Multimedia Information Retrieval [CA437] Project
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What is this essay about?...... Weblogs are are a phenomenon that know no boundaries. Everywhere you look you'll find one in one form or another. News sites, Sports sites, Weather sites, Financial sites and the most surprising, and interesting, form of weblog ...the personal website. What are weblogs? Why is it that they are so popular and why do we read them? Where did they come from? Who invented them?. These are the topics I will be discussing in this essay. The essay is based on facts (as a result of research) and on my personal opinion. |
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Why am I writing this essay?...... I keep a weblog at http://weblog.philroche.net . I always get abuse from my mates for posting my weblog, but they read it. I know they do, as I have seen the access logs. But they still ask me, what's a weblog and why do you post one?, who would want to read a weblog that you write? (knowing full well that they themselves read it). So to answer these questions I'm going to write this essay. Another reason for writing the essay, is that I am very interested to find out the origin of the weblog and how/why does it flourish despite it's many critics. My final year project is also directly related to this topic as it is a Mozilla based news aggregator (You can read about my project at aggreg8.net). I supppose the most pressing reason for writing the essay is that it is the continuous assessment project for Multimedia Information retrieval, that is due on Friday 20th Dec 2002. |
What is a weblog?...... There are many definitions, coined by many different people, of what a weblog is. In it's simplest of simplest of forms, a weblog is a dated entry on a website. Weblogs originated in 1993/94 at the beginning of the internet itself. Back then they were lists of links to other sites with commentary alongside. The weblog editor, known as a blogger, surfs the web for topics of interest to him/her. They then post a weblog about one of the links that they found particularly interesting, Alongside these links would be commentary about the link itself. This type of weblog is used as a filtering tool. In a way the web has been pre-surfed by the weblog editor, and as the blogger is more than likely very interested in, or an expert on the topic in question, the site linked to will be of good quality and most probably well worth visiting.
Another type of weblog, one which has become increasingly popular over the last year or so, is the personal weblog. While the weblogs mentioned above, included links, commentary and personal notes, the personal weblog moves the focus from the web to the bloggers themselves. This type of weblog is a type of journal. The journal records the blogger's thoughts, opinions and everyday observations. They can include the most mundane of subjects, like what the blogger ate for dinner the night before or what movie they were going to take their girlfriend to see the following weekend. There is a myriad of weblogs like this. Many can be found at blogger.com, weblogs.com, pitas.com, the list is endless. It is because of this type of weblog that some people's definition of a weblog has changed from "a list of links with commentary and personal asides" to "a website that is updated frequently, with new material posted at the top of the page". My weblog is of this type but I do try and keep a constant supply of interesting links, quotes and images on the go to make the blog readable by someone who doesn't know me. Yet another type of weblog is the knowledge log, known in some circles as a KLOG (Knowledge LOG). This type of weblog can be used in an e-learning (enhanced learning) capacity. If an expert on a topic posted regularly on that topic then readers of that weblog would gain knowledge about that particular topic. This can be a very effective means of keeping a team of engineers (for example) up to date on current advances in a certain field of engineering. The team leader would post his knowledge, on the weblog, and from there all his team would read and absorb it. This type of weblog can be even more useful if the blogger includes multimedia content like images. The final type of weblog (that I am aware of anyway) is the project based weblog. I have used this type of weblog on all of the big projects I have been involved in. It is a very effective way of keeping track of project progress. With such a weblog in use it is very easy for a project manager to see what his team is up to at any given moment. Microsoft's new SharePoint Team Services (STS) is a workgroup-based or project-based intranet server that uses the idea of project based weblogs as a feature of the product. The strength of project-based weblog is a sense of importance of a fellow team members information.
So in conclusion, it is my opinion that nobody invented the weblog but there is plenty that deserve credit for it's popularity and ubiquity. How can weblogs be used to their full potential?...... Weblogs can be used as a means of communication with one blogger commenting and referencing another weblog they have read, this could spawn a discussion across several different weblogs on a topic. Weblogs can be used as filters
Using aggregators like Radio Userland, Aggie, NewzCrawler and Aggreg8(Developed by yours truly), to keep up to date with all your favourite weblogs has never been easier. Tools for publishing have never been easier to use (i.e Blogger.com). If these tools and types of weblog are used the worth of the weblog will have no limits. |
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How do we use weblogs?...... Right then, now down to how a weblog works. In the beginning I mentioned that the first weblog has Tim Berners-Lee's page linking to all new sites. This weblog was a very simple one. The HTML code that made up the webpage/weblog was coded by hand. This is a very innefficient way to be blogging. You must alter the code, save the file, upload the file, refresh the browser. It's a whole rigmarole. Although some people still blog like this, most have realised that there are better ways.
