International Law

Sometime in the next few weeks it is likely that Julia Gillard will call the federal election.  Although I find all elections endlessly fun and fascinating, I am particularly looking forward to the looming showdown between our new Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Tony Abbott, as well dozens of exciting local races and the likely rise of the Greens in the Senate (and maybe in one or two House of Representatives seats as well).  I plan to maintain a blog focusing the election as soon as it is called.  At the moment I hope to post to this blog:

• a daily post that highlights five must-read news/opinion pieces from the mainstream media;
• embedded YouTube videos, both party approved and otherwise;
• my own political commentary and predictions;
• the occasional podcast (maybe); and
• regular analysis of how our the parties are utilising the internet as part of their campaign (including any legal issues that may arise).

I am keen to involve as many different people and opinions as I can into this blog.  So if you would like to contribute a regular post, or just get something off your chest just once during the campaign, just let me know.

In the meantime, I have two things I need to decide and am seeking your input on.  First, what blogging platform should I use for the blog?  Here is my thinking at the moment:

• Posterous is currently my preferred platform for a few different reasons.  I am familiar with it, it handles multiple authors easily, it is free, it allows me to autopost to a variety of other services. 
• Typepad is what I currently use for this blog, so I am obviously familiar with it.  However, as I would want to use a new domain and ideally would have several authors, it would not be free.  It also isn't as customisable as Wordpress.
• A self-hosted Wordpress site would be good but I've never set one up before and I'm not sure I have the technical expertise to do so seamlessly.  It would also require me to pay for hosting.
• I've never used Squarespace but it looks like a good platform (although in the past few days I have read some negative reports) that would be easy for me to maintain and give the site a professional look.
• I guess there is also Blogger but I have never really used it either.

Let me know what you think.

Second, I also need to settle on a name and URL for this blog.  I think I've narrowed it down to these two options:

So, just to recap, let me know what blogging platform you think I should use, cast your vote for the name and URL of the blog, and let me know if you would like to be involved.