Blogging is used widely to discuss topics related to social and technical issues by geeks and celebrities alike, even by soldiers in trenches, to reach to the wider world.
In order to enable the beginners and complete internet novices to maintain a personal blog site without the hassle of registration, layout design, etc, Posterous offers a free service that we will take a look today. The first step towards creating a blog at Postreous is to simply send an email to post@posterous.com and wait for auto-reply email. This email contains a link to the instantly created blog page, with contents of email displayed as a blog post item! As this happens without even having visited the Posterous home page yet, the site is rightly termed as 'Simplest blogging platform to date'.
The default blog page has a randomly generated name at first. In order to name it to your liking, browse the auto-created page and press 'Claim This Site' button, or simply press the 'Click here to set a password for this site' link in the email. Once on the Posterous site, set a password and enter a desired name and you are all set to continue posting via email.
With its simplicity, one might think it's kind of some micro blogging site such as Twitter, but it is not. Posterous allows posting a wide range of multimedia content such as MP3, video and presentations. These media types are then automatically converted to web-friendly versions. For example, an emailed attachment with MP3 gets converted in an embedded player with a play button so that viewers can listen to the audio right in their browsers.
Similarly, videos are converted into a Flash player interface that can be played even on iPhone without Flash player. Not only does it handle sound and videos well, Posterous automatically creates a photo gallery when multiple images are sent in attachment. Thumbnails appear at the top while larger images appear below upon thumbnail selection. The site takes care of image size itself as images could be sent from a computer or directly from a phone camera.
Apart from its ease and grace, the real strength of Posterous lies in its detailed re-configurability options once logged in for site administration. One can set up Posterous to automatically update other popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and a number of blogging sites through emailed posts. Friends and families can be invited to post by adding their email addresses making Posterous a group blogging platform where contributors do not have to download, register or learn anything — just emailing at post@sitename.posterous.com works!
Other options include tag support, auto-conversion of YouTube and other video site addresses to a preview image window with play button, blog customisation with in-built themes, blog posting via web-interface along with email option, conversion of blog to RSS feeds (i.e. news feeds that can be read by RSS reader software or websites/ browsers that support it), 1GB of storage space, import option from existing blogs, etc.
Yet, the most differentiating factor remains sending posts and files as email attachment which is far more handy and speedy as compared to the web-based upload feature in other blogging sites.
In addition to first timers, Posterous can be used equally effectively by those who want ease combined with basic functionalities of blogging without any extraordinary bells and whistles adding to the time it takes to kick things off. This is true for causal or on the fly bloggers for whom the convenience comes first. Not-so-tech-savvy professionals and family members alike can now simply use emails to get on the blogging bandwagon. Blogging had never been so easy, so email your way up to create your own blog!