With their relative ease of use and inexpensive setup (many sites offer them free), nearly anyone with a computer and access to the Internet can publish a blog site quickly and cheaply and let their voice be heard online.
From political ranting and raving to the reviews of the latest gadgets and gizmos and a lot of self expression and opinions in between, blogs have opened the Internet up – like the old frontier – to millions of people who want to rush in and weigh in on their favorite topics, passions, gripes, or just to have a destination for their rambling thoughts and ideas. According to Technorati.com, a popular blog search engine, they are tracking more than 53.7 million blogs ... and counting. The site estimates 75,000 new blogs “go live” on the Internet each day. And the ones in existence are posting more than 1.2 million new articles, or posts, a day. Most blogs are designed to be a "conversation," a two-way dialogue between the blog owner and reader, and not just mere Web sites and monologue.
Here are a couple of items that will make your blog surfing and reading easier:
- RSS and Feeds -- RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Another name for them is a "feed." A Web site's RSS or feed is a Internet file that contains all the posts of that blog. Each time new posts are added, this file is automatically updated by their blogging software. Benefit of RSS and feeds to readers: With a feedreader (see below), you can easily keep track of a number of blogs (I've got about 20 that I read regularly) without actually having to go to the Web site and check. [Here's another good article on feeds.]
- Feedreaders -- These are online programs or Web sites that allow you to "read the feeds" of your favorite sites, and thus keep up with them without actually surfing over to the site. My favorite feedreader is Bloglines.com. Sign up for a new account and start "subscribing" to your favorite blog sites. [Here is another article on feedreaders.]
- Comments -- As I wrote earlier, most blogs are intended to be conversations. Therefore, at the end of most blog posts is a link labeled "comments." When you find a blog post that you want to comment on, click on that post's comment link and add your two cents worth. Be sure to play nice, be fair, and don't abuse the privilege. Imagine commenting in the same light as two people having a conversation, you overhear it and decide to enter the dialogue.
Here's a couple of popular blogs, blog tools or sites that talk about blogs:
- Del.icio.us -- A popular social networking/bookmarking site
- Technorati.com -- THE blogging search engine (Make sure to get an account there and "claim" your blog so it shows up on searches.)
- Most Popular on Technorati.com -- See what tags, blogs, and searches are the hottest
- Feedster's Top 500 Blogs -- See what blog sites (and topics) are getting the most traffic
- ProBlogger.net -- Great, awesome, outstanding advice for professional bloggers, but MUCH carryover for us, amateurs
- CopyBlogger -- Writing for the Internet and other stuff
- Boing Boing -- One of the most popular blogs on the Net
- Engadget -- Neck and neck usually with Boing Boing for most popular blog
- YouTube -- An insanely popular video site that allows you to "embed" videos in your blogs for free
- Flickr -- Like YouTube but for photos
- Bloglines -- My favorite feedreader
- Feedburner -- Automatic RSS feeds for your blog
- FeedBlitz -- Automatic email updates of new blog posts for your subscribers
- Zookoda -- A free email newsletter service, I use this for my email newsletter
- Google Analytics -- Free Web site statistics program, just insert the code and start tracking
- Google Adsense -- The search engine's popular text ads programs
- SiteMeter -- Another free Web site stats program
- WordPress -- Free popular blogging platform
No comments:
Post a Comment