So I was looking for a solution, and tried MacJournal, which I thankfully already owned a license for. So far it is working well. It is not really a blog client per se; it is intended as a journaling app, as the name suggests. But it can sync to a blog, so is serviceable in that way.

I currently working to sync MacJournal with this blog as well; but there are some technical issues at the moment. [Edit: It worked. There was a badly encoded em-dash character in one of my old posts. The free W3C Feed Validation Service helped me find it.]

• All emails from me will say they are from MichaelPrewitt.com, not from FeedBlitz.
• Replies to emails will be delivered to me, and not to some stranger!
• It is no longer necessary to go through another third party to add comments to a blog post. There is also support for personal avatars; initially Gravatars are enabled (when you comment with the email address associated with a Gravatar), and later I plan to add user profiles for those who want them.

Previously I was using the third-party service called FeedBlitz. They monitored my blog, and whenever there was a new post they sent emails to to everyone who had subscribed. It worked reasonably well, except that some people were confused about the relationship between me and FeedBlitz, and some thought that FeedBlitz was the name of my blog! Now that there are no third parties, I hope things will run more smoothly.

Why did I switch? Here are some of the advantages of the new software:

• The old software, RapidWeaver, is client-based (it’s a Mac application that runs on your computer), whereas WordPress is server-based (it runs in a browser, and can be updated from anywhere where there is Web access). This means that when I’m away from home and I find something that I want to post on my blog, I don’t have to e-mail myself a reminder or send myself a file to post online later; I can do it right then. If I’m on location at a special event, I can post updates as events happen.
• RapidWeaver is commercial software, whereas WordPress is free. I’ve already been through two paid upgrades of RapidWeaver, and I’m ready for something free.
• WordPress is much more flexible and customizable than RapidWeaver. There are probably hundreds of plugins that extend the functionality of WordPress, as well as hundreds of user-developed design themes to use or adapt. There is a very robust user community to go to for help and support.
• Many standard blogging features such as comments and RSS are better handled by WordPress. 

On the flip side, WordPress is a bit more technical, and therefore more difficult for the average computer user to tackle; RapidWeaver is easy and fun to use, and well within the reach of average users. I was quite happy with RapidWeaver for a while, but now I’ve outgrown it.

So what’s next?

I need to bring over some of my posts from the old site to the new one, to give the content a little jump start. I haven’t decided whether I will go through the trouble of moving everything over. Then I need to move all of my subscribers over to the new blog.

If you have this address in your address book, or penciled in a coffee-stained notebook opposite your online banking passwords (I’m not telling how I know), please DELETE IT, cross it out, or whatever you must do.

That address has been defunct for about eight months now, so if you’ve sent anything important (money, fan mail, etc.) to that address during that time, I haven’t received it.

Here is the address you should use:

Besides being easier to remember, it has this major benefit: It works. You can, of course, also contact me through this website. Or at my workplace. Or by phone. Or chat. Or Facebook or MySpace. Or just Google for my name—it’s everywhere!

If you want a free and easy way to keep your contact information current, try Plaxo. It synchronizes your contact information with the latest updates from other members. Works on Macs and Windows PCs. I’ve been using it for some time now, and quite a few of my friends use it too. It seems to work reliably, and has been a great help. The only gripe I’ve had is that it has merged contacts who shared an email address, such as married couples. But if you make sure Plaxo is set to require confirmation before making changes, rather than working in fully automatic mode, that kind of error won’t happen. (It doesn’t hurt to backup your data first, either. I believe Plaxo does this automatically the first time you run it, at least in Outlook.)

Additionally, I have added a new category to my blog, “Books and Music.” This category simply summarizes the book and music reviews I occasionally post. Of course they are also included in the main blog; this is just a more convenient way to access them. Formerly they were part of the “Cool Stuff” category. At the moment there are only a few reviews, but I intend to add more.

Also in the news: Community websites seem to be the new big thing online (MySpace, etc.). I’ve joined a number of them, and formerly had links to all of the ones I’ve joined in my Links section (see Links button in the upper right). However, Xanga and MySpace have become my personal favorites, mainly because those are the ones most of my friends are on. In the interest of simplicity, I’ve decided to remove the links to the other community sites, although I am still part of them. For the record, I am also on Window Live, Multiply, Friendster, and Ringo. However, of those four, only Multiply shows much promise, and at this time only a very small group of my friends have accounts with any of them. If you are looking to join a community website, I highly recommend Xanga (lots of cool people, lots of neat SDA groups), and then MySpace (many more people, more features … but uglier in more ways than one).

At the moment WordPress seems one of the better options. I don’t want a remote hosted blogging service (like Blogger), nor do I want a gargantuan content management system (like Drupal). I just want something simple and easy to use, with a pretty GUI, that I can host on my own site, and that is preferably free, open source, standards compliant, and actively developed. There are a few other interesting options besides WordPress, but I’ve heard so many good things about that one that I’m leaning heavily towards it.

I am eager to see how my website will hold up in RapidWeaver as the pages increases in number and complexity. If nothing else, it is getting me off to a good start.