Much ado about blogs, bloggers and blogging.

Conveniently, blogs are electronically published media. What is a better way to teach students about a topic than to get them to actively engage in it?

You really have to applaud the powers that be for their ingenuity.

Anyway, back to the post.

For quite long, I had the distinct impression that blogs are just online personal diaries. That was until I came across a Yahoo! highlight last year about the increasing number of personal finance blogs. Admittedly, some blogs contained one-off posts on being debt-free, while others were wholly committed to dispensing financial advice. These just skim the surface of the wide possibilities of current blogs.

What is a blog?
According to Rebecca Blood, there were only a few blogs in 1998. She observed that then, blogs were often a means to update daily happenings for others interested to read them. Since 1998, blogs have proliferated to astonishing numbers. Jakob Nielsen attributed this to the fact that blogs are so much easier to set up than websites. In a March 2006 article of The Observer, Technorati claimed to track some 29 million blogs.

In his online introduction to blog neophytes, David DeJean substantiated such observations when he explained that blogging is still considered a relatively new phenomenon to be thought of as personal platforms rather than for other purposes.

Is that all to blogging?
As the trend goes, personal anecdotes about what happened on your way to work isn't everything that blogs can contain. Blood stated that bloggers have used their blogs to learn; and even improve on writing and analytical skills. DeJean also quoted Lilia Efimova who highlighted other benefits of blogging. Efimova gave the following observations in her blog Mathemagenic:

• Publishing
  A blog is a great platform for public access and wide reach. And get due recognition.
• Managing personal information
  Many bloggers use their blogs as notebooks to capture data and impressions, to document ideas and experiences, and to organise links and references. Essentially, a good information resource - for you and any others out there.
• Dialogue and networking
  Blogs are a place to get feedback on ideas, to initiate conversations, and to make contacts based on common interests. (To get an idea, read point 5 raised by Penelope Trunk's Networking for People Who Hate Networking.)
• Learning
  A blog helps its blogger learn by staying updated, articulating and organising ideas, participating in conversations, and being part of a community, as well as sharpening writing, communication, research, and technology skills.

What does this mean?
Tim Anderson claimed that Blogging is on the brink of a new phase. While still predominantly treated as online personal diaries, many blogs now offer (i) critiques on current affairs presented in the media; and (ii) various industry practices; even (iii) personal advice and; (iv) reviews on just about anything.

Even The Straits Times Digital Life has advised readers on how to set up a blog as you can see below. (Due to copyright reasons, I can't include the full article.)





source: The Straits Times Digital Life Mar 20, 2007

So, what are you waiting for? Get going!