Blog, Weblog Definition
A blog (short for weblog) is a website usually managed by one person (but not always) that journals a persons thoughts and ideas about a particular subject. Many blogs are personal diaries detailing someone's experiences.
You can contrast a blog with a forum, where the blogger really controls the content of the postings. Visitors to blogs can post comments, but a blog is less of a public forum. Visitors typically visit blogs to read the latest news and opinions of the blogger.
Isn't a weblog, Web log or simply a blog, a web application which contains periodic, reverse chronologically ordered posts on a common webpage? Wouldn't such a Web site be accessible to any Internet user? The term "blog" came into common use as a way of avoiding confusion with the term server log.
Don't run blogs from individual diaries to arms of political campaigns, media programs and corporations, and from one occasional author to having large communities of writers? Anren't some maintained by single authors, while others have many authors? Many weblogs allow visitors to leave public comments, which can lead to a community of readers centered around the blog; others are non-interactive. The totality of weblogs or blog-related websites is usually called the blogosphere.
Do the format of weblogs vary, from simple bullet lists of hyperlinks, to article summaries with user-provided comments and ratings? Individual weblog entries are almost always date and time-stamped, with the newest post at the top of the page. As links are very important to blogs, most blogs have a way of archiving entries and generating static addresses for individual entries; this static links are referred to as permalinks. The latest headlines, with hyperlinks and summaries, are offered in weblogs in the RSS or Atom XML-format, to be read with a feed reader.
Posted by: theglobalchinese | January 05, 2005 at 08:00 AM