It?s all about the continuing evolution of consumer power. What started out as backyard discussions over clotheslines, where our mothers would discuss their opinions about retailers and products, evolved into 24 hour toll-free consumer hotlines, full-time consumer affairs staffs, letters to the editor and, at times, even protests and boycotts. Consumers want to be heard. They want to actively communicate their thoughts and preferences; as well as expose dishonest practices, false claims and bad service.

Both Blogcn and Bokee have filtering systems that prevent users from writing about taboo topics. A Blogcn user, for instance, who tries to write "Falun Gong" will find the term converted to gibberish on screen. If a forbidden phrase makes it past the filter, the company might get a call from the police demanding that the offending post be removed. "We can immediately fix it," says Hu, who adds that he has gotten only "four or five" such calls in the past two years. It's not just Chinese companies that cooperate with the censors. A joint venture operated in China by Microsoft Corp.'s MSN blocks words such as "democracy" in the subject lines of blogs on its site. Microsoft says it simply is complying with Chinese laws and norms. And China's censors can intercept traffic from overseas services such as the one that hosts Muzi Mei's blog. For instance, San Francisco-based Six Apart, which is home to some Chinese-language blogs, has been blocked from the mainland twice. "China would be an opportunity for us if a Western company could go in and have a dialogue, but right now that's not the case," says Anil Dash, a Six Apart vice-president.

• Road Trips: Fun vacation moments.
• Office Humor: Pranks, skits, and other office hijinks.
• Bloopers: DOH moments.
• Pets: Yahoo wants to see what Fluffy can do.
• I Can't Believe It!: A miscellaneous category -- it doesn't fit into any of the above categories.

1. Videos accepted between July 27 and August 17.
2. Semi-finalists announced on August 30
3. Fans and friends cast their votes August 30-September 12.
4. Grand prize winner selected and announced by celebrity judges approximately September 19.

My daughter discovered online journals, or "blogs," when she was 16. After a lot of negotiating, she was allowed to start her blog on www.xanga.com. Her "xanga" had to be accessible by me. She couldn't post her real name, photos of herself, or her location, and I encouraged her to warn her friends not to either. But in keeping an eye on her xanga, I also had access to her friends' xangas. Surprise - this opened me up to a whole new world of insight into today's teenager. These kids can write.

To keep a blog going, you have to have the discipline to write daily. This puts today's young bloggers on the fast track to future Pulitzers. To keep your friends coming back, you have to be interesting, funny, intelligent, relevant. These kids are all that and more. Once I got past the immature spelling and punctuation (along with usual teen slang and vulgarity), I was treated to some of the best poetry I've ever read. All of their blogs together are a veritable anthropological study of high school life. One senior I know has, in four years, transformed from what seemed like functional illiteracy - incomplete sentences, poor spelling - into a blossoming philosopher headed for a major university.

So, we have been working really hard on performance and scalability improvements for the service. Just as the size of the blogosphere has been growing by leaps and bounds, and our traffic growth has been growing even faster. We just had another 40%+ growth in traffic this month - which makes this month the fourth month in a row of these kinds of traffic jumps. Basically, that means that we are now serving more traffic in a week than we did in a month just 4 months ago. So, we've been racking and stacking servers - over 200 now in our data center, and more coming each week, and we've been fixing bugs and making performance enhancements on the web site as well. Our median time from post to index is now under 5 minutes. That means that on average, we index your blog posts in under 5 minutes from when you post them to the web. All you have to do is make sure that your blog software sends us a ping.

Newspapers have become strangely enamored with Web logs, a.k.a. blogs, recently adopting an "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality. Examples range from inkink-stained curmudgeons blogging away at the TV Critics Assn.'s semiannual gathering in Beverly Hills to the Los Angeles Times' revamped, Internet-oriented Sunday op-ed section. No one, in fact, is immune from high-tech pandering, including National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" program, which solicited emails last week containing listeners' TV series suggestions in a misguided attempt to seem cool.

9:17: Interesting Wall Street Journal editorial. I had no idea that President Bush had cured polio.

9:21: They're only up to Wednesday night? What is this, a congressional filibuster?

