Okay blogophiles it’s time for more of Uncle Arthur’s unparalleled wisdom from a parallel universe - the Fourth Dimension. Calm down, don’t soil yourselves! Again, I will make everything easy to understand and more fun than a naturist picnic on the White House lawn.

Let’s be a little more serious now - we have some things to discuss here. Today we will learn about 1) Content Management Systems (CMS) and 2) communications systems - email accounts and instant messaging. Be quiet! Don’t act like know it alls, you rocket scientists and brain surgeons.

Content Management Systems make up the basis and platform for your blog - this means they are important. You should therefore choose carefully (feel the force . . . do you feel the force? Well, try anyway). Here are the best known blog CMS platforms: Wordpress - The industry’s standard and most popular, free of charge, Blogger - fast blog design although FTP can make for a slow upload, Typepad - another blogging platform at $4.95/month, Joomla - CMS and Web Application Framework - free, Drupal - a multi feature content management/discussion engine for setup of a news-driven community or portal site, SquareSpace - a publishing platform for managing blogs, Movable Type - a weblog publishing system developed by California-based Six Apart Communication.

Communications Systems are important too, come on you know this. So again let’s go to that special inner space and feel the force. Prepare yourselves for making a decsion. Gmail - a free email service that includes over 2 GB of storage, Hotmail - a free web-based e-mail with 2GB e-mail storage, Yahoo Mail - a free web-based email with unlimited mail storage, Outlook - an email manager which can be used with MS Exchange Server for shared mailboxes, Windows Live Messenger - Instant messaging program, Yahoo Messenger - a free instant messaging with file sharing, Campfire - a real-time group chat for businesses, GoToMeeting - a web conferencing and online meetings service, Twitter - a social networking and microblogging service using instant messaging, SMS or a web interface, Skype - a free internet calling from PC to PC

Okay Super-Bloggers, that’s it for today. Take your time and make decisions that will help you to be a Super-Blogger. See you next week for more of Uncle Arthur’s Super-Blogger Tips ( Parts 1 or 3 ). Now let’s hurry up and see if we can still make it to the picnic.

Republican Senators must identify themselves as such,
Arthur Browning