About MP3 blogs

MP3 blogs are a hot topic on teen blogs and music blogs. While there are definite copyright concerns with posting MP3 music to blogs, some consider MP3 blogs a boon to music lovers because they allow greater access to a wider variety of music types. Popular MP3 blogs include Said the Gramophone, Fluxblog, Tofu Hut, Soul Sides, Music for Robots, The Mystical Beast, and The Catbird Seat.

About blog templates

A blog template, or blog skin, is a blogging tool that provides the basic structure for a blog. Blog templates are fast, convenient, easy-to-use alternatives that allow people without technical and design skills to create attractive, functional blogs in little or no time. Reliable blog host services include access to blog templates as part of even their basic services. Your access to the host's full range of templates may be limited if you have free hosting. However, if you choose fee-based hosting, you should have full access to the complete range of templates. Before you decide on a host, check out the list of included features to see whether and what templates are available to bloggers.

Submitting your blog to a blog directory

To be included in a blog directory, also known as a blog index, a blog author submits his or her blog for consideration to the directory administrator or owner. The directory owner decides whether or not to include the blog in the directory. Blogwise.com is a popular blog directory that provides a blog index for nearly 38,000 blogs with another 1,700-plus blogs waiting to be approved. Another popular blog directory is Bloglines.com. Bloglines.com is an integrated service for searching, subscribing, publishing, and sharing Web content, including blogs. Both have information on their sites on how to submit a blog for inclusion in the directory.

Starting a personal blog

If you own a computer or have access to a computer (at your local library, for example) and have an Internet connection, then you pretty much know everything you need to know to start a personal blog. There are a ton of blog hosting services today, and each of them provides easy registration, templates, and online support to guide you through the process of setting up a personal blog. One of the most popular blog hosts is LiveJournal.com. LiveJournal offers users a simple-to-use, customizable blogging tool. Registration at the basic level is free, but you can upgrade for a fee and gain access to a wider selection of tools and features.

About news blogs

News blogs come in every stripe and color imaginable. On the surface, a news blog is just what it sounds like: a blog that disseminates news. Where it gets tricky is that the "news" being disseminated can be on traditional news topics such as current events, science, and technology, for example. Or the "news" can be about the "dumbest, coolest, craziest" stuff on the Internet as the 13gb.com news blog proclaims. Or the news can be about the goings on at a particular company. For a list of more than 500 news blogs, visit BlogCatalog.com.

Using a blog directory

A blog directory is a list of blogs organized into a format that allows users to quickly find the information (in this case, a blog) they are looking for. In general, a blog directory, also known as a blog index, is organized alphabetically by keyword. However, a blog directory can be organized or categorized by any means that will make the blog list easier for the user to search. For example, many travel blog directories are organized by country. Blogwise.com is a popular blog directory that provides a blog index for nearly 38,000 blogs with another 1,700-plus blogs waiting to be approved.

Deciding between free blog or fee-based blog hosting

Picking a blog host is an important first step in starting your own blog. There are many free blog hosting services, most of which also offer premium blog hosting for a fee. The fee-based hosting almost always includes access to more features and offers greater flexibility in both blog design and content management. Whether you should choose free blog hosting or fee-based blog hosting depends mainly on your experience. If this is your first blog and you have little or no technological experience, trying a free blog host service makes sense for you. You can get your feet wet and decide if you like authoring a blog before you commit any money to it. On the other hand, if you're a veteran blogger with lots of experience fiddling with software, a fee-based hosting program that offers richer tools is the way for you to go.

About political blogs

A political blog is a blog that focuses on political matters, including local, state, federal, and international politics. Some political blogs express the point of view of one person, while others are authored by multiple people. Political blogs gained legitimacy in the 2004 U.S. presidential election as bloggers were quick to hold the mainstream media's feet to the fire when reporting election news. In particular, bloggers broke the CBS forged memo story that resulted in several CBS executives being fired and Dan Rather's resignation. For a discussion on the impact of political blogs on the media, read "Conference Studies Blogs' Impact on News" at the ABC News Web site.

About business blogs

A business blog is a company's official blog. Becoming more common among both small and large businesses, more and more companies have dedicated marketing staff to maintain the company marketing blog. An example of a business that has embraced blogging for business as a way to build brand loyalty and solicit valuable customer feedback on its products is Stoneyfield Farm, a New England-based company organic dairy products company. Stoneyfield Farm maintains five different blogs targeted to the company's various niche market consumers. You can read the Stoneyfield Farm blogs by visiting the company's Web site. Blogging for business is also used in business-to-business marketing, and a respected blog on the topic is B2Blog.com's blog, a B2B and industrial marketing blog.

Starting a news blog

In the strictest sense of the word any can--and many people do--start a news blog. Some of them are great, and some of them are bunk. Lots of people in North America have been waiting for the MSN blog service known as MSN Spaces to launch. The beta version of MSN Space now available to North American users. MSN blogging using Spaces allows users to set up blogs, post photos, keep favorites lists, get feedback from other bloggers, and link to other MSN Spaces blogs. This blog service can be used to set up blogs of any type, including news blogs. News blogs set up by individuals that include content on current events is considered a form of citizen journalism. One example of such a blog are the many blogs set up by Iraqi citizens since the onset of conflicts in that region. Many people in the areas affected by the recent Indian Ocean tsunami also set up news blogs to share stories, pictures, and even video of the devastation there.

About video blogs

Video blogs, sometimes referred to as vlogs, are gaining in popularity. Video blogging has been the topic of several articles in major publications, including Forbes Magazine, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. Video blogging entails many of the same elements as regular blogs, but the add a video component. Videoblogging.info offers a lot of information on video blogging for everyone from the beginner to the pro.

About photo blogs

A photo blog, more than being just a gallery of pictures, allows its author to share his or her thoughts and invites feedback from other bloggers on the photography process and the composition of a particular picture. According to Photoblogs.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the use of photo blogs, in order for a site to be considered a photo blog, it must be hosted on the Web, it must have photos, and it must be a chronological log of some sort. Photo blogs, also known as picture blogs, are often confused with galleries, which are simply a collection of images often organized into online photo albums. For more information on what photo blogs are, visit Photoblogs.org.

About travel blogs

A travel blog is a blog that is focused on travel, be it a 20-something's European road trip or a travel blog discussing steals, deals, and out-of-this-world places to visit. For individuals, if you are on the road and have access to the Internet, you can update your travel blog with text and pictures about your adventures that family and friends can follow from home. If you are planning a trip yourself and you want to learn more about a destination, you can read travel blogs by people who've already visited that location at Bootsnall.com. If you're looking for tips and deals on just about anything else travel-related, again you can visit Bootsnall.com or Fodors.com. Each offer the usual tools you'd expect to find on a travel related site. Bootsnall.com has links to travel blogs from all over the world. Fodor's has its own blog where community members post helpful, interesting information on all travel-related topics.