9:47: Mental note: Investigate Karl Rove's role in determining the "Dancing With the Stars" winner. Geez, get a life, people.

10:34: Tom Cruise and I are the same age. I should call my sister and thank her for never volunteering to handle my publicity.

If the press tour is as wretched as Lowry's stream-of-consciousness internal brain babble makes it out to be at the bottom of the column, why in heaven's name does he and the rest of the critic sheep even bother going and "reporting" on it? Break away from the wool-wearers and find something the audience may really want to read about -- in a blog or in a story. Garbage in. Garbage out.

Teens now use a broader array of online content and services. E-mail is still the number one activity at 89 percent, though it slipped marginally from the 92 percent reported in 2000. Visits to entertainment Web sites (TV, music, sport and movies) were noted by 84 percent of teens (up from 83 percent in 2000). The likelihood of teens going online to play games jumped to 81 percent, up from only 66 percent in 2000. Checking online news (76 percent), purchasing online (43 percent) and getting health information (31 percent) were also up.

In comparison with adults, teen play more online games, IM more, and have a higher propensity to go online to get news on current events.

Of course, most blogs are mind-numbingly dull. You need to dig deep to find the gems and that is exactly what Best of The Web has done for you. We identify 100 of the best blogs in 20 categories ranging from Art and Literary blogs, to Small Business, Marketing, Shopping and Music blogs.

Think of gravatar.com as a dictionary that associates email addresses and avatar images. When you leave a comment on a weblog and provide your email address, the weblog can use your email address to look up your avatar. Since the dictionary is available to anyone, a single avatar image can represent you across many different weblogs.

In the first two weeks of July 2005 alone, Websense Security Labs has discovered more than 500 incidents of free web hosting sites that were created to spread keyloggers, Trojan horse downloaders, Trojan horse droppers, and other harmful spyware and malware. Earlier this year, Websense reported that free blogging accounts were being used to harbor malcode-this trend is now expanding to any form of free web hosting site. The recently uncovered sites include those available for hosting online journals, photo albums, greeting cards, music, sports 'fan' pages and online scrapbooks, among many other popular purposes.

"The growth of this trend is alarming. July has seen a major boom?in the first two weeks alone we found more instances than in May and June combined," said Dan Hubbard, senior director of security and technology research for Websense. "Some of the sites may be created with automated shared hacking software and free online tools, while others are built to appear more legitimate. For example, one of the sites found by the Labs included music that accompanied a greeting-card message which runs while your computer is being infected with spyware."

Paul Rosenfeld, the general manager of QuickBooks Online Edition, couldn't agree more.

"The customer is already talking about the corporation and its products online. Just Google the name of your product plus 'sucks' and you'll see what I mean," Rosenberg said. "You can be a part of the conversation or you can ignore it.

"We started a blog in July 2004. We believed a more authentic and uncontrived marketing message with customers would get more of their confidence," he said.

David Sifry, Technorati's chief executive officer, said three-quarters of the 9,000 corporate blogs Technorati has tracked are high-tech companies and most of the rest are related to high-tech.

"Of the non-tech blogs, they are mostly public-relations companies, marketing consultancies and real estate," he said.

The 24-year-old Barnard grad's online journal was a must-read with Vogue and Glamour peons and higher-ups. Other media-centric blogs like Gawker and Media Bistro pondered her identity.

But when news of her true self was unmasked in a mass e-mail this week - and spread faster than an Est?e Lauder goody bag around a Cond? Nast office - Haobsh saw the downside of fame.

Her bosses at Ladies' Home Journal "thought it displayed a lack of respect for the industry and a lack of professionalism," a contrite Haobsh said yesterday.

"I understand that," she said.

It would be an understatement to say that this was the weirdest week of my life. On Tuesday morning, I had a job I loved, a nice salary and was living in blissful oblivion. Flash forward to today, and I've given interviews to the New York Post, Fox 5 News and CNN (are you kidding me??), have a very, very big interview set for tomorrow (until it actually happens, my lips are zipped), have meetings this coming week with multiple book agents and-oh, yeah, that-am quickly approaching the poverty mark. 24/7 ramen: can't wait!

