To blog or not to blog . . . that's not the question. It's rather, what IS a blog?

Some trace the etimology of the term 'blog' back to the legendary Simpson's episode "Bart Vs. Thanksgiving" from the 1990-1991 season where Lisa is writing in her journal and her voice-over seems to intone, "Dear Blog . . . " But there are some questions as to this genesis, and it is transcribed as:

Dear Log: My brother is still missing, and maybe it's my fault because I failed to take his abuse with good humor. I miss him so much already that I don't . . . know . . . [sobs]

To take things from another perspective, thanks to Metagrrl, aka Dinah Sanders, I ended up at a page by Rebecca Blood, weblogs: a history and perspective, where it is written:

In 1998 there were just a handful of sites of the type that are now identified as weblogs (so named by Jorn Barger in December 1997). Jesse James Garrett, editor of Infosift, began compiling a list of "other sites like his" as he found them in his travels around the web. In November of that year, he sent that list to Cameron Barrett. Cameron published the list on Camworld, and others maintaining similar sites began sending their URLs to him for inclusion on the list. Jesse's 'page of only weblogs' lists the 23 known to be in existence at the beginning of 1999.

Suddenly a community sprang up. It was easy to read all of the weblogs on Cameron's list, and most interested people did. Peter Merholz announced in early 1999 that he was going to pronounce it 'wee-blog' and inevitably this was shortened to 'blog' with the weblog editor referred to as a 'blogger.'

So, we look to the Simpsons or some early webloggers for our various versions of the truth. Who would you believe?

But what is it?

Well. A blog a web page. It is a log of activities. It's a journal. It's a narrative. It's a community? No doubt. Blogs are pretty much what you make of them, or it. They are clearly flexible in their interpretation, manifestation, implimentation and distribution. At the core, blogs embody a single idea that sets them apart from the last decade of web pages (I first used the world wide web a decade ago ;-). It is the idea that blogs are web pages designed to be updated often. Very often. Usually daily. Sometimes with greater frequency. Any web page that is intended to be updated with new material on a daily basis can call itself a blog, according to the accretional wisdom of the 'net as I can suss it out. In a nutshell, a blog is a mechanism for organizing chronological entries on a theme that may be posts related to a company's products or an individuals private musings. Many blogs are updated many times throughout the day, functioning as bulletin boards or communal and public spaces. Blogs are conceptual tool for sharing stories and personal narrative, allowing individuals to manage and present daily journals or logs. Some pages, such as emmajane.net, insanecats.com, and yukazine.com (Japanese only), are manual blogs. Their maintainer must edit code or html every time she wants to add something. Other blogs use software to facilitate the easy posting, maintenance, and archiving of content. Salmon (meadow4.com/squish) uses Greymatter, Jenyi (babyblog) uses Blogger, as do I (jasonnolan.net). One of Sarah's blogs (sarahsmiles) uses Livejournal.

How do they work?

There are three flavours of blogs———represented by Greymatter, Livejournal, and Blogger———and are representative because they differ significantly in how they push the blogging metaphor. Other important environments that I cannot take up in this article include: Wiki Wiki Web, Pitas, and Manila. I have personally used Greymatter, Livejournal, Blogger, and Wiki Wiki Web, and appreciate their strengths, and bemoan their weaknesses. The biggest weakness for all of them is the lack of a 'save' button, but that's an aside. What they all have in common is that their creators have developed a web-based interface that allows you to post content to a web page. Usually by filling in a form, you can have your newest thoughts, poems, insights, or minutes from meetings online in a moment. Not only that, but the content is time stamped and archived. Through more menues and forms you have the ability to customize various elements of your layout, archiving, and other features. The strength of blogging is that almost everything is done for you out of the box, relatively speaking, but as you learn more about your chosen environment, you gain more control over that environment. The learning curve is gradual and forgiving.

Noah Grey's Greymatter gives you the most control, and requires the most knowledge on the part of the user.

This is a screen shot of the Greymatter editing interface.

According to the FAQ, "Greymatter is a downloadable program that runs entirely on your own server and depends on no outside service whatsoever. . . . Greymatter is primarily meant for 'power users'; those who consider themselves fairly experienced with the web." You have to know your way around not only html, but basic unix commands, ftp and Perl. There's no programming or scripting involved, but if you are already confused with these terms, it is better to read on. There is something for everyone.

Livejournal^tm "is not just an online journal; it's an interactive community! You can meet new friends, visit other journals and comment in them, and interact with people from around the world who share your interests."

This is a screen shot of the Livejournal editing interface.

Livejournal is more about being part of a journaling community than anything else. Its layout does not conform to much else on the Internet, but it is designed for new users, and does a good job of getting them going in no time at all. Livejournal severely limits choices, but allows for a very easy and forgiving user experience that is more than flexible enough for the average web user to get a blog up and running, find other bloggers, and to immediately set up rings of friends. The content of the Livejournal pages I have seen reflects this chatty communal space. Posts tend to be short and pithy, less reflective and more interactive. It is a great place to share poetry and fiction, and actually get comments and feedback.

