Blog

[Grant Barrett]

On jeudi 22 février 2001 23:41, Jane Parker <jpparker at ISERV.NET> wrote:
>This afternoon while listening to talk of the nation.  A bunch of
>technophilliacs were discussing the impact of techknoloby etc.
>Someone called in and was asking about the vast quantities of information
>availible blah blah and refered to it as blog.  I think is was a contraction
>of backlog.  None of the panel members could define the word. and so it
>ended.  Anybody out there heard of blog?

As someone who keeps two blogs himself, I will agree with Jane Parker's observation
that www.blogger.com is a good place to start and add a couple of things.

The definition of blog is wide. One on end of the spectrum, it's a personal diary.
On the other, it's a list of "cool" links. In any case, most blogs have these factors
in common:

1. Run by an individual rather than a company.
2. Updates regularly, ideally daily in a kind of "log" format with dated entries.
3. Cool links provided.

These days blogs are good generators and amplifiers of Internet memes, the latest
example I can think of being the "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" meme.

The history of blogs is uncertain. Most people are willing to credit several "what's
new" pages that appeared pre-Yahoo (and even on Yahoo, back in the days when *all*
the new sites added to the net could be visited in an hour or so each day). Bjorn
Barger *did not* invent the blog.

Some of the more popular blogs

http://www.metafilter.com/    A group blog, run by an individual, but with links
posted by its members
http://slashdot.org/                 Blog or not? Most people agree that it is.
http://www.memepool.com/     Group blog, again. With an emphasis on odd or wacky
links
http://www.camworld.com/     One of the older blogs out there. Tech-oriented. Lots
of links to other blogs.

--
Grant Barrett
New York loves you back.
http://www.worldnewyork.org/