Question; What is a Blog?
For anyone who has not heard of the term blog, what is a blog, tends tends to be the first thing they ask, after some consultation among ourselves as to what is a blog, we felt the best explanation including a historical explanation of what is a blog comes from Wiki.
So what is a Blog ?
Well a blog is a website in which journal entries are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called "blogging". Individual articles on a blog are called "blog posts," "posts" or "entries". A person who posts these entries is called a "blogger". A blog comprises hypertext, images, and links (to other webpages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular "area of interest", such as Washington, D.C.'s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.
Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or they can be run using blog software on regular web hosting services. In the early 21st Century, blogging has quickly emerged as a popular and important means of communication.
Follow up:
Blog basics
A blog entry typically consists of the following:
* Title - main title of the post,
* Body - main content of the post,
* Comments - comments added by readers
* Category (or tags) - category the post is labeled with (optional, multiple categories possible)
* Permalink - the URL of the full, individual article
* Post Date - date and time the post was published
* Trackback - links back from other sites
How blogs differ from traditional sites
A blog has certain attributes that distinguish it from a standard web page. It allows for easy creation of new pages: new data is entered into a simple form (usually with the title, the category, and the body of the article) and then submitted. Automated templates take care of adding the article to the home page, creating the new full article page (Permalink), and adding the article to the appropriate date- or category-based archive. It allows for easy filtering of content for various presentations: by date, category, author, or other attributes. It usually allows the administrator to invite and add other authors, whose permissions and access are easily managed.
Difference from forums or newsgroups
Blogs are different from forums or newsgroups. Only the author or authoring group can create new subjects for discussion on a blog. A network of blogs can function like a forum in that every entity in the blog network can create subjects of their choosing for others to discuss. Such networks require interlinking to function, so a group blog with multiple people holding posting rights is now becoming more common. Even where others post to a blog, the blog owners or editors will initiate and frame discussion, manipulating the situation to their specifications.
Digital media
While straight text and hyperlinks dominate, some blogs emphasize images (such as web comics and photoblogs) and videos (videoblogging).
Some textual blogs link to audio files (podcasting). A notable niche is the MP3 blog, which specializes in posting music from specific genres. New words have been coined for many of these content-oriented blogs, such as "moblog" (for "mobile blog").
Precursors
Electronic communities existed before internetworking. For example the AP wire was, in effect, similar to a large chat room with "wire fights" and electronic conversations. Another pre-digital electronic community, amateur (or "ham") radio, allowed individuals who set up their own broadcast equipment to communicate with others directly. Ham radio also had logs called "glogs" that were personal diaries made using wearable computers in the early 1980s.
Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, e-mail lists and bulletin board systems (BBS). In the 1990s Internet forum software, such as WebX, created running conversations with "threads." Threads are topical connections between messages on a electronic "corkboard".
Diarists kept journals on the Web: most called themselves online diarists, journalists, journallers, or journalers. A few called themselves escribitionists. The Open Pages webring included members of the online-journal community. The first famous journaller was probably Justin Hall.
Other forms of journals kept online also existed. A notable example was game programmer John Carmack's widely read journal, published via the finger protocol.
Websites, including both corporate sites and personal homepages, had and still often have "What's New" or "News" sections, often on the index page and sorted by date.
Blogging appears
The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz. He broke the word weblog into the phrase "we blog" in the sidebar of his weblog in April or May of 1999. [1] "Blog" was accepted as a noun (weblog shortened) and as a verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or a post to one's weblog"). [2]
Justin Hall, who began eleven years of personal "blogging" in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers. The site Xanga, launched in 1996, had only 100 diaries by 1997, and over 50 000 000 as of December 2005. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools: Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra Labs) launched Blogger.com (which was purchased by Google in February 2003), and Paul Kedrosky's GrokSoup. As of March 2003, the Oxford English Dictionary included the terms weblog, weblogging and weblogger in their dictionary. [3]
Dave Winer is the one of the pioneers of the tools that make blogs more than merely websites. One of his most significant contributions was setting up servers that weblogs could ping to update themselves.
