Information detrius: scraps of paper on my desk that need to somehow be filed, either in my brain or electronically. Like the email address of a contact in business - but I don't have his name, just his email, and I don't want to lose it. Or the post-it of a list of people I want to send a batch-email to, and the sheet of paper that has a bunch of stuff on it crossed off...except for a few things that I don't want to forget. Desk detrius, information detrius; the flotsam of Keep-Track stuff we all have.

Set Up Your Blog!

You may already know how to do this. In fact you do it already, in other ways; you use Facebook and there's not a world of difference between Facebook and creating a blog. Creating a blog is easier and requires fewer steps.

Your blog serves the purpose of you communicating to a group of people, and allowing them to make comments. This is what you seemed to be suggesting when you wanted to set up a 'family blog' for you to upload pictures and tell people what you will be up to when you're overseas.

You can use this program: Blogger - or there's a more elegant site called WordPress. If I were to do it again, I'd use WordPress.

Just set up a new blog by going through the Signup process. Give your blog a name - 'meoverseas' or...you get the idea. I like "Evenartichokesvolunteeroverseas" but that's just me.

You can find a theme that works for you, then finish off the process and post your first comment! Publish the url on your Facebook account...and write it down for your parents! They will be able to read your posts and make comments in return.

You can also set up your own free Google Web Site - it's a new service of theirs. I tried playing with it, but I think it would be a pain in the neck to maintain - it's like creating a real web site, and it sounded like you just wanted to have a place to post comments quickly.

The one drawback to a blog is that you can't upload a zillion images the way you can with Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, etc. Well, you can, but it's one at a time and it becomes a long 'list' of images. This is an example from an existing blogger who uses WordPress. You can still upload images to those other places then provide the link on your blog .... like this: check out Black River Grad Photos on my Flickr account....

This is a nice example of a blogger who uses a WordPress template.

I hope this helps!

Movies I Want - Or Need To Re-buy

Buckaroo Banzai - $10.00 Barnes N Noble
Liquid Sky
1 Million Years B.C. - $10.00 Barnes N Noble
Snatch
12 Monkeys
Big Trouble
O'Brother Where Art Thou
Usual Suspects

• Also don't forget to show Erin how to start a blog (Wordpress) or Blogger.