As online food sites become increasingly influential in the restaurant business, chefs and owners are plying bloggers with free meals to get good write-ups. Some are also posting favorable reviews about themselves on popular Web sites or becoming Internet scribes.

Among those using the tactics are some of the biggest names in the business. Terrance Brennan, co-owner and chef of New York's Artisanal Bistro and Picholine, hosted a cheese class for bloggers last year, waiving the usual $75-a-person fee. Bill Telepan, chef and co-owner of Telepan in New York, donated a $200, four-course meal to one influential blogger's online contest. And in Washington, the Park Hyatt's Blue Duck Tavern says it invited a customer back for a free Father's Day meal after she posted a negative comment on the Washington Post's Web site. (In a follow-up post, the diner wrote, "We will definitely return to Blue Duck Tavern," not mentioning that she had been invited free.)

Chefs say there's another upside to getting chummy with bloggers: advice on improving the food. In San Francisco, Chef Robbie Lewis of Bacar restaurant says he considers Ms. Gagliardi, of Tablehopper, "a friend" at this point. After hosting her at a "friends and family dinner" -- a meal to try out new dishes on close associates about a month after starting as the executive chef at the restaurant -- Mr. Lewis took her advice. He changed the way he plated a roasted baby leek dish, so it was easier for diners to get a taste of poached egg and sauce with each bite.

"I can't get feedback from other critics before publication," says Mr. Lewis. Ms. Gagliardi didn't write a subsequent review, but frequently mentions events at Bacar on her site.

It's relatively easy for restaurants to ingratiate themselves to key food bloggers. Publicists across the industry say they now include bloggers and food Web site forum hosts on their media lists, and regularly invite them to opening parties, free meals and other events.

What I was told, in a nutshell, is that the café staff has encountered a stream of would-be critics "with attitude," predisposed to take issue with or be critical of the business. Whether or not this is a correct perception, there are many more outlets (Yelp being only one) for customers and consumers to voice opinions about businesses on the Internet. And there's little most of these businesses can do about it, for better or for worse.

The staff said to me rhetorically, "If you've got a problem with something, you should tell us first rather than going online and posting." They also expressed the view that amateur reviewers, in this case from Yelp, were not making distinctions between local coffee houses and large corporate outlets like Starbucks. They were, the cafe staff argued, being "snarky" for entertainment reasons or to impress the Yelp community but not being respectful or mindful of the potential impact their reviews might have on a small businesses.

iStockphoto pioneered the concept of micropayment stock imagery and was one of the first social networks in the world to actually pay contributors for the sale of their work. It remains the world leader in micropayment stock and is now the global volume leader in all stock photography sales, whether user-generated or traditional. iStock has more than 1.8 million members and an image or video is downloaded from the site every 2.5 seconds.

"Lise is a great friend, a true artist, and has really set the bar high for the members of our community," said Bruce Livingstone, CEO of iStockphoto. "We work very hard to promote our artists, providing training, business cards, partnerships, and advertising that give all our exclusive contributors maximum worldwide exposure. I believe Lise is the first of many who will achieve this milestone, as we have just barely scratched the surface of the worldwide appetite for imagery. What may be her most astounding accomplishment is that by our calculations, she just may be the most prolific stock photographer on the planet."

iStock artists are paid instantly every time one of their images is downloaded. Exclusive photographers can make 40 percent royalties on each image sold, and 50 percent on extended license agreements. iStock promotes its collection and photographers through aggressive marketing and advertising campaigns worldwide, and has many partnerships internationally that increase channel sales potential for its artists.

In recognition of her achievement, iStock is creating an iStock Wall of Fame, with Lise the first member inducted. She'll be joined by many more of the artists she has inspired during her meteoric rise.

"I love the community aspects of iStock so much and have learned a great deal from all my friends there since 2003," said Lise Gagne. "I fell in love with iStock right away, but never would have dreamt that someday it would be my career. But things have a way of working out: I got fired from my old design agency for spending too much time on iStock, and suddenly found myself with all the time in the world to give to photography. Now I hope to hit a million downloads in half the time it took to reach 500,000."

Most self-employed bloggers take in between $2,000 and $10,000 a month from ad sales, says Henry Copeland, founder of BlogAds.com, a Web advertising concern based in Carrboro, N.C. The few that have huge audiences make significantly more, he adds. During election time, for example, a political blogger can bring in $20,000 to $30,000 a month, says Ken Layne, West Coast bureau chief for Wonkette.com, a political gossip blog owned by Gawker Media.