Blogging combined the personal web page with tools to make linking to other pages easier — specifically blogrolls and TrackBacks. This enabled bloggers to control the threads that connected them to others with similar interests, thereby wresting control from forum moderators.
Blogging gains influence
The first broadly popular American blogs emerged in 2001: Andrew Sullivan's , Ron Gunzburger's Politics1.com, Jerome Armstrong's MyDD, and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga's DailyKos — all blogging primarily on politics.
By 2001, blogging was enough of a phenomenon that how-to manuals began to appear, primarily focusing on technique. The importance of the blogging community (and its relationship to larger society) gained rapidly increasing importance. Established schools of journalism began researching blogging and noting the differences between journalism and blogging.
In 2002, many blogs focused on comments by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Senator Lott, at a party honoring U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, praised Senator Thurmond by suggesting that the United States would have been better off had Thurmond been elected president. Lott's critics saw these comments as a tacit approval of racial segregation, a policy advocated by Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign. This view was reinforced by documents and recorded interviews dug up by bloggers. Though Lott's comments were made at a public event attended by the media, no major media organizations reported on his controversial comments until after blogs broke the story. Blogging helped to create a political crisis that forced Lott to step down as majority leader.
The shaping of this story gave greater credibility to blogs as a medium of news dissemination. Though often seen as partisan gossips, bloggers sometimes lead the way in bringing key information to public light. This puts the mainstream media in the unusual position of reacting to news bloggers generate.
Since 2003, blogs have gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping, and spinning news stories. The Iraq war saw both left-wing and right-wing bloggers taking measured and passionate points of view that did not reflect the traditional left-right divide.
Blogging by established politicians and political candidates, to express opinions on war and other issues, cemented blogs' role as a news source. Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts blogged, making blogs a source of in-depth analysis.
The second Iraq war was the first "blog war" in another way: Iraqi bloggers gained wide readership, and one, Salam Pax, published a book of his blog. Blogs were also created by soldiers serving in the Iraq war. Such "milblogs" gave readers new perspectives on the realities of war, as well as often offering different viewpoints from those of official news sources.
Blogging was used to draw attention to obscure news sources. For example, bloggers posted links to traffic cameras in Madrid as a huge anti-terrorism demonstration filled the streets in the wake of the March 11 attacks.
Bloggers began to provide nearly-instant commentary on televised events, creating a secondary meaning of the word "blogging": to simultaneously transcribe and editorialize speeches and events shown on television. (For example, "I am blogging Rice's testimony" means "I am posting my reactions to Condoleezza Rice's testimony into my blog as I watch her on television.") Real-time commentary is sometimes referred to as "liveblogging."
Blogging gains popularity
In 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services and candidates began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. Even politicians not actively campaigning, such as MP Tom Watson of the UK Labour Party, began to blog to bond with constituents.
Minnesota Public Radio broadcast a program by Christopher Lydon and Matt Stoller called "The Blogging of the President," which covered a transformation in politics that blogging seemed to presage. The Columbia Journalism Review began regular coverage of blogs and blogging. Anthologies of blog pieces reached print, and blogging personalities began appearing on radio and television. In the summer of 2004, both (America's Democratic and Republican) parties' conventions credentialed bloggers, and blogs became a standard part of the publicity arsenal. Mainstream television programs, such as Chris Matthews' Hardball, formed their own blogs. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary declared "blog" as the word of the year in 2004.
Blogs were among the driving forces behind the "Rathergate" scandal. To wit: (television journalist) Dan Rather presented documents (on the CBS show 60 Minutes) that conflicted with accepted accounts of President Bush's military service record. Conservative bloggers declared the documents to be forgeries and presented arguments in support of that view, and CBS apologized for what it said were inadequate reporting techniques. Many bloggers view this scandal as the advent of blogs' acceptance by the mass media, both as a source of news and opinion and as means of applying political pressure.
