What is a Blog?
The first time I heard about a blog I thought of the Blob. The mass that was indescribable, indestructible and nothing could stop it. In some ways a blog is like a blob. It is taking over the internet. With Web 2.0 technology it is enabling people to do HTML-Less Publishing of journals, e-portfolios, etc. Nothing can stop it and it is growing at incredible speeds. It has created a whole new Blogosphere on the Web.
Actually Blog stands for WEBLOG. A Blog is:
- A place for an individual to write their opinion and thoughts about a variety of subjects.
- Online journal or Personal diary
- Collaborative space
- Collect & share things you find interesting
- Your voice on the web
Blog Entries…
· Are written in chronological order, but…
· Displayed in reverse chronological order
Blogs usually contain…
- Title, Headline, and Posts
- Post Date & Time
- Text and images
- Links to other blogs or websites
- A place where readers can leave comments or feedback on the subject. (Interactive)
- Categories, labels or Tags
- Mood or Music
- Permalink, the internet address or URL of the complete post.
- Directory of recent posts.
- Bio on the blog owner.
- If you go to Google you will find an option “more”. It will give a drop down box with a link to Blog Search.
Google Blog Search gives you the option to several options to view those results. You can view blog posts written in the last hour, last 12 hours, last day, past week, past month or you can choose the date of the post. There is also an option to sort by date or relevance.
You will note on Google Blog Search the ability to subscribe to Blog Alerts. If you click on the link it will let you create your own Google Alert. You can put in you search terms – such a genealogy or New York
- What if the Alerts become unmanageable?
- What if I want to read only certain blogs?
- Do I have to visit each blog’s website everyday?
- RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary)
- Atom – this is the more advanced feed
Blogs will usually have the icons for you to click on to get the feed address. If you are using an older version of Internet Explorer or Mozilla you will see the actually XML code the feed is written in, very similar to HTML code if you ever seen that.
symbol. This symbol lets you know that you are on a website that is actually a blog and has a feed associated with it. Click on that symbol/icon will take you to a page where you can subscribe to that feed and later read all the posts made on that blog. In Internet Explorer it uses almost the same concept as saving favorite websites where you can later go back and view them. The difference is that you don’t actually go to the website to view the posts. It will give you a running page with all the posts with the most current one on top. The other nice thing about the way Internet Explorer lets you view the blogs is it has a box that will let you display various things you might be looking for on the blog. There is a search engine that will display all the articles that contain the words you might be looking for. You can sort posts by their date, title and the author. The other nice thing is that lets you filter by category tags. If the author has used tagging correctly just the list alone will allow you to determine if they are speaking on the subjects you are interested in and then find worthwhile to continue watching this blog.
I really like this feature except it doesn’t always show me all the graphics that the author used in that blog post. The other problem is the Internet Explorer is notorious for its security holes. Well the latest version of Mozilla also uses the same principle of letting you know when you are on a website that is using blog technology and sending a feed.
In Mozilla you can subscribe to the feed using Live Bookmark with is just a glorified version of saving your favorites only it gives a drop down box of all the blogs post titles. When you click on the title you are interested in it takes you to the actually blog posts URL so you can see all the graphics associated with the post. You miss nothing. I’m not totally sold on that method yet. I really like quickly scrolling through the actually article to see if I am interested in it.
The other option Mozilla gives to subscribing to the feed is to send the feed to a blog reader. The only ones it will send it to are Bloglines, My Yahoo and Google. With Google you can read the feeds on Google homepage or Google Reader. I’ve used both and had Google Reader set as my browsers homepage, but it takes a while to load. With Google Reader you have the functionality of most Readers. You can organize the feeds into categories, star favorites, mark items as read and customize your tags.
Some of you might still have concerns.
- Use to mailing lists concept and delivery to email account
- Set it up once and forget it.
- Reading RSS the way you are already reading your email.
- Subscribe to any feed, anytime, anywhere.
- If a new article appears it will be sent to you.
- Single or Clustered (digest) options
- http://www.rssfwd.com
If you click on these icons you will see the correct address to enter. If you only know the website URL use that and RSSFwd will give you some options.Now that I have formularized you with what blogs and feeds are – what if you are feeling the desire to be a blogger?
- You can have a “webpage” without all the baggage.
- You can have your posts picked up by search engines.
- Increases your chances of finding others to collaborate with.
- Talk about your research experiences.
- Pass on tips and research techniques.
- News and happenings in your community.
- Update and discussions on specific products or projects.
- Discussions about concepts, plans, needs or techniques.
- Social networking
- Live Journal – Renee’s Genealogy Blog(old)
- TypePad – Dick Eastman’s Newsletter
- Blogger – Very Popular & Simple
- Social Networking: MySpace, FaceBook. Windows Live Spaces.
- WordPress.com – Arlene H. Eakle
Renee’s Genealogy Blog – http://rzamor1.blogspot.com
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