Introduction

A blog may be defined as "a regularly updated website featuring articles arranged in reverse chronological order." This means that the most recently added article appears first on your blog's main page, followed by the second-most-recent article, and so on. As new articles are added to the page, older articles are pushed farther down the page.

Since using a text editor to manually compose the HTML for a blog is time consuming, blogging tools like this one simplify the process of managing a blog so you can concentrate on your blog's content.

There are many ways to use a blog:

Blogs make it easy to add, edit, and organize information on your web pages, whether it's text, photographs, or files.

Blogs have features that make it easy to upload, organize, and show your photos. You place your photos in virtual photo albums and annotate them with short captions and longer descriptions. Blogs also have features for resizing and rotating photos, so that you can get the photos from your camera to your web pages without using a photo-editing program. You can even use your camera-equipped, email-enabled mobile phone or PDA to post pictures directly to your blog.

You can use a blog as a company-wide newsletter for general news and announcements. You can use it as a place to store revisions of a document, or even have your co-workers collaborate on the document. It's also a good tool for keeping track of projects: you can post status reports, assignments, or data pertinent to your projects. Your co-workers can be notified by email whenever you update your blog. If you're fond of buzzwords, think of a blog as a knowledge-management tool.

"Freedom of speech," the maxim goes, "is only for those who have one." A blog can be your own personal publishing service that makes it easy for your to take whatever you want to say to the world and place it on the web. Feel like jumping for joy or ranting? Do have your own commentary about the politics of the day or the service at the restaurant down the street? Are you an aficionado of books, movies, or music with an opinion you'd like to share? See any interesting web pages that you'd like to point out to the rest of us? Whether you're a "thinker" or a "linker", a blog is the tool for you.

If you've got friends and family scattered across the four corners of the world, you can use a blog to publish your "what's happening with me" page, complete with your words and pictures. You can set up your blog so that your friends and family are notified by email every time you make a new blog entry or post a new photo.

You can use a blog to keep track of the evolution of an idea or project, whether it's a paper or book you are writing, an assignment for school or work, or even your plans for taking over the world. A blog's web-based nature means that you can access your ideas anywhere, and its post-by-email feature means that you can brainstorm anywhere with your email-enabled handheld device.

Some of the best stories out there are personal stories, and the growing popularity of blogs will attest to that. Blogs make it easy to enter, organize, and publish your stories, and allow you to control how public your journal entries are — you can keep them to yourself, share them with your best friend, your circle of friends, or the whole world.