSA events, executives of the two largest cellular telephone services (Smart and Globe) admitted that the networks were so congested that calls and SMS messages simply could not get through. A friend who was trying to use his phone at the EDSA Shrine (the main venue for the protests) confirmed that his phone was useless a lot of the time as the networks were unavailable.

After the EDSA revolution, I got to use “text” a lot more through the remainder of my stay in the Philippines. I used SMS to organise appointments and to keep in touch with family and friends while I was in Manila and in Cebu. I even managed to get help (from my sister) in rebooking flights from Cebu to Manila using text. I also used it to liaise with my lawyer who was attending to some legal stuff (hearing dates, etc.) for me.

I also learned a bit more about texting in the local media; one ad that grabbed me was for a service that allowed mobile phone users to pay for and receive goods from a vending machine using SMS: you send a message to the company that operates the vending machine that places your request for the goods and confirms your payment then the good (e.g. soft drink can) is dispensed. I’m not sure if you need to have an account with the vending machine operators or if the phone company acts as go-between and charges you for the goods on your bill as I didn’t manage to check up on the ad. The point is that SMS is being used in many ways in the Philippines.

By the end of my stay (third week of February), I was a text convert and a bit more competent with punching in characters (you get 160 maximum with SMS) using the phone’s key pad. Even my wife expressed a desire to use SMS when we got back to Darwin — it turns out she rarely used her mobile in Darwin because of the brain cancer scare associated with using mobiles, and she reckoned using SMS would be better as the handset is sway from your head when you input and read SMS messages.

Why the popularity of Texting in the Philippines?

SMS is a technology that is about 5 years old but SMS usage exploded in the Philippines only the last two years. One explanation is that it is a relatively accessible and cheap medium for mobile communications.

Mobile phones are everywhere in the Philippines and, supposedly, people from all walks of life use them (including janitors and taxi drivers and other working class people, I have been told). I’ve seen people in shopping malls, restaurants, public transport, on the street even staring at their phones and punching away everywhere. I’ve grown accustomed to the telltale beeps of incoming messages in all places, including churches during Mass. Jokes circulate about people sitting at the same table in restaurants texting away, sending text messages to each other.

Mobiles are very popular because for many people who want a telephone service, it is much easier to get a mobile than a landline service — land line telephones are notoriously difficult to get in the Philippines, with some potential subscribers having to wait for months or years to have a line installed. With mobiles, you get connected in minutes. While mobile telephone itself and the service charges are more expensive than for landline equivalents, the ease of connection has expedited the huge adoption of mobile telephones everywhere.

Most mobile phones in the Philippines are digital (specifically GSM) and are thus SMS-capable. When SMS was first promoted by the telcos, it was free. The boom in usage and popularity of this free service surprised even the telcos, so much so that they eventually charged one peso a message to regulate usage (that is, to discourage abuse of the service). But even with the one peso charge per message, it was reported that as at January 2001, there were about 14 million messages being processed everyday in the Philippines. A peso a message is much cheaper than the 8 pesos a minute that some telcos charge for voice calls; hence the tendency for mobile telephone users to use SMS rather than voice.

SMS is Good (and Bad)

There are of course critics of this texting revolution and some criticism is legitimate, especially in relation to the sending of jokes and useless information, not unlike the abuse of email to send useless messages or to spam. But as I said, I am now a texting convert after some weeks of seeing the possibilities of using SMS for a wide range of purposes (including the sending of jokes, although I will not do that I think as I have yet to send a joke via email). I was so hooked by this text thing that one of the first things I did on my return to Darwin in February was to upgrade my crappy Alcatel One Touch (which displayed only two lines of text) to a Nokia 6210 (with SMS, WAP, Infrared, etc.) as well as upgrading my wife’s phone to a Nokia 3310 so we could text our love for each other (as well as organise our daily movements and other things).

I write more about texting, SMS, and other intersections between the net and mobile telephony in “SMS, WAP, and the IT&T convergence”.

from bramilo.weblogs.com

One of the things I was keen to know about Manila and Cebu was the availability and accessibility of Internet Cafes. I intended to keep checking my email and maintaining my blogs/web sites (and do other Internet things) while I was in the Philippines for about a month and wanted to know if I could do this easily through Internet Cafes. I was curious about this particularly because when I last in the Philippines (mid-1998), there were very few Internet Cafes in Manila and they were very expensive.

When I got there, I was overwhelmed with the number and affordability of Internet Cafes, at least in Manila and Cebu where I stayed most of the time. There are dozens of Internet cafes scattered around Manila and Cebu.

In Manila, the biggest Philippine metropolitan area (with about 10 million inhabitants), these can be found in the big shopping malls, in the business districts, in suburban shopping centres, and along some barangay (neighbourhood) roads. I noticed that many Internet Cafes in Manila also had billiard tables so that they were more like Internet Billiard Halls.

Cebu, the second biggest city (with about 3 million inhabitants) also had Internet Cafes everywhere (except I didn’t notice the connection with billiards there). I felt however that there were more Internet Cafes in Cebu than in Manila; this was observed by other friends who know both cities. I used Internet Cafes in Cebu more than I did in Manila because I didn’t have any other access in Cebu while I had access to the Internet through family in Manila.

Internet Cafes in Manila and Cebu offered a variety of services: email, web surfing, chatting, word processing and laser printing, and network gaming. It is network gaming that is the most popular activity in these Cafes I noticed. In the Cafes I used, there was not even food or drink on sale and most users were young people playing Counterstrike or some other shoot-em-up game.

I enjoyed using a small (ten-computer) Internet Cafe called xpress link, along the main road in Mandaue, Cebu. It was in a small ground floor room of a residential house, with a little sign on the front hardly visible from the road. But my wife’s nephew Earl, who introduced me to the place, says it is always full from 9:00 am to past-midnight, mostly with gamers but also with students doing their online research, word processing, and printing.

