Seeing a blog is more enlightening than reading about them, so have a look at my new blog, Susan's Book Blog.

As you may have guessed from the title, this is an ongoing list of the books I have read recently. To add a new entry, I just log on to the main Blogger Web site. After entering my user name and password, I select one of my blogs (I can have as many as I want), type my comments on an easy-to-use-browser-based form and, when done, click on the “publish” button. Within seconds, my entry is posted to Blogspot for anyone in the world to see.

I can include hyperlinks to other sites (I link the books to Amazon in case anyone wants to buy them) and I can also make things bold or italic. If I mess up, entries are easy to edit. Old entries are sent to an archive – you get to decide how long an entry stays up front before it is archived.

Setting up a blog is easy; it takes about two minutes. First, set up an account. Then name your blog, select a template and start making entries. By far the easiest way to blog is by using the blog service’s own hosting service. However, if you have your own Web site, you can also have the blog uploaded and hosted there. Onscreen instructions and well-written help files walk you through the process.

Although Susan’s Book Blog is a one woman show, you can also invite others to participate in a “team blog.” In the service I am using, up to 32 members can be on a team. They are invited using a simple form that sends them an e-mail inviting them to participate. As the blog administrator, you can set the options so that other team members can only post, or you can make them administrators as well, which gives them the authority to edit and delete anyone’s entries.

The service is free, but at the no-cost level you will get an advertising banner at the top of the page. At Blogger, the service I am using, you can get “Blogspot ad free” for $15 a year, which gets rid of the ads. They also have two Blogspot plus options which allow you to have multiple pages and to include photographs. Depending on the amount of space you need, this costs $50 or $100 a year. Another service, Blogger Pro ($50 a year) adds a lot of functionality to the interface, such as spell checking and the ability to post your blogs via e-mail.

Blogger has just been bought out by Google (who thinks of these names?) and anticipates adding new services. One new feature that just debuted a few weeks ago is the audio blog. With AudBlog, you can make a telephone call and have a 2-minute message posted to any of your blogs as an MP3 file. A $3/month subscription fee buys you 12 two-minute AudBlog. They had a free trial of this service and I posted one on Susan's Book Blog, so that you can see how it works.

Who blogs? Everyone! Humor columnist Dave Berry has a blog. There are personal blogs, business blogs, funny blogs and serious blogs. Authors have blogs, journalists have blogs families have blogs and businesses have blogs. Anything that lends itself to a chronological diary format can be a blog.

I just read my first Computer Crime books that contains a blog — Claire and Present Danger by Gillian Roberts, due to be published in June. We reviewers get books before you do, nyah, nyah, nyah. In it, a high school student is being persecuted on a blog maintained by a super-popular girl. I understand that this sort of gossip-mongering blog is rampant among students, and it can be quite hurtful. Don’t keep that kind of blog, please.

As mentioned, I used Blogger to set mine up. This is easy and free, a perfect first choice for blog newbies. If you have your own Web site that can host custom CGI scripts, an excellent choice is Moveable Type , a software-based system that has more custom features. Salon.Com offers a blog, but you have to use their software, Radio UserLand. It costs $39.95 a year for the software and blog hosting, but you get some extra features, such as the opportunity to use news feeds. Big Blog Tool costs $13 a year. One of their features is “bloglet” which allows people to sign up to receive a daily summary of your blog via e-mail.

Blogging has been around for about nine years but has really caught on in the last year or so. If you have a Website, a blog can be a good way to keep your content fresh. If you don’t, it can be a good substitute. In either case, it’s free, it’s easy, it’s fun — it’s a blog!