NEW Zealand has just hosted Blog Hui 2006, an inaugural international conference for bloggers.
For technologically challenged readers, allow me to offer some clarification.
Put simply, a blogger is basically someone who blogs away on a blog.
Blogs represent a new force in the growth of the internet.
The term "blog" is believed to be short for "weblog", a word that first made its debut on the cyber stage some 12 years ago.
It is used to describe an online template that enables you to develop and update your own website.
The art of writing and updating your website is known as blogging.
Generally, items on your blog will appear in a reverse chronological order.
How do I know all this? Because four years ago, I stumbled on the website of a smart Australian from Melbourne, Amir Butler.
Mr Butler is an Australian-Muslim activist of British and Caribbean heritage who uses his blog to comment on media matters.
I was quite impressed with the website and assumed he was only able to perform web miracles after spending hours engaged in coding and programming.
Then I read this unusual square, which said "Powered by Blogger".
I decided to click the icon and follow the directions on the blogger website.
Within five minutes, I had created my own website.
I decided to name it Planet Irf.
Today, I have five full-time and one seasonal blog.
I initially thought blogs were just a simple way to comment on what the mainstream media were writing and broadcasting.
I soon discovered blogs can have multiple uses.
In fact, one of the themes of the inaugural conference was the enormous number of blog applications.
Jonathan Ah Kit of the Victoria University of Wellington spoke about how blogging can revolutionise the process of learning and teaching in tertiary institutions.
Social architect and Melburnian James Farmer said a single blog website can be used by many different people within an organisation.
He should know. He is single-handedly responsible for enabling the construction of more than 2600 education-based blogs, more than 500 learner blogs for school students and more than 130 uniblogs for college and university students.
Blogging is not just for tech-heads and grunge-listening nerds.
Around 800 blogs are created each day and there are millions of blogs in cyberspace.
Some of the most popular blog templates were created by a small company based in San Francisco (where else) named Pyra Labs.
The company was founded in the midst of the tech-boom in August 1999.
In the words of its founders, the company committed itself to ...
... helping people have their own voice on the web and organising the world's information from the personal perspective.
In February 2003, the company hit the jackpot when it was acquired by internet giant Google.
At that stage, it had 1.1 million registered users. From there, blogging became a serious business.
Educational blogs are becoming more common among students and teachers.
You can even get a moblog, which enables you to post content from your mobile phone.
As always, Kiwis would like to think they are at the cutting edge of the latest developments in cyberspace.
But blogging is here to stay. If you don't like it, you might as well blog off.
(IRFAN YUSUF is a Sydney writer and consummate blogger. First published in the Herald Sun on 03 April 2006)
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