Here are some photos of Earl and xpress link.

The Internet Cafe scene has certainly changed (boomed) since I was last in the Philippines and most people I talked to about it pointed out that network gaming was the catalyst for this growth. A cousin of mine who lives outside Manila told me that there are even online tournaments between rival teams who compete through the Internet.

Costs are cheap compared to Australian costs: average of $A1 per hour in Manila and Cebu compared to average of $A5 in Darwin. This rate seems attractive to many users, especially those who wish mainly to check email, surf the web, or chat, a few times a week, or students — much cheaper going to a Net Cafe than setting up a system at home (computer equipment costs roughly the same as they would cost in Australia).

An issue with these Cafes though is that their main revenue seems to come from gaming, and that many of the young users are (anecdotally) becoming almost addicted to these games.

At any rate, I was impressed with how many Internet Cafes there were, and how many of these were at neighbourhood level — I thought that this was one model of grassroots and community computing that I should look at more closely. It is a model that locates the technology down to the neighbourhood level, is relatively affordable for less well-to-do users, and provides relatively fast access to the Net (cable Internet is widespread in Manila and Cebu, and even the little xpress link in Mandaue was on cable). It is also an enterprise model, where operators seem to make enough to maintain operations and where demand seems to warrant the proliferation of such enterprises. It is, however, a model with negative implications as well, particularly in relation to gaming. I believe gaming is what sustains many of these Cafes and if gaming were minimised or removed then the enterprise might suffer or lose money.

I need to look at the whole business again when I am back in Manila and/or Cebu.

from bramilo.weblogs.com
Posted by Christian Ramilo, 4/1/01 at 1:18:16 AM.

Web logging is also known as “blogging.” It has been described as “push button publishing” (http://www.blogger.com) because of the simplicity and directness with which web sites can be created and maintained through web browsers and web logging facilities provided by such sites as blogger.com. Blogging can indeed be as simple as “push button publishing” as blogging sites offer templates, WYSIWYG input and editing, linking through shortcuts, easy to set up discussion groups, and other automated publishing mechanisms which dn’t require users to know HTML and other technical web things.

The simplest blogging operation involves setting up the web log (blog) using push-button and menu-driven mechanisms, typing in a posting/message/story, clicking on the publish button, and your material is uploaded to your own blog site. In its simplest form, it is an online log book or journal accessed through any web browser, which allows bloggers to write and publish on the web when the urge hits them (as some of the promotional copy says).

Blogging has also been described as “content management for the rest of us” (http://manila.userland.com). Content management systems allow users to focus on the creation of content (ideas, text, image, etc.) individually or collaboratively, and to publish content directly, with the “content management system” taking care of the technical aspects of page and site design, uploading, maintenance, etc. Users then would not need to know HTML or any other web application other than a browser as web-based content management systems — which include Blogger and Manila — handles the other background technical stuff.

While the ability to create sites using templates, to edit pages, and update content through web browsers has been offered by several services (e.g. Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire) before “content management systems,” the difference lies in the utter simplicity and directness of publishing through blogs. With other systems, users will still need to know some HTML and be familiar with some technical aspects of the web and the net (e.g. ftp, hyperlink syntax) to sort out design, formatting, editing, uploading, downloading, and other usual web maintenance tasks.

Also, collaborative aspects such as discussion lists (with email lists) and collaborative page editing were add-ons (or complicated operations) rather than built-in features; these discussion and collaborative facilities are part and parcel of blogs (if blog owners wish to use them, that is).

Content management systems can be more complicated and much more expensive than what Blogger and Manila offer, although both these applications are extensible if users wish to customise their blogs through scripting and interfacing with databases. The main idea behind content management systems is, however, captured by bloggers, albeit at the lower end of things (hence the claim that it is “for the rest of us.”).

Blogger

Blogger is one of the original and probably the most popular blogging facilities on the web.

To create blogs with Blogger, you must register at their site. After registration you can create blogs — as you are not limited to one blog, you can create various ones on various themes or topics. On logging into Blogger, you will be presented with a menu of your own blogs as well as other blogs linked to Blogger.

Blogger provides browser-based editing, thus there’s no need for dedicated web page or web site development packages. You can also have “Team” members, or other registered users whom you allow to comment on your pages or co-edit your site. Blogger also provides templates for simple blogs but offers strong customisation capabilities through scripting and linking to applications such as Cold Fusion (a powerful online database application).

Blogs can be hosted on Blogger’s own servers; there is no charge for hosting but your blog will feature advertising from Blogger and its partners/advertisers. Alternatively, blogs can be hosted on users’ own web sites; Blogger will publish to your own site through ftp (so you must know your ftp details such as ftp address, user name, and password).

Manila

Manila, as described by its creators Userland, “is an Internet server application that allows groups of writers, designers and graphics people to manage full-featured, high performance Web sites through an easy-to-use browser interface.”

Manila is included as part of the UserLand Frontier content management system, a commercial product for Windows and Macintosh. Frontier is itself apowerful scripting and web development application that is used by many ISPs. You can run your own Manila server (if you purchase Frontier), or you can set up a Manila site hosted by Manila service providers such as Weblogs, Weblogger, and Manilasites.

Manila’s key features include: browser-based editing, with “Edit this Page buttons” that allow you to instantly edit your web/blog pages; site membership; a simple publishing model, managing editor, contributing editors, members; discussion group facilities; link management through shortcuts; email notification of new stories or edits; and customization thru templates, navigation, CSS, JavaScript.

Manila maintains that in its system, “content is separated from form, designers edit templates, while writers independently create stories, photographers and artists place pictures. The site template can change without updating any content.”