Get Your “Blog” Here

Leasing News introduced photographs, links to resumes, personal web sites, and “blogs” for the free “job wanted” classified ads.

Several readers have asked, “What is a blog?”   More important than its definition, you can build one for free, and it is not difficult to do.

Matt Gebhardt explains its best in an article he wrote for “The Inside Internet.”   www.elementkjournals.com

“The term blog is really the favored shortened version of the term weblog, which, as you might really assume, is  basically a personal log posted on the web. These no-frills Web pagesare self-published personal musings, observations, essays, notes, and favorite links of the author, also known as the blogger. Because  of the lack of influence from advertisers, potential advertisers, editors, and publishers (at least back in the infant stage of blog evolution), these pages often convey much more of the author's personality than people are used to seeing in the public sector.

“Blogs differ from simple personal Web pages in several ways. First, the tools used to create blogs, such as Blogger (www.blogger.com), enable the author to create a page and update it with incredible ease and rapidity, since blogs traditionally lack more than very basic design elements. Secondly, blogs are generally updated on a near daily basis.

“Professional bloggers are often people with an inside track to breaking news and trends, and some experts are even predicting that the collective blogs on the Internet (also known by some as the blogosphere) may transform and democratize the dissemination of news. The main idea behind this line of thought is that the blogosphere can provide the common consumer with breaking news and insights, unedited and free from political and economic pressures.

“Blog, bloggers, and the blogosphere all sound innocent. But blogs, such as the Drudge Report (www. drudgereport.com) and Ethel the Blog
(http: //stommel.tamu.edu/-.baum/ethel/blogger.html), are continually gaining in both popularity and respect-ability. Their uses are just beginning to be tapped-experts in the fields of marketing, journal-ism, and academics are all showing interest.

“To take a look at some interesting blogs, be sure to check out the Blogdex at
http://blogdex.med .mit.edu, an online index of blogs created by the MIT Media Library. If you're interested in creating your own blog, there's even a free hosting service for Blogger-powered Web logs called Blog*Spot, located online at www.blogspot.com. And of course, you can follow the growth of the blog phenomenon in future articles of Inside the Internet.”