Due to recurrent uploading problems with Blogger at the moment, I´ve been wondering whether I had made a good decision or not opening “ITAddict: IT made simple” on Google´s Blogger / Blogspot. Don´t worry, this blog´s very existence in by no way in danger: I enjoy blogging a lot.

To tell you the truth, when it comes to chosing a service to power my blog, I´m not sure I actually made a choice: I just happened to open it on Blogger without thinking too much (I had had a former, pretty interesting, blogging experience one year ago – which lasted 3 weeks and as many posts, using Overblog – which wasn´t bad at all).

Since I didn´t want to pay anything to be able to blog (Six Apart´s Typepad and Movable Type), my pain should more or less have resulted in chosing between Overblog, Wordpress, and Blogger.

Blogger is very easy to use, powered by Google (ungrounded rumors: there are good chances that search rankings will be higher!), and easy to remember since so many people use it. But it lacks functionalities such as editing comments (rather useful when you realize you made a spelling mistake), and has been unstable recently. Another shortcoming: the layout is the one you should expect if you user Mozilla Firefox to browse the Net; otherwise, and especially on MS Internet Explorer, the design is crappy and definitely not what you should expect.

Anyways:

1) too late…

2) I´m not convinced another blog service provider would´ve done much better (e.g. WordPress´s rather slow at loading; Overblog is too French; TypePad is not free; etc.).

Adendum 1: I just happenend to discover that Olivier Ezratty, a former Microsoft France executive and now a coach for start-uppers, explained on his blog (in French) why he chose WordPress. To French-speaking readers (I apologize to the majority): Olivier Ezratty´s blog is one of my favourite daily visits. I don´t know the man, but his analyses are unique. We share a common drawback, which is having a hard time writing short posts . But though some of mines are concise, you won´t find any single one of them on his.

Forgetting about length, you have access on www.oezratty.net to the most accurate analyses on the software industry (innovation, R&D) in general and Microsoft on particular (as an insider, his writing usually involves a sarcastic tone when it comes to regulation or lobbying; e.g. “MS fined by Bruxelles for lower-tier software engineering methods”). You may also find in a recent post an enlightening interview of Bernard Liautaud, the co-founder & the Chairman of Business Intelligence software player Business Objects. Interestingly enough, the interview was published in the magazine “Centraliens“, an in-house alumni review of Ecole Centrale Paris, a leading French engineering school where I´ll be starting in September majoring in computer science, telcos & project management thanks to an agreement between Centrale & my home-university, HEC Paris.

Adendum 2: …the same Olivier Ezratty provides his readers with an a link: Emily Robbins describes on her blog her experience with both WordPress & Typepad.

Adendum 3: 5 blog services reviewed by CNet. Blogger ranks last between Typepad, MSN Spaces, Yahoo! 360 & AOL Journals but taking a look at user comments, Blogger´s far ahead. Although I´m aware of the sample bias we´re facing here.