My friend Chris, who runs Graphpaper.com and AskROM, turned me onto Blogger a few weeks ago. It took me a while to get my act in gear and learn how to use it. I’m impressed. Blogger has greatly simplified the entire process of updating Web sites regularly.This page was built in an afternoon and I can now update it on a whim, from any Web browser, without touching a line of code (well, not entirely true, but true enough). I built it in the same afternoon that I took out to learn how to use the service from scratch. Granted, I fused Blogger code with pre-existing chunks of HTML that I use regularly on my Web site, but the basic concept is easily grasped. In fact, the largest investment is spending the time to tweak the display layer.

While I think Blogger and its ilk are a terrific development, I do think the tool has a long way to go, e.g. faster servers, expert-level control, spell check, possibly a desktop app. In this market, who knows how likely developments like those might be. In fact, betting on a free, Web-based widget like this as a primary publishing tool for one’s Web site has got to be an act of faith. At this point, I’m just wondering how long Blogger can go before running out of money, or getting bought out by Yahoo!