Web log/blog

A weblog (often web log, also known as a blog, see below) is a website that
tracks headlines and articles from other websites. They are frequently
maintained by volunteers and are typically devoted to a specific audience or topic.

The word weblog is believed to have been coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997.

     Weblogs are often-updated sites that point to articles elsewhere on the
     web, often with comments, and to on-site articles. A weblog is kind of
     a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are
     many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there's also
     comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point
     to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc. -- Dave
     Winer,

Weblogs are useful for web-surfers because they often collect numerous web
sites with interesting content in an easy to use and constantly updated format.

The format of web logs varies, from simple bullet lists of hyperlinks, to
article summaries with user-provided comments and ratings.

Some web logs specialise in particular forms of presentation, such as
images, or videos, or on a particular theme, and acronyms have been
developed for some of these, such as moblogs (for "mobile" blog).

The totality of web logs and blog-related webs is usually called the blogosphere.

Creating and Publishing Weblogs

Since their introduction, a number of software packages have appeared to
allow people to create their own web log. Blog hosting sites and Web
services to provide editing via the Web have proliferated. Common examples
include pitas, blogger, and xanga.

Many more advanced bloggers prefer to generate their blogs by using software
tools such as Movable Type, and then to publish their articles on their own
Web site, or on a third party site. This provides some greater flexibility
and power, but requires more knowledge. Additionally, it may reduce the ease
of creating and editing text for travellers, some of whom like to produce
their travelblogs from Internet cafes as they travel around the globe.

Many blogging tools have also been developed to improve the blogging
experience, with commonly used ones providing blogrolls and feedback comment
systems. Well known examples of these are blogrolling and the commenting
system YACCS. Tools such as w.bloggar allow users to maintain their Web
hosted blog without the need to use the (generally somewhat slower) Web
based editing tools. Fundamental enhancements to weblog technology continue
to be developed. The most intriguing one, generating growing interest in
2003, is Movable Type's trackback feature which enables automatic
notification between websites of related content such as a post on a
particular topic or which responds to a post on another weblog [2].

Types of Weblogs

Blog usually means a personal web log, a type of online diary, or journal
(LiveJournal is a good, popular example) run by special blog software. Blog
sites make it possible for users without much experience to create, format,
and post entries with ease. People write their day-to-day experiences,
complaints, poems, prose, illicit thoughts and more, often allowing others
to contribute, fulfilling to a certain extent Tim Berners-Lee's original
view of the World Wide Web as a collaborative medium. In 2001, the
popularity of blogs increased dramatically.

Another common kind of blog is a political blog. Often an individual will
link to articles from news web sites and post their own comments as well.
Many of these blogs comment on whatever interests the author. Some of them
are more specialized. One subspecies is the watch blog, a blog which sets
out to criticize what the author considers systematic errors or bias in an
online newspaper or news site - or perhaps even by a more popular blogger.
One of the earliest and most popular examples of this genre of blog is
http://www.AndrewSullivan.com, the personal blog of Anglo-American
journalist and writer Andrew Sullivan which claims (as of late 2002, early
2003) over 250,000 unique visitors per month.

Weblog History, Characteristics

Weblogs have some similarities with wikis, in that they may stimulate
community interaction, and some allow reader feedback. Web logs do not
generally permit readers to modify existing text.

The word blog was coined by Peter Merholz who in April or May of 1999 broke
the word weblog into the phrase "wee' blog" in the sidebar of his weblog
[3]. This was interpreted as a short form of the noun [4] and also as a
verb, to blog, meaning "to edit one's weblog or a post to one's weblog".
Usage spread during 1999 and the word was popularized by Pyra's creation of
their weblog service Blogger. The Oxford English Dictionary has considered
including it in their dictionary (see the editorial).

Amateur radio is, in many ways, the predecessor of the modern internet. Ham
radio logs formed a sort-of precursor to the modern web log. With
miniaturization, ham radio equipment evolved from fixed (located in homes
and offices) to mobile (automotive, in cars, vans, and boats) to portable
(handheld, wearable, and even implantable) [5]. Portable ham radio gear made
possible the CyborgLog (cyborglog, or "glog" for short) in which early
cyborg communities were possible. Glogs also gave rise to early electronic
newsgathering on the Web.