Why did I choose myblogsite.com?
I did consciously choose to host my blog here at myblogsite.com (which exited the blog hosting business since I wrote this), but I confess I didn't do a lot of research.
(Interesting sidenote: I saw the link to this site in an ad in my Gmail session. I know Google owns blogger.com, but I didn't see an ad for that site.)
I'll talk more about why here another time, (I want to go for a drive!) but l did look at blogger.com, livejournal.com, and a few for-pay sites, and this looks (again, based on not much research) like the most full-featured free site.
Update: 2005.03.17
When I first looked at blogger.com, I wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped. Either they've made improvements since then, or my initial look wasn't as thorough (likely) as it should have been; it looks a bit better/easier. (And though I'm a "computer guy", I want blogging to be super easy; I have enough computer-related problems to deal with.)
In any case, I setup a blog at blogger.com to see what I think of it in contrast to myblogsite.com.
I do wish Google would take a lesson from Yahoo and let me have a single account with Google and attach various services (e.g. gmail, blogger) to it. I already have a gmail account, but had to create a new account at blogger.com, which is owned by Google.
A few minutes of working with it reminded me of one of the big differentiators for me: Categories.
myblogsite.com allows you to have categories, which work in the same way as Gmail's labels. (Ironic that Google's own blog hosting service doesn't have this. I know they didn't initially develop blogger.com, but still.)
For reference, here's a comparison of features. I should have re-read that before even bothering to sign up at blogger.com. It does have some cool features, and I may check it out again, but for me, categories are a deal-breaker. I need to write an article about the use of categories/tags/labels one of these days...
Update: 2005.03.21
In addition to providing categories, myblogsite.com also lets you tag posts with keywords, which, as the help documentation points out, can lend context and improve search results.
They make a good point about this that I hadn't considered; it's conceivable that one might make a post related to a topic without ever directly mentioning the topic. Their example is a post talking about replacing drywall and carpet in the context of a renovation project, but the post doesn't contain the word "renovation". Adding a keyword ensure that it would turn up in a search about renovation.
Update: 2006.02.25
Now I've moved my blog to its new, probably permanent home, at http://jameselee.alwaysaskwhy.com/blog, hosted by Yahoo! Web Hosting.