But while Leffelman's playinthecity.blogs.com doesn't mention it, the 23-year-old waitress and aspiring journalist is getting a little help from Milwaukee's tourism office: a year's worth of high-speed Internet access, $1,700 in computer and camera equipment and free access to many of the outdoor diversions she'll be describing in her twice-weekly musings.

Last month, Pennsylvania's tourism site, visitpa.com, launched six blogs written by "real people" taking road trips across the state. Accompanied by digital photos and videos, the diaries cover such diverse pursuits as antique shopping, mountain biking and attending a NASCAR event. The authors - a family of four, a history buff, and a Harley-Davidson rider among them - receive $1,000 for each of three journeys they'll write about this summer.

Minneapolis' visitor and convention bureau, meanwhile, is soliciting applications for three culturally diverse "online tour guides" - a heterosexual couple, a family with children, and a gay male couple or group of gay male friends - who will post journal entries on the bureau's Web sites at least once a week for six months. The bloggers' payback: a "package of fun" that includes hotel rooms, event tickets and gift certificates.

And what of blogs?

Kenealy tosses out another analogy: "Every blogger is a rock band without a record contract."

I guess he means weblogs will continue to be free.

We want to hear about your "click moment" ? the very first step you to took to stand up for your digital rights -- whether it was blogging about an issue you care about, participating in a demonstration, writing your representatives, or getting involved with EFF. As a thank you, we've enlisted an independent panel of judges to choose from among your posts for "Most Inspirational," "Most Humorous," and "Best Overall." At the end of the Blog-a-thon, we'll announce the names of the three bloggers with the best posts on our website and in our weekly newsletter, EFFector. We'll also publish the three best posts on our site and send the authors a blogging "kit" as an extra thank you: an EFF bloggers' rights T-shirt, special EFF-branded blogger pajama pants, a pound of coffee, and a pair of fuzzy slippers.

The airplane manufacturer invited about 30 Web loggers plus some real, accredited, card-carrying journalists to try its Connexion on-board Internet service.

As Microsoft Geek Blogger Robert Scoble reported, "We were the first in the world to experience a new service: four channels of live TV. Hey, that's cool."

Chris Pirillo, organizer of the Gnomedex technology shows, wrote, "I've never been on a better flight. The novelty of wireless connectivity wore off quickly, but its continued application is much more noteworthy." Pirillo's got lots of links to blogs and video coverage of the trip between Seattle and Walla Walla, including some terrific footage of Mt. Ranier.

The variation among these feeds is significant. The most popular is Slashdot, with 37,400 active subscribers. Meanwhile, sites with only 1 current subscriber include Haag's Pop Podium and Justin's Guide to Everything, where the only subscriber is me. I have no idea who Justin is but thought he would appreciate the audience. (Maybe people will start a new game called Bloglineswhacking to find feeds with only one subscriber?)

It's also interesting to note that these feeds are very prolific and getting more so everyday: In June we surpassed 500 million articles in the Bloglines feed index, and in the next few days we'll cross the 600 million mark. We're adding more than 2 million new articles every day. There's no question that the blogosphere and other sources of feed content are the fastest growing segment of new content on the web.

The fever may be most intense at Jones' free site, created after his first bubble blog crashed in May from trying to handle its 20,000 daily hits. His latest site doesn't run advertising and therefore he derives no revenue from it.

A self-described "economic activist," Jones, 41, sees his mission as chronicling a seminal financial event, something future scholars can turn to just as historians today would read an anthology of letters written by Dutch tulip traders in the 1630s.

"In 100 years, economists may be studying the comments of this blog because this was a real-time skeptics' log in the middle of a financial mania," said Jones, who rents a house with his wife in Sedona, Ariz., and doesn't own any real estate.

Jones' fervor stems largely from his status as a casualty of the dot-com meltdown, when he was the controller at an Austin, Texas, Internet firm that he declined to name. He resigned in 1999 before the company went bankrupt, after he spent a stressful final year trying to convince his entrepreneur bosses that "companies really do need to make money."

The housing market today "is just like the tech bubble," said Jones, who holds economics and business degrees from Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. "That's why it's a mania ? because people have forgotten the fundamentals."

