This section contains news about blogging and Bloggerce in general. Read on for more details.

Blum Interactive Media, Ltd. is the parent company of Bloggerce. Blum Interactive was founded in 1995 and provides a variety of interactive media consulting and content creation services for companies around the world. These include development of business plans and marketing materials; functional and technical specifications; web content; blog design; and custom podcasts.

Blum Interactive was founded by entrepeneur Brian Blum.

If you'd like to learn more about how Blum Interactive Media can help your organization, contact us at help@bloggerce.com.

I have been writing for as long as I can remember. As soon as I could spell and peck on the keys of my father’s old Royal typewriter, I was getting ink on my fingers and churning out stories.

One of my first endeavors into fiction was an episode of Lost in Space. I must have been 8 or 9. I think the plot had the Jupiter Two running into Aqua Boy somewhere out near Alpha Centuri. It never sold, of course, and then they went and cancelled the show. Tough break...

Later, in high school and college, I wrote features and news for the local weekly, covering subjects as diverse as the bearded lady at the circus sideshow (really) and the city planning commission (yawn).

I graduated from Oberlin College in 1983 with a B.A. in Creative Writing. I spent a few years in Israel after that where I wrote scripts for educational institutes like Pardes and Livnot U’Lehibanot. I also produced audio and video programs.

From 1987-1996 I wrote and produced CD-ROM titles, lectured at San Francisco State University, and wrote articles about multimedia and the web that appeared in magazines with names like CD-ROM Today, Multimedia World and Media Letter. In 1995 Ziff-Davis Press published my book, "Interactive Media: Essentials for Success."

I founded my consulting firm Blum Interactive Media in 1996 after moving to Israel and it then gave birth in 1997, during the height of dot.com fever, to a VC-backed Internet start-up, Neta4, which raised a total of $3 million and lasted until 1999. During that period, my writing turned to business plans, press releases, and marketing collateral, and my presentations were in front of investors and at conferences where we launched our products.

Following the premature demise of Neta4, I served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Jerusalem Global Ventures and as a VP of Marketing for Comverse, a leading telecommunications service provider. Blum Interactive Media continued during this time as it does today.

Now I'm devoting my energies into writing "This Normal Life," a syndicated column which appears regularly at Jewish.com, Jewsweek, JewishFamily.com, and Israel Insider. An audio version appears weekly at the online edition of the Jerusalem Post. You can also find articles from "This Normal Life" in Jewish newspapers across North America.

Finally, in 2005 I founded a new company, Bloggerce, which provides blogging software services (but you knew this already because that's why you're here). We've got a lot planned for Bloggerce - a play on the words "blog" and "commerce" - stay tuned for more.

I may also be appearing in a city near you. If you're interested in having me speak to organization or trade show about anything from "normal life" in Israel to the future of blogging, commerce and podcasting, please contact me at brian@ThisNormalLife.com.

New to blogging? Not sure what a blog is?

Here's a quick, standing-on-one-foot description: a blog is simply a website that you can create and update without having to worry about being a computer programmer. Look at the sample Bloggerce sites below. All made without extensive techie skills.

Here's a bit longer answer: a blog is a superb way of communicating - whether it's with customers, potential customers or family and friends. With a blog, when you have something you want to say, you simply type like you would in a Word document. You click publish and it's automatically posted to your website - your blog, that is.

Have something else to say, the next day, the next week or in the next hour? Type and click. It's published with a new headline and a date. All your writing is posted in reverse chronological order. Archives are automatically created and (with Bloggerce at least) you can assign your writing to categories so your readers for easy searching.

You can add pictures, audio files, well, any kind of file at all. If you write an article about how to build a monthly budget and you want to attach a sample spreadsheet, go ahead.

A lot of people refer to blogs as a kind of "online diary," and at first they were. In fact, most blogs still are. But you can do so much more with them. These days blogs are a really a serious business and everyone is getting one. You can use a blog for breaking news (and breaking major network anchorpeople) to sharing your essays on life, the universe and everything.

What kind of blogs can you create?

A personal diary blog
A business blog
A travel blog
An audio blog, and much more...

But wait, there's more: with a blog, your readers can enter into a dialogue with you. You write, they comment, someone else comments, you comment back.

