Weblogs have been around almost as long the world wide web. They’re sites, like this one, where usually on person posts notes about things they’re interested in. The most popular are those that update regularly –often daily– and connect with a large audience. Key examples include Slashdot, Scripting News and Memepool. Recently, someone finally came up with the term weblog and that’s all it took for them to become the next hot thing. And the hype will continue for sometime and then die down. Unlike other such phenoms, I suspect this one will become an ongoing part of the fabric of the web. In a world of too much information, tools to help us filter, sort and run down the information we want are critical. Search engines are one such tool. But, they often provide little sense of what’s important and only serve to answer the specific question that was asked. Weblogs are usually not a place to search for answers, but to discover new stuff. And the good ones provide some idea of what you’re getting before you go. The best circle repeatedly through a topic, adding more key links and more information. They’re not news sites –with the journalistic standards implied– but with the advent of the internet, they’re just as important.

On a little less serious note, we stumbled across a wonderful comic on thanksgiving. Don’t like comics? Go anyway. It’ll be worth it.