Browse Books

Reviewer: George R. Mayforth

This is a how-to guide for anyone wishing to publish on the Internet. The book describes weblogs, Web-based diaries or journals, and the various products and services that have been created over the past few years to facilitate maintaining them. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 introduces weblogs, also called "blogs," defining the term and describing how they are used. Part 2 discusses the components of a weblog, and describes tools and services that are available for maintaining one. Part 3 covers advanced blogging, and is oriented toward creating a successful weblog. Also covered here are the possible uses of weblogs in a business environment. Each part is broken into several chapters. Each chapter concludes with an exercise, to help reinforce the material, and references. The book is supplemented with a Web site, http://www.blogroots.com. This site provides news, and additional information about tools and services. The latter is useful, given the rapid evolution of Internet-related products. Part 1 discusses the what and why of weblogs, such as what various people do with their weblogs, and the ways in which weblogs have been used. The text goes into areas such as online identity and how to manage it, weblog communities, and weblog genres. Part 2 addresses the mechanics of weblogs. It first covers the basics of Web pages, such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), links, and Internet protocols. Next is a description of the components of a weblog itself, for example, what elements an entry should contain, how HTML can be used in a posting, and so on. Since most weblog authors are likely to use one of the existing weblog hosting services, several of these are reviewed here. The reviews are quite good, including comments on the service's user experience, performance, security, features, and so on. Part 2 concludes with a much more technical description of the internals of a weblog service, including a detailed discussion of a content management system, and an exercise to create one. Part 3 covers style and marketing, plus a description of how weblogs can be used in a business setting. Here, one finds ways to connect with one's audience, such as through a comment system, a guest book, or a mailing list. Also discussed are techniques for publicity, such as how to integrate one's content with search engines, and syndication, which is a process and protocol for reaching a wider audience by providing a way for other Web sites to discover and find information about one's weblog. The chapter on business uses relates weblogs to more formal knowledge management systems, and discusses the collaborative benefits that weblogs can achieve. This book is written for Internet novices, assuming no prior knowledge of Internet protocols. The writing is clear and easy to read, and provides detailed how-to information for getting a weblog up and running. The reviews of weblog services provide useful information on the capabilities and other aspects of each service. The one weak spot in the book is the emphasis on content management systems, and the exercise in chapter 6 to create one. Such a system is quite a bit more complex than represented. Creating and, especially, maintaining one is not likely to be the straightforward process outlined by the exercise. Other than this relatively minor point, the book achieves its objective, describing how to publish online with weblogs. Online Computing Reviews Service

Reviewer: Mary-Lynn Bragg

In the last few months, Web logging, or "blogging," has become such a popular method of information sharing that even the reporters from the BBC blogged reports from Iraq during the war (www.bbc.co.uk/reporters). This book, written last year as blogging started to gain mainstream notice, provides an overview of the entire genre, from the ongoing arguments over the term "blog" and what defines one, to available software for setting up your own blog, to the politics of online identity and publicity. The authors are closely affiliated with Blogger, one of the major blogging software and hosting services, and as such, the book often demonstrates their bias. Coverage of Blogger is somewhat more detailed and refined than coverage of other blogging software, particularly in the section on the history of blogging, and in the basic introduction on how to set up an account. Screenshots of Blogger are often used. Not until chapter 5, where you are shown a comparison between Blogger and three other major blogging software options (Radio UserLand, LiveJournal and Moveable Type), is the fact that the book isn't just addressing blogging in the Blogger context really addressed. Three sections make up the book, with a number of chapters in each. The second section, "Blog Elements," is the most technical of the three. It provides a good explanation of the parts of a blog, how they are structured in both the back and front ends, and includes the chapter noted above that compares some of the most common blog software. This is supplemented in the appendices with some simple Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) instructions, links to other blog tools not previously covered in chapter 5, and a good glossary. Structured somewhat like a textbook, each chapter ends with a summary of the chapter's content, and an exercise to perform as you go through and set up your first blog. The other two sections, "What is a Blog" and "Advanced Blogging," are more focused on the culture of blogging, helping the user to explore some of the more objective questions of online identity, feedback systems, and publicity. They also address the issues around using a collaborative blog in the workplace, as an intranet-based communications tool. This type of blog has the potential to become an increasingly popular and useful new knowledge management tool for some companies. On the back cover of the book, the publisher has listed the reader level as "beginning to advanced," which I feel is overly broad. While there is something in the book for bloggers and potential bloggers of all levels, more experienced users are likely to turn to the Web itself for more up-to-date technical explanations, and to start participating as a reader in the blogs of others. There is a companion weblog to the book (www.blogroots.com), where the authors post more current links and information. Readers can read three of the chapters (the most interesting three, in my opinion) here as well. If you don't know a thing about blogging, and want to jump on the bandwagon (or, maybe, blogwagon), this book is a very reasonable place to start. Those with more online publishing savvy, even as readers and not necessarily participants, would be better served checking out the book's own weblog, and visiting the resources to which it links. Online Computing Reviews Service