Planet blog.Several dog-years ago, a 17-year-old version of me made daily entries in a notebook I titled "Journal of the Plague Year Journal of the Plague Year Defoe’s famous account of bubonic plague in England in 1665. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 529] See : Disease (With Apologies to Mr. Defoe)." The journal captured my free-flowing observations and anxieties about--and the occasional insight into--my friends' and my teenage not-so-wild life. If I reread Verb 1. reread - read anew; read again; "He re-read her letters to him" read - interpret something that is written or printed; "read the advertisement"; "Have you read Salman Rushdie?" that journal today, I'd smile and cringe. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Substance (or lack thereof) aside, my spiral-bound journal and handwritten hand·write tr.v. hand·wrote , hand·writ·ten , hand·writ·ing, hand·writes To write by hand. [Back-formation from handwritten.] Adj. 1. entries would surely be viewed by today's teen journal writer as quaint. And at least a segment of grown-up grown-up adj. 1. Of, characteristic of, or intended for adults: grown-up movies; a grown-up discussion. 2. journal keepers, who do their best work online, might think the same. The virtual world is filled with Web logs, or blogs, which trace their origins to the humble journal. For $39.95 or even less anyone can create his or her own, good-looking, feature-robust (think comments, links, etc.) online journal. Compared to podcasting and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) A syndication format that was developed by Netscape in 1999 and became very popular for aggregating updates to blogs and the news sites. RSS has also stood for "Rich Site Summary" and "RDF Site Summary. (real simple syndication), blogs are hardly the newest tech-powered tools on the block. After all, Web logs were around in the distant '90s. On the other hand, as mainstream communication tools, they're still finding their place. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a December 2004 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, only 3 percent of Americans read blogs daily. Meanwhile, 51 percent get news from television and 44 percent from newspapers. But here's something interesting, and not surprising: Blog readers are younger than the general population; one out of four blog readers is in the 18-29 age bracket (think up-and-coming members). Magazines like Wired use blogs, Slate.com features "Today's Blogs: The Latest Chatter in Cyberspace," and some associations are employing blogs for targeted purposes. That's why we asked cover guy Kevin "Born to Blog" Holland to write about his association's use of the tool. The story starts on page 22. (P.S. No, the tattoo isn't real. We thank our colleague Dan Austell Ill for creating it.) KEITH C. SKILLMAN, CAE (1) (Computer-Aided Engineering) Software that analyzes designs which have been created in the computer or that have been created elsewhere and entered into the computer. Keith C Skillman Editor in Chief kskillman@asaenet.org |
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