So more recently, I've gone back to posting blog entries, life tidbits and the like. I'm also trying to focus a lot on books that I've read or am reading and mommy stuff. I don't feel comfortable blogging about how my current manuscript is going or how I'm developing a plot or a character; that simply doesn't work for me. Mundane life stuff? Sure. That I can handle! I'm still not sure if I'm contributing, but considering the length and breadth of cyberspace, I don't suppose it matters so much. Plus, I do like the feedback I get from folks who visit the blog. That's always lots of fun. (I also realized that I'd like to have a blog without the related work, and I created one at www.SlayYourDemons.com dedicated to guest bloggers coming in to gripe about their personal demons. That one's a lot of fun, too! And I participate in a group blog called Out of the Blogosphere. Also fun because there's no pressure to be the sole focus of the blogging attention!)

They found all sorts of interesting stuff - Charlie's main takeaway was that blog readers are remarkably similar in profile to early internet users... But here was the shocker for me...

They asked those individuals whom they had observed visiting blog sites the same question as I listed above, and 13% answered (e)!!! 13% of the people trafficking blog sites had never heard of blogs. Even more astounding, a full 50% of the individuals answered c) or d)!

That means that almost 2/3 of blog readers don't realize they are reading a blog. It is a fairly common theory amongst folks analyzing the blogosphere that blog readership is underreported in surveys - but Charlie's team found a way to quantify that with staggering results.

Everyone from Disney to Newsweek to National Public Radio is now offering podcasts, and Apple Computer, Inc. last month made it a whole lot easier to find them and download them to iPods.

While profits remain elusive, there's a bigger prize out there the company that manages to become the go-to Web site for podcasts could gain enough leverage to strike favorable deals with proven content providers, and generate cash by charging for subscriptions and advertising.

She is eager for such a deal. Without one, KCRW is prevented from recording podcasts for shows that include music. That means fans of the popular "Morning Becomes Eclectic" must wait until music rights are obtained.

"The explosion for podcasting hasn't happened yet," said Seymour. "It takes off the second that someone gets the music rights."

Edited by two young women, Angela, 23, and Aredhel, 18, the site lists tons of amazing blogs -- many of them written by teens from all over the world (Australia, Singapore, Ireland, etc.). I haven't finished going through them all yet, but what is really cool about Glitter is that they are constantly making sure the sites they list are still live and updating. Since many teen blogs come and go, this is really invaluable.

Does Scoble call up people before posting something about them? No, of course not -- he doesn't have the time. Yet, when wearing my news journalist hat, I'm expected to do exactly that.

Ultimately, most blogging is about what's being said in the rest of the blogosphere. It's an accurate representation of what people are talking about, which is not the same thing as being an accurate representation of reality. One of the best things that I learned doing seven years of philosophy was a simple one: Truth is not consensual. Simply because 30,000 say that Apple is preparing to launch a phone company doesn't make it true. It just means that 29,999 bloggers saw it on Scoble's blog.

Many of the vlogs have a home-grown, experimental feel. People capture moments in their everyday lives. Some post cooking lessons, short films or videos of local festivals or family events like graduations. One of the best-known video blogs is Rocketboom, which puts together an irreverent daily news program.

Politicians are also wading in the video-blogging waters. North Carolina Sen. John Edwards is receiving and responding to questions using video. Boston City Councilor John Tobin has a video blog as well.

Clint Sharp, a vlogger who publishes a weekly tech show, said "the potential for everyone to self-publish has the ability to revolutionize the world" by sharing video across cultures and countries.

No participant understood the mechanisms associated with RSS/subscribing to a blog -- not even the minority familiar with the term "RSS."

Few participants even recognized that they were on an actual blog -- and once they did, had a very different reaction to the information presented.

A minority of participants understood how to navigate within the blog itself -- with most being confused by areas for recent posts, categories, trackbacks and even the comments and archives functions.

Catalyst's conclusions: broad comprehension is fairly far away ? and better design and terminology are essential. All those tested were optimistic about blogs following the test, with many expressing interest or enthusiasm for what had been a new experience. However, few felt that the presentation of functionality and navigation was intuitive, and many wondered why more effort had not been put into education.