Self-employed bloggers set their own schedules. Writers of breaking-news blogs say 40- to 60-hour workweeks are the norm. To scoop his competitors, Mario Lavandeira, author of the celebrity-gossip blog PerezHilton.com, says he averages 19-hour workdays that start at 5:15 a.m.

CAREER PATH: Most bloggers start out using free Web sites such as WordPress.com and Blogger.com. They say it takes at least six months to build readership and clout in the blogosphere. Mr. Lavandeira advises picking an area you'll enjoy discussing for a long time because "you have to be passionate about what you're writing." A background in journalism or communications helps but usually isn't required. "I don't want to hear where candidates went to college or where else they worked," says Ryan Block, managing editor of Engadget.com, who hires most of the site's employees. "I review writing samples."

During an appearance last night on MSNBC, DeLay was asked about the mechanics of writing for his new blog. "Well, I'm not a very good writer," DeLay acknowledged. "I have the ideas, and I have somebody else put the words together." Apparently he still isn't interested in doing research on the Internet.

Still, only three percent of Europe's estimated 130 million Internet users create blogs, it said, adding that most of the bloggers were in France, Italy and Spain.

"France today is still the country that blogs the most, with nearly one million active bloggers," the study said.

The report was based on a survey of 7,377 online consumers in seven countries -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

It found that, unsurprisingly, bloggers tended to be young and first-adopters of new technology -- those for whom any IT innovation is a must-have.

After attracting 11.1 million unique visitors each month to the station's online social network, Skyblog.com, Mr. Bellanger is planning to reach for the skies in January. That is when he intends to spin off new blogs in German, Spanish and English to offer the same rich, raucous mix of the inner thoughts and videos of thousands of young bloggers.

The Internet Society of China has recommended to the government that bloggers be required to use their real names when they register blogs, state media said on Monday, in the latest attempt to regulate free-wheeling Web content.

The society, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Information Industry, said no decision had been made but that a 'real name system' was inevitable.

"A real name system will be an unavoidable choice if China wants to standardise and develop its blog industry," the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Internet Society's secretary general, Huang Chengqing, as saying.

"We suggest, in a recent report submitted to the ministry, that a real name system be implemented in China's blog industry," Huang said.

Now, I got a couple of e-mails I was checking here during the break from people who say, "Oh, no, Rush! Don't get in a war with conservative bloggers. If the media rips you guys apart, it's all over." I am not at war with conservative bloggers. I quote countless posts from many blogs on this program. I use them as resources. I'm referring to one blog post, and I don't even know who it is. This all got started when I cringed when I saw the use of the term "premortem" on a blog site called Insta-Pundit. It hurt me; it irritated me as much as when Tom Davis, congressman from Virginia, goes on Face the Nation and starts speculating to Bob Schieffer or whatever it was, and starts counting up the number of seats his party is going to lose.

No, it's not. But I'm talking about one blog, and it's not even Insta-Pundit. Whoever Insta-Pundit is, is letting somebody else reply to whatever it was I'm saying on the program, and it's a little one-page post that I responded to this morning in the first hour.

I'm going to tell you the blog postings that I regularly read in my RSS reader. I've communicated with many of the people who run them. They're fabulous people, starting with National Review Online, then Hugh Hewitt and his Townhall blog, Captain Ed, Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters. The three lawyers at Power Line. These are resources that I have added to everything else that I use for show prep which makes show prep an ongoing, never ending thing. Red State is another site.(I hope I don't forget anybody.) Little Green Footballs. I don't want to leave any out. A.J. Strata, Strata-Sphere. I don't want to leave anybody out here. The American Spectator. You here me talking about these. I'm referring to two days' worth of posts on this one site.

The team uses several scanning tools to monitor sites for OPSEC violations. The tools search for such key words as "for official use only" or "top secret," and records the number of times they are used on a site. Analysts review the results to determine which, if any, need further investigation.

For the 10 Virginia Guardsmen, the mission often becomes personal.

"I have friends over in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan," said Sgt. Yaphet Benton, a network technician in civilian life. "Once I started this mission, I saw a lot of things that can endanger a lot of Soldiers. I see a lot of bios, pictures, names and birthdates. I consider that critical. Terrorists (and persons trying to steal your identity) can use that information."

Based in Arlington, Va., AWRAC was created in 2002 to monitor official Web sites. Its mission was expanded in August 2005 by order of the Army Chief of Staff to include unofficial sites written by servicemembers.

