CALL and motivation

I haven't been going to "language-learning" sites per se since taking part in the project in Fall 2006.  However, I want to share a recent experience of my own language learning via blogs.  As many of you know, I write a non-academic "foto blog" (the url I'm happy to share if you ask).  Recently a reader of my blog, who happens to live in northwest Spain, wrote and we've continued a dialogue.  She does a similar "foto blog" in Spanish.  Because of the strong instrumental (v. integrative) motivation I feel, I've been struggling to read her blog in Spanish.  Motivation is critical here;  if I weren't interested in what this blog communicated, I wouldn't make the effort with a language I've never formally studied.  My point?  The web provides easy access to sites that--although they're not overtly instructional--can "instruct" readers in the target language provided the reader feels that struggling with the target language will be instrumental in learning something.  Obviously, this only works if the reader/learner (i.e.,  me) has some existing entry into target language (in my case, the familiarity with the Roman alphabet and with a smilar Romance language, French).  My points wouldn't hold if the blog were in a non-Roman alphabet.