Whoever figures out how to communicate these terms, clearly and intuitively, to the hundreds of millions of Websurfers who don't blog stands to make a mint.

If you're going to blog, become an expert on something. This is especially important for blogging in the business world. Think content, not rambling comment. Years ago I wrote an article mocking bloggers who post pictures of their dogs and cats. I was inundated with emails from outraged blogging pet owners. I stand on my conviction. Blogs are for sharing information, not pointless doggerel (or catteral).

Don't make your blog look boring. There's nothing more disturbing than a well-written blog that looks like a newsletter template from Microsoft Publisher. You know exactly what I mean?thin and unreadable type, negligible spacing between lines, justified paragraphs and very little graphic relief.

A blog should be welcoming to read. Embrace white space. Be generous with line spacing and use bigger fonts. Well-written subheads almost guarantee readership. Pictures that illustrate your point are also fantastic. Go easy on the clip art and stock photos, though. A blog is about originality and sizzling hot information in written and graphic form.

Blogging software developed by Seattle e-mail technology developer What Counts will, in effect, make bloggers out of store personnel who use the tool to post local events and schedules. While that content will reflect the personality of REI as a company to the extent that it supports company values and mission, it's not, at this point, intended as an extended platform for the personal attitudes of the individual blogger.

"We're using blogging technology, but it really will not be presented as a blog," says Reynolds. �We are not educating the 50 or so users that they are going to be blogging. We're simply creating a new user interface that makes it incredibly simple to post content."

Some also speculate that more scandalous blog entries -- especially those about partying and dating exploits -- will have ramifications down the road.

"I would bet that in the 2016 election, somebody's Facebook entry will come back to bite them," Steve Jones, head of the communications department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says, referring to thefacebook.com, a networking site for college students and alumni that is something of a cross between a yearbook and a blog.

More traditional blog sites -- which allow easy creation of a Web site with text, photos and often music -- include Xanga, LiveJournal and MySpace. And they've gotten more popular in recent years, especially among the younger set.

Caitlin Hoistion, a 15-year-old in Neptune, N.J., says she knows people who go as far as posting their cell phone numbers on their blogs -- something she doesn't do. She also often shows her postings to her mom, which has helped her mom give her some space and privacy online.

"That's not to say if I thought something dangerous was going on, I wouldn't ever spy on her," says her mother, Melissa Hoistion. "But she has given me no need to do so."

Take, as a case study, the most instantly iconic photo to emerge from the bombings: a hazy picture of a man in a crowded, eerily lit subway tunnel, holding a handkerchief to his mouth. That picture was taken on a camera phone by Adam Stacey, by no means a professional photographer, who happened to be on the subway train that was hit in a tunnel outside the Kings Cross tube station. Stacey instantly beamed the image to his friend Alfie Dennen, who runs moblog.co.uk. Dennen published the snapshot with a Creative Commons license permitting anybody to reprint it provided Stacey received credit for the photo. From there the image was picked up by picturephoning.com and then Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is edited by its readers, followed by Sky News, the Associated Press and finally the BBC and the Guardian newspaper. It has since been everywhere.

What happened Thursday is not done happening yet, nor will it be for a very long time. But one lesson that may already be gleaned is this: it is no longer newspapers, as the old maxim goes, that write the first draft of history. Cable news may offer instant images, but it has always been the role of the written word, meaning newspapers, to capture fleeting events and distill them into historical record. But by the time the first editions of print newspapers hit newsstands Friday morning, citizen journalists had already written that first draft, and in some respects the second and third draft, online. Factoring in Wikipedia's coverage of Thursday's terror, you might even say today?s papers are finally getting around to offering history?s 2,801st draft.

"iTunes has done what possibly no one else could have accomplished, propelled podcasting into the mainstream," said Will Lewis, management consultant for Santa Monica, CA, radio station KCRW, which posts content in the Podcast directory. "Our servers have been swamped with a stratospheric increase in traffic. In fact, downloads have increased tenfold as a result of the iTunes 4.9 launch."