Some bloggers have moved over to other media. The following bloggers (and others) have appeared on radio and television: Duncan Black (known widely by his pseudonym, Atrios), Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) , Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (Daily Kos), and Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette). Hugh Hewitt is an example of a media personality who has moved in the other direction, adding to his reach in "old media" by being an influential blogger.
Some blogs were an important source of news during the December 2004 Tsunami such as Chiens Sans Frontiers, which used SMS text messaging to report from affected areas in Sri Lanka and Southern India.
In the United Kingdom, The Guardian newspaper launched a redesign in September 2005, which included a daily digest of blogs on page 2.
In January 2005, Fortune magazine listed eight bloggers that business people "could not ignore": Peter Rojas, Xeni Jardin, Ben Trott, Mena Trott, Jonathan Schwartz, Jason Goldman, Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis..
Blogging and the traditional
Many bloggers support the Open Source movement. The free speech nature of its technology has helped blogging to have a social impact. Blogging makes it easy for employees to irritate their bosses, and a number have been fired.
Open Source Politics, or the ability of people to participate more directly in politics, is reframing terms of debate. Many bloggers differentiate themselves from the mainstream media, while others are members of that media working through a different channel. Some institutions see blogging as a means of "getting around the filter" and pushing messages directly to the public. Some critics worry that bloggers respect neither intellectual property nor the role of the mass media in presenting society with credible news.
Bloggers' credibility problem, however, can be an advantage for the bloggers and for the mainstream journalists who take an interest in them. News organizations are sometimes reluctant to tell stories that will upset important people. But when bloggers or activists make sensational claims, then they become stories themselves, and journalists can use them as cover for reporting the underlying scandals.
Blogs have been seen as archives of human thought. They can provide useful insights to aid in dealing with humanity's psychological problems (such as depression and addiction). And they can also be used to solve crimes. (In 2005, Simon Ng posted a blog entry which identified his murderer.)
Blogs have also had an influence on minority languages, bringing together scattered speakers and learners; this is particularly so with Scottish Gaelic blogs, whose creators can be found as far away from traditional Gaelic areas as Kazakhstan and Alaska. Blogs are also used regularly by Welsh language activists. Minority language publishing (which may lack economic feasibility) can find its audience through inexpensive blogging.
How blogs are made
Blogging software — such as Nucleus CMS, Movable Type, Blojsom, iBlog, Drupal, b2evolution, boastMachine, Antville, Serendipity and WordPress — makes blogs possible. A good program combines a user-friendly interface and format flexibility.
Server-based systems eliminate the need for bloggers to manage the software. With web interfaces, these systems allow travelers to blog from anywhere on the Internet.
A blogroll is a list of links that create a context for a blog. Bloggers with common interests will share a blogroll to help each other increase their visibility on the Internet.
A feedback comment system allows visitors to post comments to individual blog entries. Frequent comments testify to popular blogs, but some bloggers prefer to pre-screen or block comments.
Tools such as Ecto, Elicit and w.bloggar allow users to maintain their Web-hosted blog without the need to be online while composing or editing posts.
The TrackBack feature introduced by Movable Type in 2002 enables multiple blogs to be automatically notified when certain topical or other changes are made to one blog. (bBlog has gone as far as implementing threaded trackbacks on comments and comments on trackbacks.)
Linking between blogs has been critized as complicating search engine page ranking techniques. It has resulted in search engines changing how search results are obtained.
Some Web hosting companies (Tripod), Internet service providers (America Online), online publications (Salon.com) and internet portals (Yahoo! 360º) provide blog creation tools and blog hosting.
Some people program blogs from scratch using ColdFusion, CGI, pure Ruby, Rails, J2EE, JSP, ASP/ASP.NET, PHP, Python or other server side software. Others have created blogs using wiki software, such as the Wikimedia platform.
for more info go to Wikipedia
