Thing 3

The closest I have ever been to 'blogging' was a blog my cousins started last Spring. The purpose of their blog was to keep family up to date on their father's fight with cancer. My uncle Bob lives in northern Michigan and was diagnosed with lung cancer in May 2008. The blog helped everyone get information about the treatments without immediate family spending hours on the telephone. This blog enabled us to get information, post encouragement and ask questions. My uncle lost his battle with cancer in January but we were able to walk with him every step of the way.

This particular blog was maintained so that you had to ask permission to view it. I think this was probably a really good idea so the writers didn't feel they had to be so careful about how much information they shared. If the blog were not private, information about upcoming doctor appointments could have potentially opened the door to theft in their home. The blog contained uncle Bob's full name and city where he lived. All a thief would have to do is look him up in the phone book and know that he would be at U of M for treatment on a particular day. Privacy is key in certain situations.

As posted previously, I have encouraged my children to keep their MySpace and FaceBook private. One of the instructors pointed out that blogs that are open to everyone enable us to learn things from other people. Point taken, if all blogs were private, what a boring web it would be.