More importantly, Mr. Cassar said, sites must figure out how to keep customers from straying from the store to the blog without ever returning to shop. Because typical blogs feature links to articles elsewhere on the Web, they can represent a one-way ticket away from the site.

Such is the dilemma faced by executives of Ice.com, an online jeweler based in Montreal. Ice.com has created three blogs in the last six months: a celebrity jewelry site (SparkleLikeTheStars.com), a question-and-answer site (JustAskLeslie.com) and a company news site (blog.ice.com).

Shmuel Gniwisch, Ice.com's chief executive, said the company was "having an internal struggle" about whether to put links to its blogs on Ice.com itself. Currently, people reach them through search engines and links from other blogs.

"Our blog people want the links on our site, but our brand people say it'll take people off the site," Mr. Gniwisch said. "We'll probably test it and see what it does."

Mr. Greenberg said the blog allowed eHobbies to project the homespun image that sometimes eluded even small companies like his, which has only 25 employees. "It lets us pull back the curtain and show how we're a company of hobbyists who love participating in the things they're buyers for," he said. "It humanizes us."

In addition to featuring the link to the blog at the top of the eHobbies home page, the company will soon begin promoting the blog in e-mail messages to customers, and hiding coupon codes in the blog to give people incentives to visit, Mr. Greenberg said.

What's interesting is that some of these companies are actively promoting the blogs in their correspondence with customers and even hiding coupon codes in their blogs to give people an incentive to visit. These online retailers are obviously hoping that a huge blog audience will translate into additional sales, or at least, additional buzz around certain products.

There are 3 key components required to deliver world-class blog search: a deep index of blog and news feed content, the capability to find and index new content quickly, and world-class search technology that brings relevant search results to users. Bloglines is the only service that has all three elements. We have the largest documented index of blog and feed articles (well over a half billion articles). We also index more new blog and feed content than anybody else (2-3 million new articles every day). And as part of Ask Jeeves, Bloglines has access to world-class search technologies. Bring those all together, and we'll elevate the blog search game to a new level.

The gain of 2.76 million hostnames from June is the second-largest monthly increase in the history of our survey, as 2005 continues to shape up as a historic year for Internet growth. The only larger gain was a 3.3 million hostname increase in March 2003, which ended months of stagnation and kicked off 30 consecutive months of positive growth for the Web.

The sun is shining, birds are singing, and I'm sitting on the couch deleting the 62 trackback spams that have arrived since yesterday. For now, these spams are easy to spot. They're mostly about online poker and miracle drugs, and they make no attempt to look authentic. From our experience with email spammers, you can bet that two things will happen. They'll continue to rachet up the volume, and they'll fine tune their pitches to blend in with authentic trackbacks.

Battlestar Galactica executive producer David Eick will offer viewers an exclusive look behind-the-scenes of one of television's hottest new shows. Fresh three-five minute video blogs will be posted every few weeks. They will give fans never before seen insights into the production of the hit show including candid moments with the series' stars. Visitors will be able to sit in on script meetings with writers and producers and meet other members of the crew and special effects team.

When the Rev. Mark D. Roberts started his blog, he envisioned a small outreach to his community and parishioners at Irvine Presbyterian Church in Irvine, Calif.

A little more than a year later, the blog reaches far beyond that, drawing 1,500 visitors Monday through Friday and 2,000 on weekends.

"I have readers literally all over the world," says Roberts, pastor of a 750-member congregation. His review of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ has drawn more than 25,000 visitors since the film's release, and it continues to draw readers by the hundreds.

'Costs in terms of man hours' was seen as the biggest potential roadblock to starting a blog. This makes sense, its in the nature of blogs the requirement to post a lot of comments, that it requires a lot of discipline to post comments on a regular basis. It is therefore important to develop good solid content strategies before starting a blog. Conducting interviews, reading other blogs, surveying your audience and employees on a regular basis, keeping current on industry trends are all strategies for developing content. 'Legal liability' was the next most important factor, thinking about and seeking advice from colleagues or industry bloggers will help to mitigate any posts that might cause liability. Many companies are now developing corporate blogging policies based on blogger experience and legal advice. Reviewing other company blogging policies can help you to develop your own policy.