The word "blog" is shorthand for
Web log. A blog is a frequent, chronological publication of
personal thoughts published on the Internet. The activity of
updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a
"blogger."
Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people
with little or no technical background to update and maintain the
blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in chronological
order with the most recent additions featured most prominently.
Tim Berners-Lee is credited with
creating the first Web log with his World Wide Web News pages (http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/).
Starting in January 1992, Tim kept his blog about the W3 project
with a periodically updated log, including hypertext links to new
content available on the Internet.
In the early years of the Internet,
those who had more web skills than others kept web logs, but because
it was a tedious and time consuming process, there weren't many
blogs online. The blogging trend gained momentum with the
introduction of automated published systems, the most well known
being Blogger at blogger.com.
Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and
accelerate the publishing process. You can read more about the
history of blogs online at
http://newhome.weblogs.com/historyOfWeblogs.
Blogs have become so popular that
they now influence public opinion and articles citing blogs have
appeared in many mainstream publications.
Blogs
come in a number of basic types:
- A personal
journal.
- A collection of links to other
Internet content with commentary.
- A collection of
thoughts/opinions on a given subject
and a give-and-take with readers.
- A collection of links to content
on a given subject, with or without commentary. The Berners-Lee
blog was this type.
How do you find blogs? You
can start by visiting a blog directory like Blogarama at
http://www.blogarama.com or the Blog Search Engine at
http://www.blogsearchengine.com. You can also go to Yahoo or
Google and do a search for blogs. |