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Recently, I've had more than one person ask me what a "blog" is. Clearly, it's definition time. A blog is basically a date-based web site where you add comments. The term is sort of short for Web log. Frequently a blog points to articles on the Web with editorial commentary.
Blogs are often quite personal in their subject matter, kind of like a journal that is publicly available on the Web. 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.
Blogs have hit the Internet mainstream in the last few years; even politicians have them now. But really blogs aren't a new innovation. In fact, some blogs have been around pretty much since the beginning of the World Wide Web.
What is new is the software you can use to create blogs. Now you can use reasonably simple software such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) to create a blog site without needing to know how to create a Web page or HTML. All you need is a Web browser. Other popular blogging tools are made by Movable Type (http://www.movabletype.org/).
Since creating a blog is now so easy, blogs have proliferated throughout the Web. Literally hundreds of thousands of blogs are online covering every imaginable topic. Not surprisingly, there are also a lot sites that list blogs such as Blogarama (http://blogarama.com), BlogUniverse (http://www.bloguniverse.com), and Globe Of Blogs (http://www.globeofblogs.com).
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