Blogger.com is the grandaddy of them all. Blogger seems to be the heart of the revolution and is popular in the media. Indeed, their motto is "The revolution will be bloggerized."

This is a screen shot of the Blogger editing interface.

And headman Evan's right: Blogger is the slickest, most sophisticated, and the easiest to use. It balances between accessibility and flexibility on one hand, and the ability to hack your blog into any form you can imagine. You can update blogger from a cell phone, integrate new features, dump in various bits of code and templates, or just keep it clean and simple. Blogger will host your blog, or you can put it on your own web site. And for the average user, you get the feeling, with Blogger, that you are right in the middle of a technological happening.

Blogger is my main squeeze. After spending six years maintaining various sites, and after trying out the competition, I have temporarily settled on Blogger. I use it for courses I teach as well as for my own personal and creative sites. At present, I have 20 different blogs set up using Blogger, some my own, some collaborative efforts, and some where I'm just helping out. With minor reservations, it is probably the most important tool I have for my online work.

All three solicit money through some mechanism or another, but aside from Livejournal, there's no second-class status for using the free version. Blogger sells micro ads on the login page, which are designed to be easily ignored. However, if you want Blogger to keep your blog for you, versus putting on your own site, you can put up with ads or pay a small fee. Greymatter has a very successful legion of fans who donate everything from cash to buying Noah things from his Amazon.com wishlist. Since you must download and install Greymatter yourself there are no other fees. Livejournal has free and paid options. To get a free account, someone must sponsor you; I had to beg sponsorship from someone I did not even know. If you pay, as little as $2/month, you get many perks. None of these projects are big profit concerns. No one is getting rich over blogging. But a lot of people care about it.

What's so good about all this?

There's been a lot written about how great blogs are, and how they're the next big thing. Laurel Murray, a research assistant one my blogging projects (Edublog), has done a great job in digging up most of what has been written on blogs in her Edu-Blogs. Laurel's work is very important for anyone looking to find out what has been said far and wide about Blogs. She is presently categorizing all the kinds of software, specific uses of blogs, scholarly and media articles, educational projects, and journaling resources. Everything is presently chronologically organized according to how she found it, but all the raw resources will be massaged into a more accessible format over the winter, and will be available of our main Edublog project page. In the meantime, you can look at Weblog Madness for some categorized information on blogs as well.

Perusing Laurel's blog on blogging, what you will find is that Blogs are rescuing the internet from commerce, dead boring content and ugly images, replacing it with badly written poems, idle self-centred chat, and long-winded narratives. And that is the fun part of the Internet, after all. To me, the Internet is and always was about putting people in touch with people. It is about sharing ideas, stories and dreams. It is not the board room or the library, but the kitchen. The kitchen is where things happen, where you learn things, where stories are told.

Why is this cool to a writer?

There are a few very interesting reasons why any writer, especially an electronic writer, should consider setting up a blog, and using it regularly. You should have a blog because you want to share ideas, keep fans updated, and to promote your work. Add to this the fact that you may not have the time or skills (yet) to be able to make a sophistated web page yourself. I use a blog as my journal of what is going on in my life: personally, professionally, creatively. It is my public note pad, and I often find that people comment on my posts with new ideas or insights or just words of encouragement. Some folks, such as San Francisco writer Rain Graves (thanks for the suggestion Sarah) uses her blog to keep readers up-to-date on her writerly life, with info, stories, and snippets of verse. Wil Wheaton, known as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek, blogs his life as an actor to a legion of fans. Author Neil Gaiman, of Sandman fame, runs his own blog as well, and responds to reader's requests with wit and humour. Blogging gives these writers control over their own Internet presence, access to existing or potential audiences, and is just a fun way to try out ideas and modes of writing. Perhaps more important than merely side-stepping the publishing machine, blogs put a writer directly in touch with an audience, much in the way that an old-style public reading can. It fulfills some of the aspects of a promotional tour, allows a new writer to hone her craft as workshops do, and allows for experiments that can later be worked out for formal publication.

Jason Nolan, PhD (jasonnolan.net), is Scholar in Residence with the Knowledge Media Design Institute of the University of Toronto. He teaches graduate courses in English, Technology and Education. He is presently co-editor of The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments for Kluwer in The Netherlands.

He has about 5000 web pages in English and Japanese, and as been online since the late 1980s. He moonlights as editor-at-large for E2K, and co-poetry editor for TheHarrow (www.theharrow.com), and is collaborating on a vampire novel. On the horizion is an annotated edition of Bram Stoker's notes for Dracula in collaboration with leading vampire scholar Elizabeth Miller.