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In line with the Philippine Independence Day, Google Philippines‘ web site shows a unique doodle design that displays a sun and its eight rays as the first ‘O’ in the Google logo.

“This is the first-ever Google doodle for the Philippines so we wanted to make it very classic and meaningful for Filipinos. We created a special doodle on the Google Philippines homepage for June 12, 2009 to commemorate the Philippines’ Independence Day,” said Jay Trinidad, Regional Product Marketing Manager, Consumer Products, Google Asia Pacific.

“We also used red, white, and blue, the Philippines’ national colors, which stand for patriotism, equality, and justice, respectively. We also incorporated the flag’s three stars in the design, symbolizing the three major geographic regions of the country,” he said.

On June 12, 1898, Philippines daclared it’s independence from Spanish rule that lasted almost 400 years. Making this day the 111th anniversary of its declaration of independence.

Every time you go online, you visit some of the popular blogs that talks about your interests. Be it sports, technology, web development, entertainment, career or whatnot, you visit bloggers that knows what they write. When you read your mail, you receive a blog promotion that let’s you visit a blogs popular post. You heard people spreading the word that you actually could earn money just by blogging.

Now, you’ve heard so much about blogging and you want to blog, too.

Not too soon.

If you’re too amped up about blogging already and you want to join the bandwagon and start your own blog, be among the  112 million blogger, and growing,  then there’s some few things you need to consider. The quickest things that comes to my mind that a start-up blogger needs to consider are domains, hosting service, blog platform, blog design,  and some blog tools.

Domains. Bloggers build identity, it’s one of the main reason why you blog and people remember you for that. If you’re going to ask me how can you easily build an identity in the blogosphere then there’s no easier way than getting the right domain name. Actually, having the right domain name brings so much more than just identity. For example, depending on how good your domain name is, it could bring a certain amount of traffic without doing anything.

Now there’s a tricky part. Your desired domain name may be gone forever if you don’t act now. Valuable domain names, especially those short dot com names are already registered. So before everything else runs out, I suggest you register yours now.

If you have decided already on what domain name you want, you may want to register it on the following affordable and reliable registrars: GoDaddy, 1 and 1, Impressive Domains, Domains PH.

Hosting service. If you plan to be a serious blogger, I suggest you do away with free blogging sites like blogger and wordpres.com. It’s cool to be free, yes, but you won’t have the level of control you need and want. With free blogging sites, you’re limited to what they offer you. But by owning a personal web space, you are in total control. Just Host, Fat Cow, 1 and 1, and IX Web hosting are just some of the popular web hosting companies with affordable services. If you can’t shell out money yet, I can help you.

Blog platform. With more than half of the bloggers in the blogosphere using WordPress, you can’t go wrong  if you decided to go with it. But if you want to think it over, take a look at this post – 3 Best Blogging Software.

Blog design. You don’t really need it when you’re just starting but if you have the money to spend, then by all means,  have  it personalized. A personalized blog design could only do you better. Identity. Identity. Identity.

Have some other things in mind? Share them below.

According to Technorati, there are 112 million blogs out there. For the non-bloggers, you may consider this post as a cheap kind of invitation to the Blogosphere. It doesn’t me you have to, what I’m going to tell you is that there are more reason to blog that not to. For fellow bloggers, let’s evaluate ourselves on why you blog and why bloggers blog.

So what’s the reason for blogging? Many.

Blogging let’s  you express yourself. From wherever country you are from, you have the right to express yourself. By being a netizen, you have that right, too. Blogging is a great way to express yourself to a greater audience. You can share text, images , audio or videos regarding about everything you like. Your blog revolves around you and it’s fun

Blogging makes you find-able on the Internet. Have you tried searching your name online using your prefered search engine? If you have, what results do you get? Is it you? If you haven’t yet, there’s a great chance that the top results would be the pages on your social networking profiles. Yes, friends may be able to find you and add you there but having a blog for yourself delivers unlimited potential on to what you can share with your friends. Social networking sites does not let you have total control and almost always, you don’t get to do what you really want. With your the star, they’re the audience.

Blogging helps you have more friends. You already know that by having a blog you get to express yourself. With that, people with the same interests as yours may find it useful and would leave comments or open a small talk with you. It’s sweet to find out that your not the only person who thinks a certain idea is cool and it’s sweeter that there’s a person who wants to talk about it with you.

Blogging let’s you showcase your photos and videos. Traveled to some beautiful places in the world? Been to Boracay, Amanpulo or Hundred Islands? You can share your unforgetable moments in your blog by sharing your images and videos on your blog about it.

Blogging helps you to be better in what you blog. Constantly writing a topic in your niché helps you think better and learn deeper. When you blog, you get to realize things you may have forgotten, neglected, new things or the things that you probably should need to know. Blogging evolves yourself.

Monetization. Famous bloggers have a huge number of readers. And just like television, radio, or any media for that matter, blogs with huge number of readers have a handful of potential customers in it. That’s why it is a great tool for providers to showcase their products and services there. They get to have more exposure and that exposure may lead to sales.

Blogging is fun. Enough said.

Passion. Here’s what every blogger should have, and I really mean should have. When you want to express yourself to the world wide web, you can’t just blab around and talk like forever with those meaningless words. You need to have passion. Passion for what you love to do and passion for sharing that by blogging.

If you’re a blogger, did I miss the reason why you blog? Share them below.

Another popular question from the blogosphere  is “What blogging software should I use?”.

To answer that question, you’ll need 5 essentials things to consider on how to choose the right blogging system that fits you. Those are: Features, Cost, Control, Support, and Usability.

Here’s a rundown on the three best blogging platform available to you – for free.

Movable Type

Movable Type is simple, let’s you have total control, search engine optimized, looks good,  and let’s you connect to dozens of social networks.

One caveat on choosing Movable Type, you’re free to use Movable Type so long as you’re the passionate individual blogger. That means, you’re limited to just one author and you can not have it for business.

Just so you know, Movable Type is blogging platform used by 12 of the Technorati’s top 100 blogs.

Blogger

Probably the easiest if you’re the totally uninitiated. When I was just introduced to beautiful world of blogging, I opened up one Blogger account that until now the blog still stands. Hooray! Seriously, you simply sign up and you’re blogging within the next five (5) minutes. That”s the reason why there are approximately 4.5 Million Blogger users in the world.

Be warned though, by using Blogger, you don’t have the level of control that you’d be getting if you’re using the other two blogging platform from this post. But if you”re just a newbie, I think it won’t bother you much.

Just so you know, Blogger is blogging platform used by 3 of the Technorati’s top 100 blogs.

WordPress

PHP based, lots of support, almost all features of the two platforms mentioned  above can be found here plus more,   and the most important thing, you’re in absolute control of your blog.

Back by people with the passion for blogging, this platform has gone a rapid development since its release in 2003.

Just so you know, WordPress is blogging platform used by 27 of the Technorati’s top 100 blogs and 0.8 of the total web sites.

Did I miss something?

That’s just the three of the most used blogging system. If you know a better one other than the three, let us know below.