The Internet world continues apace. For once let’s leave off talking about viruses, hoaxes, and online scams, and let’s talk about a few “fun” things that the Internet lets us do, that actually--or at least prospectively--add to the quality of our life. Realistically, the #1 use of the Internet is obviously email--something we’ve become increasingly dependent upon, despite its myriad problems--but beyond email, there are a few other ways to optimize your participation, as it were, in cyberspace.

Blogs
Weblogs, or “blogs,” for short, are a relatively new phenomenon, but one that is increasing exponentially, even in recent months, where “bloggers” were given their own press passes to the Democratic and Republican conventions, further blurring the already obscure line as to what role they actually perform. Are blogs online journals, or journalism?

A blog is actually just a log, on the Internet, of its owner’s thoughts, impressions, and singular point of view. Sometimes a blog is a common undertaking by several people, but most often, it’s one person with a particular point of view to communicate.

Although bloggers--those who produce blogs--have different temperaments, and reasons for getting involved in blogging, one of the most common profiles is someone who enjoys journaling, or sharing his or her impressions of various states of affairs (the world, their kitchen, their mind at the moment) with others, who either respond (by leaving comments) or just read without replying (affectionately known as “lurking”).

Blogs are great for people who’ve gotten frustrated with having to turn content updates over to their web designers --simple blogging software is set up for the non-techies among us to make our updates ourselves. A fresh blog is a well-read blog, the reasoning goes.

Now that we’ve got the process defined, what are some examples? Seth Godin, an inventive marketing genius, who Business Week has called “the ultimate entrepreneur for the Internet age,” has an excellent blog at http://seth godin.typepad.com/seths_blog/, which can also be found through a link at his regular website, www.SethGodin.com.

It should be noted, before we increase confusion, that a blog is fundamentally different from a website, though they’re both online. The biggest differences are or should be, clear authorship and defined purpose (in a blog), along with a generally chronological listing of posts, so that it’s obvious when someone said something and blog postings can be read in order, to get a sense of what’s on the blogger’s mind over the course of time.

From the discussions I’ve had with lawyers about blogging, it seems like a topic that could interest them a great deal. Blogging is particularly suited to those whose professional (or personal, if it’s a non-work-related blog) interests are in either a niche area, an area of emerging interest (or a current hot topic), or who are vitally interested in engaging in what amounts to dialogue, over time, with interested readers.

A copyright attorney could write about current developments in the law, post-Napster. An immigration attorney could write about things he or she has seen, post-9/11. (The audience can clearly be a mix of colleagues and potential clients.)

An attorney whose focus is animal rights, white collar crime, or bicycle personal injury cases could keep a running “blog” of things that interest him or her in their field, which are also (intentionally, please) likely to be of interest to their readers.

Of course, lawyers-who-blog should and will insert their usual caveat about their blogs not being construed as dispensing legal advice, or substituting for an attorney-client relationship, but those constraints aside, one would think lawyers might find LOTS of reasons to blog--and might additionally find that blogging became an enjoyable, and low-key way to increase their visibility in their field.

If you don’t have a website yet, consider starting a blog first, or instead. You can always append contact information so prospective clients can contact you. Truth be told, a blog is a lot less dry than the typical website, and you can always keep the tone professional and conservative, if that appeals to you--just not dry, dull and boring, or you’ll lose readers, over time.

If you already have a website up and running, you can always start a blog separately, and link to it from your website.

How to get going in blogging? Technically, while you do need separate software to blog with, many companies have made their blogging software available, for free or at very low cost, and many sites also offer to host your blog as part of the package.

Blogger.com was one of the earliest blogging websites; later, Moveable Type became a leader, and now Moveable Type has spawned a simpler, less techy offshoot, called “TypePad.” When I researched this topic for my own purposes a few months ago, I noticed that most of the sites I admired, that still had graphical flexibility (so they didn’t all look like cookie cutter copies of each other), were TypePad sites.

Reviews I read said that TypePad really offered the greatest ease of use for someone who just wanted to blog, not get into the technical intricacies of how, and their prices were quite reasonable. You can check out the three packages they offer at www.TypePad.com. The middle one, for roughly $8.95 a month, is a sensible one for beginners and intermediates. The most expensive package offers unlimited blogs (and who could keep up with those?!) as well as what’s known as distributed authorship--the ability to hand the blogging “wheel” to others and allow them to drive. Hmmmn. Probably appropriate for partners in the same firm, or colleagues in the same section; but otherwise approach with caution.

