Some of the most popular online activities are data gathering, research, “blogging,” and Web surfing to explore new and different sites. We are all familiar with using the Web to gather information about products and services so we can make informed decisions. Businesses use the Internet to do research for work, students use it to do research for school, and we’ve all done some Web surfing.

However, blogging may be a new term unless you are doing it. Blog is a shortened version of “weblog.” Weblogs are personal journals kept online by groups like Slashdot.org. They are freeform journals about nearly any topic imaginable. There are Web sites packed with links and ideas and users making arguments that used to solely belong to the established news outlets. If a topic exists, there is probably a blog out there to cover it.

Blogs Are Personal

They accomplish things that the Web magazine sites can not. Most of them are alive with the temperament of the writer. Their personal touch is much more in tune with our current sensibilities than were the opinionated magazines and newspapers of old. Readers know that the large news sources are no more inherently trustworthy than a lone blogger who has earned the reader's respect. Just because a large news organization has a grand-sounding name and a large staff, it does not mean that they are above reproach. The recent Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times is an example that comes to mind.

Reinventing Publishing

For as long as journalism has existed, writers of whatever kind have had one route to readers: They needed an editor and a publisher. Blogging has changed all of that. It has unleashed a publishing revolution more profound than anything since the printing press. You no longer need an agent, a publisher, or even paper! All you need is an idea, a computer and access to the internet.