Blog, short for web-log, is not a recent thing. People have been logging what they're doing, from personal diaries to project reports, since the beginning of the web. What is new (relatively) is the availability of commercial and Open Source products that make it easy for a non-technical user to create and maintain one.

Quite a sub-culture has sprung up, with an estimated one million users, and sites devoted to tracking changes to blogs, such as http://daypop.com or http://www.technorati.com. Blogging software is available from many sources. Check here or use your favorite web search engine.

Many blogs participate in RSS (Really Simple Syndication) which is an ad-doc set of standards (hint: 0.91, 0.92 and 2.0 are from http://scripting.com, 1.0 is a separate, incompatible branch) that are based on SOAP and XML-RPC interfaces and whose messages are in XML format. "News Aggregators" are also available which allow you to subscribe to the news sources of your choice and browse the headlines, which are gathered in the background.

Potential for a VFP solution in this marketplace, a powerhouse of XML manipulation and powerful internet client, are just waiting on an enterprising developer to find a niche in need.

Several companies manufacture commercial products for blog creation, maintenance or hosting. Leading manufacturers include:

• http://www.blogger.com - recently bought by Google
• http://radio.userland.com
• http://www.moveabletype.org

Books:

Essential Blogging (O'Reilly) by Shelley Powers, Cory Doctorow, J. Scott Johnson, Mena G. Trott, Benjamin Trott, Rael Dornfest, ISBN 0596003889

The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog by Rebecca Blood, ISBN 073820756X

We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs by Paul Bausch, Matthew Haughey, Meg Hourihan, ISBN 0764549626

-- Ted Roche (blog at http://radio.weblogs.com/0117767)

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