As far as ease of use goes with blogging, I did recently interest my father, now in his mid-70s, in starting his own blog, and after a few initial difficulties, he’s sailed along with the process. His blog, on a very niche, yet hot topic, of interest to his peers and up-and-coming people in his field, has generated lots of readership in just a few short months. It’s been cited on and linked to by other blogs as far away as Iceland and Japan, and it’s even won a few awards. The search engine “Yahoo!” recently named it its top pick of the day among blogs, and the Internet Scout Report also gave it high marks. So the moral of the story apparently is, “You’re Never Too Old to Start Blogging!”

Portals
If a website or a blog doesn’t interest you, perhaps a portal might. Portals on the Internet again, like blogs, are somewhat “like” websites, but with some distinct differences. A portal is essentially a “doorway” through which you enter the Internet, and beyond being an entry point, can function somewhat (or entirely) as a “destination” in its own right. If you log on to the Web initially through AOL, MSN, or even Yahoo!, and set their sites as your homepage, those are technically “portals.” From the same screen you’re able to access a few of your key functions (email, etc.) as well as read abbreviated versions of the latest news, perhaps view stock quotes from your portfolio, read sports scores from your home teams, or note the local weather.

These portals are fairly generic, though, in terms of being able to be customized deeply to address your very own hot topics of interest. I use Yahoo! as my home page (but for nothing else; I have different email providers and I use Google for all my searches, naturally) and I have been able to customize it quite a bit, but even there, there’s a limit to how many of the links that I frequent daily I can actually access from the Yahoo! portal.

Like many of you, I keep leaving that homepage to do all my various “business” on the Internet. I go somewhere else for Web searches (www.Google.com), log onto to two different bank websites to check my personal and business accounts, read six or eight daily newspapers at their various sites, log on to the King County Library system to put books on hold and route them to my library, etc. It’s a whole lot of jumping around, whether I keep those other sites as “favorites” or have some other method for how I keep track of them all.

CEO Express.com is a company that grew out of the need to create super-portals for busy executives, who didn’t need to know everything about the Internet, but needed to have key sites at the ready for their own use. Patricia Pomerleau, CEO of CEO Express, designed a comprehensive site with news feeds from all over the country, research links, stock tickers, a concierge service, etc., and found that the resulting portal (www.CEOExpress.com) was of great interest to her audience. She has since created offshoots from this original site, including www.LawyerExpress.com, which combines legal research sites along with news feeds of interest to lawyers; MDExpress.com, and Journalist Express.com.

Next up for her business is what are known as “private label portals,” where a company, a firm, or a trade association wants to get even more specific about providing news and information that’s directly of value to its constituents. This site is usually not a public site, but one restricted to members (such as firm employees, etc.).

The Boston law firm, Mintz, Levin is one of the first firms in the country to set up a private label portal through CEOExpress for its shareholders and employees. It’s similar too, but different in scope and purpose from, their standard website, at www.Mintz.com.

Ultimately, portals and websites can function together, with similar but not identical purposes, and similar but not identical audiences. Come to think of it, you could probably have a firm website, a blog, and a portal, provided you had the time or the interest to keep these going, because they all could have different scopes and purposes, and potentially different audiences as well.

Thankfully with CEOExpress.com’s private label portals, they push the content through to the portal you set up, so you don’t have to worry about that aspect of it. You can suggest areas of interest, but at least you don’t have to be responsible for keeping the content fresh.

Otherwise, a word to the wise is don’t bother doing it (e.g., blogs or even websites) if you can’t expect that you’ll be able to keep the content reasonably fresh. A website on life support with stale or never-changing information, or a blog without regular commenting is pretty dull indeed. Used wisely and/or judiciously, any of these three items can serve your purposes in bringing your message to an interested public--whether peers or prospective clients--or help provide the information you need to get through your workday with a minimum of muss and fuss. If you’re interested in learning more about private label portals, contact me directly--I have some examples I can show you. n