Since Google acquired publishing platform Blogger in 2003 nothing much has really changed when it comes to looks for the 11 year old blogging platform, but Google has big plans.

Blogger may be the sixth largest websites in the world but when you compare it to the likes of WordPress, the blogging platform does not stack up very well. Taking into consideration how well the adoption of WordPress has taken up with online publishers one might even argue that WordPress has overtaken Blogger.

Seems like Google is feeling the threat from WordPress and announced in a blog post that 2011 will be an exciting year for the Blogger platform with the introduction of a brand new next-generation user interface that will go live later this year.

Below is two screenshot Google shared of how the new Blogger dashboard and post editor will look.

So what do you think? I think it looks pretty cool and refreshed.

I read an interesting article the other day about resumes and it got me thinking, is the resume busy dying a slow death?

A resume is normally a list of all your qualifications compiled into a document, and this is what employers look at when making their decision whether you are qualified or suitable for the job. The problem with the resume is that is can also be a document that can exclude you from the job position.

This is where the personal blog comes in. Blogging is definitely not dead, and in today’s social media boom it can in fact help you become more exposed and show off your talent. Being revolutionary is always impressive.

Start building a personal blog where you can showcase how good you are, put as much info on it as you can and update it on a regular base. This is your place to show off what you have done via a visual representation.

Personally I would recommend setting your personal blog up on a domain that represents your name, so yourname.com or yourname.co.za would work fine. You can also opt for the free method by registering a free blog with a blogging platform like Bundublog.

Remember you are building your own personal brand to show off, so try not to post irrelevant stuff on it like the latest gadget you got, you can set up another blog for that. Use this blog to promote yourself, if you want to make it more personal add a personal stream to it like your Twitter account. Just make sure your stream presence won’t harm your image you are trying to portray on your new online resume.

Add links to projects you have completed, people and technologies you have worked with, and displaying a few recommendations made by others won’t harm as well.

Start building your own personal brand now by creating your online resume blog.

MyScoop has lately been making big headways in the local blog aggregation scene, and today I am proud to announce yet another first for South African blog aggregators. Just a few days ago MyScoop was the first to offer real-time aggregation to bloggers and now its the first to keep track of user engagement on blogs.

User engagement is a term used to describe how much users interact with your articles through leaving comments. How does MyScoop calculate these top user engaged blogs? MyScoop runs through each and every registered blog every 168 hours (7 days) and check how many comments the articles has received that was written in the last 7 days. Once the comments has been calculate the number is divided by the amount of articles written and this will give you the user-engaged ratio.

As it currently stands the top 5 user-engaged blogs in South Africa are:

1. Pamorama: Marketing, life, social media
2. Nick Duncan
3. Erica Says
4. If these walls could talk v4.0
5. Harassed Mom

iGeek is currently sitting at number 11 on the list, you can view the list here.

Would just like to thank Nick again for this great new feature, sometimes its hard to believe that he is the one and only creator and developer of MyScoop.

March is the month of Blogging here at iGeek where we are trying to educate the non tech savvy people out there how they can start their own blog and even make some money while they are at it. We have already covered the topic of starting your own blog with Blogger.com and also showed you some differences between a WordPress blog and a Blogger.com blog.

If you have read the post WordPress vs Blogger.com and decided to be taken more serious with your blog you are now asking the question, how do I go about setting up my own WordPress blog? Just note that this is a self hosted WordPress blog and not a WordPress.com blog.

Luckily WordPress is famous for their easy 5 minute installation, but before you get to the part of installing your WordPress blog there is a few things you need to take note of and get done before you can proceed.

Step 1: Register a domain

The first thing you need to do is decide what your domain should be, this is the part users type into the browser to get to your site Eg. www.igeek.co.za in my case. Domain registration is really cheap and will cost you anything from R50 to R150 depending on the type of domain you would like. There is a range of domain types available and choosing the correct one would be based on the geographic location of your audience. Com domain would be ideally if you would like to appeal to an international audience while co.za I would say if you are aiming at a local audience.

