Blogging: It's Even In the Dictionary Now

This page provides a basic overview of blogs and Real Simple Syndication (RSS). If you're not already familiar with these concepts, you came to the right place.

If you already understand the basics of blogging and RSS, you may want to skip this page and go directly to BlogEnhancer Help or RSS Help. These pages explain the specific tools HighBeam created to help you research topics of interest and share the results with others.

So what is a "blog", and why should I care?

"Blog" is short for "weblog", which is a kind of Web page that's easy to update with new content, ideas, thoughts and opinions. Blogs began taking off about five years ago. Today there are roughly eight million, and 30,000 new ones are created each day.

The subjects covered by blogs are as varied as the people creating them. Subjects range from politics to poltergeists, sports to spareribs, law to lyrics and technology to Tokyo.

The best way to get familiar with blogs is to check out a bunch of them and find a handful that interest you. This page shows examples of many different types of blogs. Click on a few, and you'll get a feel for what blogs are.

To find blogs on specific topics or areas of interest, there are a number of ways to search them out:
   • blo.gs
   • blo.gs
   • Blogdigger
   • Bloglines
   • Google Blog Search (beta)
   • Technorati
   • Yahoo! Directory for Blogs

For a crash course in blogs and blogging, browse around in the first two directories above. Try out some topic searches using the other links. But make sure you come back at some point – the fascination can hook you for hours on end.

As you can, blogs cover an enormous range of topics and concerns. This is one reason why so many people are reading and writing blogs. There's no barrier to entry and little or no requirement to master the underlying technology. Plus, there is no lack of interesting material out there. Which leaves two burning questions:
   1) How do you create a blog?
   2) How do you subscribe to blogs you want to keep track of on a daily basis?

How to start your own blog

The number of blogging tools is growing fast. Each one basically gives you everything you need to create and maintain your own blog. Some, like Blogger and Bloglines, are entirely Web-based.

Others, such as Moveable Type and Radio UserLand are more sophisticated desktop applications that connect with the Web. The list below offers a handful of blogging tools worth checking out:
   • Blogger
   • Bloglines
   • LiveJournal
   • Moveable Type
   • Radio UserLand
   • Squarespace
   • TypePad
   • Weblogger
   • WordPress
   • Xanga

The choice usually comes down to a tradeoff between ease of use and bells and whistles. If you're just getting started, simpler is better.

You can find many more options than the following in the Google Directory under Weblog Publishers and Weblog Hosts.

RSS in a nutshell

If you have a blog, you probably want people to read it. RSS allows readers to subscribe to your blog so they get a direct feed into their news reader (more on that in a second) every time you post something new. Similarly, if you don't have a blog but are an interested reader, you may want a way to subscribe to the blogs you like.

For bloggers, whatever tool you chose will assist you with publishing an RSS or other kind of feed so that RSS readers can pull in what you've written.

For readers, the RSS reader you choose should enable you to add any blog that publishes an RSS feed.

All this is much simpler in practice than it sounds – and practice is the way to figure it out. As with other elements of blogging described here, the best way to see how this works is to check out some RSS readers. Here's a short list of sites offering such tools:
   • Bloglines
   • Feedreader
   • Firefox Live Bookmarks
   • NewsGator
   • NewsGator NetNewsWire
   • NewsGator FeedDemon
   • News Is Free
   • RSS Bandit

HighBeam BlogEnhancer

Once you get the hang of blogging and pick tools to read and/or write blogs with, you're ready to see how HighBeam Research makes it easy to add depth and substance to your blog posts. HighBeam can also help you use RSS to track topics and publications of interest.

The following pages walk you through the details:
   • HighBeam BlogEnhancer Help
   • HighBeam RSS Help

With these tools, you have the ability to track, search and share HighBeam Research content via your blog or Web site. Even if you're not a Full Member of HighBeam, you can use BlogEnhancer to link your blog or Web site to article citations and preview text. This is better than you get in the footnotes of most professional books and journal articles.

Full Members can share full-text articles from 3,500 newspapers, magazines, books, journals and transcripts – many of which are not freely available on the Web.

Plus, with HighBeam RSS, you can easily keep on top of everything you?re interested in – from your latest research to your favorite magazine.

This new tool automatically feeds you headlines from new articles on HighBeam Research that match your search criteria. Using the Keyword Feed Generator, you can create RSS feeds based on any search terms you choose. The Publication Feed Generator updates you when new articles come in from your favorite magazines or journals.

You benefit from these tools. Plus, if you're a blogger, your readers benefit as well. Best of all, these services are free, whether or not you're a Full Member of HighBeam Research.