because most of us would rather be out and about when we're not working, rather than fiddling with hieroglyphics on a computer screen.

Friends also might start giving you that blank look when you try to describe what you're doing.

But go ahead, express yourself.

You don't have to build your site in one go.

Build something basic then keep adding to it when you have the time.

The free software described over the past two columns are designed to make the job of creating pages much easier.

You can get a lot more sophisticated by using the free goodies from service providers who offer online tools, such as hit counters, search engines and news feeds, to make your site more interesting to a wider circle of friends.

Why do the providers give this stuff away? Some are attempting to build a market for future charges.

Others throw in some advertising to eke out some revenues.

Sometimes software tools are provided free by individuals who are happy to test their skills and distribute in the original spirit of the Internet.

Take advantage of all the software available cause who knows how long the free lunch will last.

News feeds: The best provider I've found of a free news engine service is Moreover (http://www.moreover.com).

A news feed will help keep your site fresh, even if you forget to add pictures or updated text for a few months...or years.

You sign in as a member, set up your search parameters, review the results and click on a button.

The site then generates the HTML that you copy and paste into one of the pages for your site.

The news feed is very simple to set up, unobtrusive and doesn't contain any advertising, except a link at the bottom of the feedback to Moreover.

That to me is a bargain.

Headlines are updated every 15 minutes.

There are about 500 different types of feeds that Moreover has already set up or you can create your own.

You can set up the page to display new stories for terms in such categories as business, finance, sports and technology.

For example you can choose your news feed to display only business stories containing the word "Bermuda''.

Moreover also allows you to display your feed from one up to 20 stories on a page and set the colour and size of the fonts.

Blogger: Using Blogger (www.blogger.com) means you are prepared to spend more time with your site.

This is a online tool that allows you to add your own continually updated writing and content to a page or pages on your site.

Call it the ultimate in stream-of-consciousness software.

Blogger is a web-based tool that allows you to automate the process.

You add in the commentary and then send the page directly to your site.

You determine the look and style of your commentary or journal page.

"Blogger offers you instant communication power by letting you post your thoughts to the web whenever the urge strikes,'' the site proclaims, adding that this is "push-button publishing for the people''.

You can set the page up so that you allow family, friends,or work colleagues to add their comments from anywhere, thus creating your own Internet community.

Blogger has also teamed up with Moreover to allow you to add continual commentary below each story in your Moreover news feed if you'd like to do that as well.

This tool works quite well. I've tested it out at my site http://www.ahmedelamin.com, where I've put it up as a demonstration.

It contains the previous two columns in this series.

Blogger allows you to automate the creation of archives of previous postings so that you don't have massive pages that scroll down forever.

Make sure you read the "how-to'' page before you start as there are a variety of options available depending on how Web adept your are.

If you don't know yet how to FTP (see next column) pages to your site Blogger will provide you with free space to create your journal.

ListBot: To create an e-mail community or newsletter service, try ListBot (www.listbot.com).

The service lets you create and automate a subscriber discussion, moderated discussion or announcement e-mail group.

Businesses that want to create a marketing newsletter service for their customers or potential customers pay about US$20 per month for a more sophisticated service.

Personal users who just want the basics can have it for free.

The service generates a sign up interface you can put directly on your page so people can subscribe or unsubscribe to the list.

You can automate the process to allow only your e-mails to go to all subscribers, or, if you're a close group, to allow any member of the group to send them to all on the list.

You can also set yourself up as a moderator to first check others' posts before they are sent out to everyone -- a very important control for avoiding a temper explosion in your community.

Guest book: If you just want to create a guest book, where visitors simply leave a message which then gets automatically sent to you, try htmlGEAR (http://www.htmlgear.com).

The web-tool allows you to create add a guest book service on your site, a poll and other add-ons that will allow you to encourage your visitors to leave comments.

Next week I'll deal with adding a search engine to your site and a hit counter to track how many visitors come to your site.

Tech Tattle deals with topics relating to technology.

You can contact Ahmed at editor yoffshoreon.com or (33)-467-901-474.