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What is a Blog?
What is a “Blog” and How Do I Make One?
By: Josie Hanneman
According to Wikipedia, a weblog, commonly called a "blog," is a type of web site with entries displayed in reverse chronological order. There are many different types of blogs, some are similar to newspapers or magazines with regular entries on a given topic, while others are more personal and resemble a diary or journal. Although blogs can be used as both entertainment and research tools, you must be careful when relying on information from a blog as it can be difficult to judge the accuracy. Personal blogs are becoming more and more popular too. These blogs are useful to update readers on an individual's life. While they are not always newsworthy to a general audience, a person's friends and family will follow a personal blog with interest.

Blog has only been a word in English for perhaps ten years. It can be used as a noun, a verb (Do you blog? Are you blogging?), or as another part of speech. Both the word and the idea are quickly evolving and it may be difficult to find some variations in most dictionaries. Other related words you might see are blogosphere (the blog world), vlog (video log), podcast (sometimes used as an audio blog) and moblog (a blog created from a mobile phone or other such device).

If you are interested in starting your own blog there are many easy ways to do it. First decide what you want to talk about in your blog. Will it be personal or related to a certain theme? Who will your audience be? Do you want only your family and friends to read it, or perhaps a teacher, future employers, or enthusiasts of a specific topic? Will you include pictures, or will it just have text and links?

After you have chosen a focus, explore some of the websites that make blogging easy. These sites are available for free and offer a wide variety of options on maintaining and updating your blog.

Here are a few options:

• Blogger: A free, automated weblog publishing tool that sends updates to a site via FTP.
• Bloglines: A web-based personal news aggregator that can be used in place of a desktop client.
• Live Journal: A place where you can share your thoughts with the world. Its innovations include friend pages, or pages that enable users to easily view the recent journal updates of their LiveJournal friends.

Some offer wider options in certain areas, so try to pick on that best fits your needs. For example some offer RSS feeds for free, while other charge for this service. Check back here for more information on RSS feeds in the future, or ask your teacher or Ms. Hanneman.

Remember that what you post to an open blog is available for anyone in the world to see. For this reason it is incredibly important that you do not post personal information or anything that might make you a target for illegal activities.

If you have any questions about blogs or blogging, please feel free to contact Ms. Hanneman in the library.

If you are interested in seeing what a blog looks like, check these out:

• http://bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com
• http://www.janeespenson.com

If you want to search for other blogs, use this link: http://blogsearch.google.com.


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