Getting dirrty?......
I'm afraid readers this is where we get down to the nitty gritty technicalities of how a todays weblog works. The method above
is not a viable solution for a weblog that is to be updated daily, so new methods have appeared. Now with scripting languages liek perl, python, and my personal favourite PHP,
By storing the weblogs individually in a Database it is then possible to select only the weblogs you want. This is what I have done, I have selected the blogs based on the date that they were posted. I did this using PHP. This is an answer to some of the issues brought up above, but not all. I go back to the issue about, if somebody wants to have some of my content on their page.....you might ask why would they want to that, but if I was CNN news and my weblog content had to also feature on a reigional TV station's webpage, what then. This is where the idea of structured text comes in. What is structured text and how on earth will it help me with the problem?... Structured text is composed of text objects, in a hierarchy. There are rules to this hierarchy. This means that instead of just writing text, I fill "text objects" with text, for example if I was describing a book I would say "The title of the book is creating applications with Mozilla". This is fine and good for humans to read but what if a program wanted to know what that sentence was about. Granted it could search the string and get book, title and mozilla but the program is none the wiser as to what it all means together. To solve this problem we could intoduce the idea of tags (these tags act as the rules to the hierarchy).
The text to the left is now much easier for a programme to process as it is told what is going on and there is no ambiguity as to the meaning of the text. The programme would of course be familiar with the hierarchy or rules that appear in the text. With structured text we can now specify in out blogs that they are in fact blogs, that the date above the blog is in fact the date and not a simple string. Now you might say , sure isn't HTML structured text, why do we need to change it.? HTML is structured text, you are right, but HTML is designed for the presentation of text regardless of what the text represents, for example I can wrap a quote from a poem in "<b>" tags(bold type face) but I can also wrap my essentials on my shopping list in "<b>" tags. The markup(that is what the tags or rules are called) for HTML is for presentation only but with structured text, the markup can represent anything you wish. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is structured text. With XML you can create your own rules/tags for your documents and then you can apply style sheets, XSL(eXtensible Stylesheet Language) or CSS(Cascading Style Sheet), to the XML you have created. these Style sheets act as the programmes I described above, that know the rules and vocabularly of the XML you are using. The style sheets might know, for example, that everything that appears inside "<confidential>" should not be displayed on the screen. HTML, being structured text, has style sheets that know the vocabulary of HTML. These are embedded in your web browser.
By now I hope you can see where I am going with this....There is a breed of XML called RSS which is XML with a defined
vocabulary specifically designed for weblogs.
With parsers you can acheive this. There are many sites that allow you to include different RSS feeds in your portal, like myrss.com, syndic8.com, newsisfree.com. There are also applications that allow you to aggregate RSS feeds(to gather feeds together), Radio Userland, NewzCrawler and Aggreg8. There is still an issue though. How do I keep track of all the RSS feeds I want to include. Well that is where OPML(Outline Processor Markup Language) comes in. OPML is used as a kind of bookmark file for all the RSS feeds. These OPML files can be called just like RSS feeds given that the parsers or style sheets are in place. OPML files are somtimes known as BlogRolls as they specify all the users favourite RSS feeds.
A rundown of how weblogs work today with RSS?......
Using RSS enables reading of weblogs easy, as they can be imported into applications or other sites and not only on the site that they are posted on. All you have to do is look for the |
it is much easier to update the weblog. Using a simple HTML form you are able to update your weblog much easier than before. My first weblog was like this, I had a HTML form that I sent to a PHP script that appended that text ,that was sent, to my weblog file. This way of serving up a weblog has it's benefits in that it is simple an efficient but it needs alot more. For instance, if I wanted to edit or delete one of my blogs I would have to go back to the old way of hand coding the weblog file. I might want to be able to group the weblogs by the month that they were posted.