Try and keep your domain name as simple and as short possible, something users would remember easily. Once you have chosen your domain name its time to see if its available. You can register your domain through ISPs like WebAfrica, Afrihost, Hetzner or Serv these guys specialize in hosting and would help you out. A note WebAfrica currently has specials on their .com and .net domain registration for only R90.

Step 2: Hosting

Hosting is the server where your site will be running, it will be your WordPress installations’ home on the Internet. There is two types of hosting, local hosting where your site will be hosted in South Africa making it faster for local users to access and there is International hosting, much cheaper than local hosting and you get more features for the less price. It is normally advised that if your audience is local then you should stick with local hosting, but be warned if you start getting thousands of visitors a day this can become costly.

Your hosting packages requires 2 essential things for WordPress to operate on it, it must have PHP and must have at least 1 MySQL database. Opt for a Linux hosting package as they normally come standard with PHP and MySQL and they are generally cheaper packages. Also make sure you have at least 100MB of storage capacity and about 1GB+ bandwidth to start with.

You can obtain hosting from Hetzner, Afrihost, WebAfrica, Serv or Texo. Serv and Texo is ideal for a starting a blog, their prices start at R29 per month.

And that’s that, once you have sorted yourself with a domain and hosting package you are ready to install your WordPress blog, keep tuned as I will be doing a article on how to install your WordPress blog very soon.

So you want to start your own blog and tell the world exactly what is on your mind, and maybe even make a buck or two while you are at it? I’m going to show you just how you can be blogging in a matter of minutes.

What is a blog you ask? A blog is a type of website ran by an individual or sometimes multiple individuals where they can post regular entries of commentary, or keep an online journal. Blogging is the perfect way to express your opinions about certain subjects to other people on the web, or just tell them whats happening in your life.

I’ll be showing you how you can be blogging in a matter of minutes by making use of the free blogger.com platform.

If you already have a GMail account signing up to the Blogger.com service from Google is a breeze. Blogger.com is a free blogging platform that enables anybody to run their own personal blog for free. It also allows unlimited flexibility to personalize your blog with themes, gadgets and more.

Step 1: Go to http://www.blogger.com and click the Create a blog button

Step 2: Enter your name and tick the Acceptance of Terms box and click Continue

Step 3: Give your blog a title and choose a blog address, this will be the domain you type into the browser to get to blog, click Continue

Step 4: Choose a template you like, this will be the look of your blog, click Continue

Step 5: You blog is now created, to start writing your first post click Start Blogging

Step 6: To start writing your first post give your blog post a title and then start writing your heart out about what ever you would like. After writing your first blog post simply click Publish Post and your post will appear on your site for everybody to read.

See how simple it is to start your own blog? Keep coming back as I will be doing some more articles soon on blogging, including how to get more readers to your blog and setting up your first advertisement to earn money from your blog.

If you have any questions regarding starting your own blog feel free to leave a comment and I will reply swiftly.

Just last night I wrote about Amatomu closing down until Mail & Guardian finds a new buyer for the product. And now upon the closing down of Amatomu a new South African Blog Aggregator has surfaced.

MyScoop is the latest addition to the South African Blog Aggregator familly. Although I alway welcome competition MyScoop is rather limited when it comes to functionality.

A great thing I noticed upon signing up was that I could make use of my Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, OpenID or Blogger accounts to sign in with. Another nice thing about MyScoop is that fact that I do not need to install a badge of any kind, this may be needed for some nice functionality, it looks like MyScoop periodically fetched rss feeds and adds new posts when they appear in the latest fetch.

Now I did say it is rather limited, and here is why. Too put it simply MyScoop only displays latest posts from the blogs it crawls, this is due to the fact that is does not make use of a badge on your site. It would be nice to have some stats about your site and a ranking system. Another nice thing that is missing is adding categories, would be nice to be able to add you blog to a certain category, and even be able to view blogs of only certain categories.

I would say it is a good start for now, but to keep up with the competition the guys from MyScoop will need to add some of the functionality Amatomu had and Afrigator currently utilise.

Good luck to the guys at MyScoop and hope you guys make a success of the site.