You might have noticed many of the blogs you read have addresses ending in ‘blogspot.com’ — that means that their authors are publishing their blogs using the Blogger software originally developed by the American company Pyra, which was (rather cannily) acquired by Google in 2003.

Blogger has a lot going for it: it’s extremely simple (ten minutes from first click to blog creation, according to the PR material), it includes hosting services (with the Google guarantee of stability), and it’s free. It also comes with various bells and whistles that effectively become the standard in the blog world.

But, frankly, when simply everyone has a Blogger blog, there’s something to be said for thinking different and looking at other options, which will typically be more flexible but a little harder to master — and they’ll usually cost money.

Susannah Gardner of the Online Journalism Review recently published a very useful rundown of the major blogging packages — filled out, in true blog style, with comments and suggestions from her readers.

• The story: ‘Time to check: Are you using the right blogging tool?’ is at:
www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050714gardner/

• An accompanying product comparison chart is here:
www.ojr.org/ojr/images/blog_software_comparison.cfm