Until recently, if you were an aspiring blogger and you asked me my opinion of the blogging software Blogger, I would have gone into a mini rant about how surprisingly clunky and user-unfriendly it is, especially considering it is hugely popular and owned by Google.
Then I would have added that, of course, you get what you pay for. (Blogger is free.) And finally I would have suggested that you'd be better off paying $5 a month for a service like TypePad instead.
That was until this past Christmas.
In December, Blogger officially launched their new - and vastly improved - software, and I had a really good chance to give it a workout since I spent some of my Christmas holiday helping my Dad set up his first blog, In A Mellow Tone. (He prefers to call it a Website, but that's another story...)
The new Blogger is much easier to use (especially for non-technical folks) and offers some customization and configuration features that rival those of paid services like TypePad. Best of all, it's still free.
For full-blown professional or corporate blogs, I still recommend more robust and configurable paid services like TypePad and Movable Type (along with WordPress, which is 'free' but requires considerable technical prowess). However, for personal or modest little blogs like my Dad's, the new Blogger offers more than enough bells and whistles and is extremely easy to use.
If you haven't played around with the new Blogger yet, I highly recommend it. It's a great way to start the New Year.
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