RSS has all the features of XML, in that it is structured text, hierarchical, and
the ability to use style sheets to transform the RSS to readable text. RSS is an acronym for "RDF Site Summary","Really Simple
Syndiation" and "Rich Site Summary", but they all mean the same thing. The issue I described above where a reigional TV station's webpage wanted to include the content of CNN's updated news page (weblog). RSS is the basis for this content distribution service. It allows sharing of content between sites.
image which means that there is an RSS feed present (the orange xml image has become a universal sign of an RSS feed being present, It was introduced by Radio Userland).
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Why do we use weblogs?...... There are many reason why we use weblogs, many of them discussed in the What are weblogs? section. However there are other reasons why a blogger might start his/her own weblog, and, there are other reasons why a reader might read a weblog. I will try and discuss these reasons here. Why do we create them(revisited)?...... Many people wander around the web reading material and participating in forums, but that is as far as their internet presence goes. Having a weblog means that you have presence on the internet, you are not just an idle surfer. It is so easy to set up a simple weblog these days that more and more people are doing it, for the simple reason...they want to make their presence felt. From the beginnning the web has been about individuals creating their own media, from pictures of their cats to in depth essays. People say things on their weblog or webpage that they mightn't say in public, why?.. because they can. People like a soap box to stand on, we all do. Weblogs are a chance for people to have their soap box, it lets them rant and rave about whatever tickles their fancy. I might be getting into the whole idea of human nature and human tendencies her but, people love to show that they know things, even little me loves to show that I know things.
Why do we read weblogs?...... I suppose a more pressing question than why do we create them?, is, Why do we read them?. This mostly applies to the personal type of weblog. As mentioned, there are thousands of personal weblogs out there that discuss nothing but the lives of the bloggers themselves. These types of weblog have huge audiences. By reading these weblogs you can get a glimpse into the mind of the blogger. It tells us what they are interested in, what they find absurd, what they think is funny. They have a voice. They have a personality. "Simply put, they are an interactive extension of who you are."(Cameron Barret) I come back to the idea of a weblog being like a soap box, I was in Charleston, SC. last year, and there were tens of people standing around preaching from the bible, I wasn't interested in the content but I still found myself stopping and listening. The same applies to weblog, if I'm tearing around the web trying to find out how to encrypt a file in C++, and I see a weblog discussing nothing really, I will stop and read it. I find myself doing this all the time. The ones I find most interesting are those that are written by computer people(I thought to call them geeks was a bit harsh). If a user was to stick to using forums and chat boards they would soon get tired of the hostility and abuse that appears on all forums and chat boards. Weblogs are written by individuals in a civil manner, thus won't engage in any petty name calling and personal remarks that usually goes on in forums. People might think that Forums have an added advantage in that they aid in the creation of a community but weblogs can also have communities. Like slashdot.org for example, people read slashdot, then comment and link to an article they read there. Another blogger reads this blog and in turn comments on it in their weblog. As I mentioned before this is when conversation across weblogs can begin, and if enough people are commenting on the same blog and all referencing each others weblogs then you have a community of like minded bloggers all discussing the same subjects. Simple question, simple answer...What's the point?...... "Filtering content is the point; commenting on that content is the point; being active on the web instead of passively grazing is the point."(GeneHack). |
In some sense, weblogs sum up what's so great about the Internet. Like fanzine editors before them, weblog editors embrace a
topic or theme and run with it. Weblogs are a great indicator of what's happening on the Internet and within the web community.
Pass along your tips for finding the best tidbits and links.
The weblog is here to stay, regardless of whether it's updated daily, weekly or whenever and now with the advent of RSS weblogs will become even more popular as it will be easier to keep track of, search for and locate interesting weblogs.
People will create and maintain new weblogs, people will read these new weblogs and then create their own. This cycle will
continue to run until, well forever. In the words of Cameron Barrett of
Camworld.com--"Go forth and create".
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Disclaimer: An essay submitted to Dublin City University School of Computer Applications for the course CA437: Multimedia Information Retrieval, 2002/2003. I hereby certify that the work presented and the material contained herein is my own except where explicitly stated references to other material is made. |