And writing is just the start. If you have a microphone and some easy-to-use free software, you can record your own audio program. It's called "podcasting" - read more below. Bloggerce lets you post and syndicate your own podcasts all from your single, easy-to-use blogging platform. How simple is that?

The best way to get to know blogging is to get started. We'll give you a free 30-day trial. The trial includes everything a paid account has except you're limited to 100 MB of storage. When you upgrade, you'll get a whopping 1-2 GB depending on the package you choose. Click here to start your trial today.

Once you've signed up, read the Bloggerce Publisher's Manual or visit the help section for info on how to best use your new Bloggerce blog.

By the way, if you're wondering what's up with that funky name, Bloggerce, well here's the skinny: we are building a platform combining blogging and ecommerce. What you see now is the first phase. The commerce is coming in the next few months. What that means is that you'll be able to make money with your blog. How cool is that?

But don't wait. All of Bloggerce's great blogging features are available to you right now.

See you soon in the blogosphere!

 

Once your 30 Day Free Trial is over, you can upgrade to a Bloggerce Basic or Plus package for $9.95 or $12.95 per month respectively.

Q: There are so many free blogging programs out there, why should I pay for a blog?

A: The short answer: if you want to include pictures, audio or other large files on your blog, the free services won't let you do that. Blogger, MSN Spaces, Yahoo, and the like are great, but they don't give you up to two gigabytes of storage for your stuff...and up to two gigabytes of monthly bandwidth (that's the amount of data that gets displayed by your blog when visitors come or when they download your podcasts, pictures or files).

Q: Why don't I just get a free blogging tool and host my files on another less expensive server - wouldn't that be cheaper?

A: If you're technically-minded, you can certainly do that and and "point" to them from a free blog, but that's pretty complicated. Bloggerce is all about making things easy to use!

Q: Is there more to Bloggerce than storage space and bandwith?

A: You bet! Bloggerce has the absolute best feature set of any blogging program out there. Check out the features on this page.

Q: What about MovableType, ExpressionEngine and WordPress. Those are pretty sophisticated systems.

A: And we love them too. Can't say a bad word about the feature set or functionality. But again, you have to be technically-minded. You'll need to get a server, install the software, set it up. If you want to be up and running, no fuss, no muss, in 20 minutes, Bloggerce is the best choice.

Q: I've heard TypePad has all the same features...what's the difference between them and Bloggerce.

A: TypePad and Bloggerce do indeed share many of the same features of high end paid blogging systems. Bloggerce has a few features that TypePad doesn't offer. If these are important to you, then sign up now:

Bloggerce has the best category functionality around - you can create unlimited categories and nested categories - that means sub-categories and sub-categories of sub-categories.

Bloggerce is the only blogging system that lets you create a separate RSS feed for each category. This lets you, for example, create a podcast category and then allow your readers/listeners to subscribe just to that category for your podcasts rather than to the whole blog! In this way, you can essentially create an unlimited number of blogs with their own syndication features!

Bloggerce is the only blogging system that lets you create entire private categories - not just private posts, but whole categories for specific users. An invaluable tool for corporate bloggers.

Built in email - forget about copying and pasting to a YahooGroup to send out an email version of your blog - Bloggerce does it for you

Bloggerce is the only blogging system that lets you upload HTML pages by FTP to your blog. This means that we're really a complete Content Management System. Store web pages, images, audio, PowerPoint presentations, whatever. And with up to 2 GB of data storage (double the maximum at TypePad), you've got the best of both worlds.

Still not sure? Contact us at help@bloggerce.com and we'll walk you through the pro's and con's.

Bloggerce provides hosted blogging and ecommerce solutions. Started in 2005, Bloggerce is a service division of Blum Interative Media, Ltd., an Internet consulting firm founded by Brian Blum that has been operating since 1995 and is based in Jerusalem Israel.

Blum Interactive Media develops software solutions, custom blogs and podcasts, and interactive strategies for leading companies around the world. Brian Blum writes on issues as diverse as the online classified business and the business of parenting.

Contact us by sending an email to help@bloggerce.com.

Or give us a call at 1-646-485-7266.

Our fax is 1-707-221-2111.