*BLOGS,* OR WEB LOGS, POSTED TO PUBLIC WEBSITES ARE INCREASINGLY USED BY MILITARY PERSONNEL AS PERSONAL JOURNALS. COMMANDERS SHALL ENSURE SUBORDINATES ARE AWARE THAT, IN ACCORDANCE WITH DOD DIRECTIVE 5230.9, *CLEARANCE OF DOD INFORMATION FOR PUBLIC RELEASE,* AND THE JOINT ETHICS REGULATION (DOD 5500.7-R), PERSONAL BLOGS (I.E., THOSE NOT HAVING DOD SPONSORSHIP AND PURPOSE) MAY NOT BE CREATED/MAINTAINED DURING NORMAL DUTY HOURS AND MAY NOT CONTAIN INFORMATION ON MILITARY ACTIVITIES THAT IS NOT AVAILABLE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC. SUCH INFORMATION INCLUDES COMMENTS ON DAILY MILITARY ACTIVITIES AND OPERATIONS, UNIT MORALE, RESULTS OF OPERATIONS, STATUS OF EQUIPMENT, AND OTHER INFORMATION THAT MAY BE BENEFICIAL TO ADVERSARIES.

I would like to invite you to check out our web site, www.centcom.mil. It's one more resource for information and you're free to use any of it (video, audio, photos and articles) in conversations on your blog.

Why would I fly to New York for a day? Because former President Bill Clinton invited a group of progressive bloggers (who happen to be Democrats) in for a 2 hour roundtable meeting at his Harlem office. It was awesome. More later, including a list of all the bloggers there (and yes, even the TL kid was there, thrilled at the opportunity.)

The new blog directory will be designed with an eye toward helping mothers find mom bloggers through keyword searches and tags. They'll be indexed by similar interests, number of kids and region of the country. The site will also offer non-blogging mothers advice on how to start. Organizers hope to get existing bloggers to participate by bringing them traffic and offering tips on how to increase their audiences. J&J recruited a panel of "top mom bloggers" to advise the company on this initiative. "We didn't go into this as experts, for sure," Lindsay Kalaw, product director at Johnson's Baby, told ClickZ. "We've learned a lot about the blogging community. We wanted to identify moms seen as influential in this space and we asked them, 'What would you be looking for from a blog directory?'"

Murphy is launching PayPerPost.com, which will automate such hookups between advertisers and bloggers and thus codify a new frontier of product placement. Advertisers pay to post details about their "opportunity," specifying, among other things, how they want bloggers to write about, say, a new shoe, if they want photos to be included, and whether they'll pay only for positive mentions. Bloggers who abide by the rules get paid; heavily trafficked blogs may command premium rates. Those seeking to subvert PayPerPost from within can't: No pornographic or "illicit" content is accepted.

Murphy's approach used to be more ad hoc. He made invitations through e-mail via the BlogStar Network, which he started in 2004. BlogStar paid nicely -- a flat fee of $5 or $10 per post. "Easy money...go buy a burger or something," advised a BlogStar invitation from 2005 soliciting posts about cable network TNT's basketball commercials featuring HBO character Ali G. That come-on also told bloggers "we definitely appreciate more positive posts."

"You could call it a new grief ritual," said Victoria Pitts, an assistant sociology professor at City University of New York, who authored a 2004 study about breast cancer patients inspired to start personal Web sites. "These people have created a new personal narrative to their illness, which goes beyond the health protocols they might have found on WebMD. ... But whether it's helping their recovery is still speculative. It's certainly transformed it."

That transformation is being experienced by bloggers such as Jeannette Vagnozzi, a 41-year-old resident of La Verne (Los Angeles County), who writes about her breast cancer on 2hands.blogspot.com.

Vagnozzi set up her site seven days after she received her diagnosis. Initially, she had turned to the Internet in a frantic hunt for information about her ailment. Then, like many cancer bloggers, she felt frustrated by a lack of reliable medical information sites. And she was inundated by well-intentioned friends and family members inquiring about her condition. In the frenzy, Vagnozzi posted her blog to satisfy the influx of personal queries and to create an info-portal for other cancer patients.

"It gets hard to tell your story over and over again," Vagnozzi said. "It was easier for me to say to people, 'Log on, and see where I'm at.' "

For Mr. McDonald, the Web log he created, "I'm a Comedy Central Intern," was merely a way to keep his friends apprised of his activities and to practice his humor writing. For Comedy Central, it was a corporate no-no — especially after it was mentioned on Gawker.com, the gossip Web site, attracting thousands of new readers.

"Not even a newborn puppy on a pink cloud is as cute as a secret work blog!" chirped Gawker, giddily providing the link to its audience.

But Comedy Central disagreed, asking him to change the name (He did, to "I'm an Intern in New York") and to stop revealing how its brand of comedic sausage is stuffed.

"They said they figured something like this would happen eventually because blogs had become so popular," said Mr. McDonald, now 23, who kept his internship. "It caught them off guard. They didn't really like that."