This document provides information about blogs, including what they are, common features of blogs, blog statistics, and how to find and create blogs. It defines a blog as a website where entries are made in a journal style and displayed in reverse chronological order. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual and cover commentary, events, or other media. The document also lists some interesting statistics about the number of blogs and bloggers worldwide and discusses using blog-specific search engines and directories to find relevant blogs before explaining how to set up a blog on common platforms like Blogger and WordPress.

1. Share Fair Agknowledge Africa http://tinyurl.com/sfaddisblog ILRI- Addis Ababa 18 th Oct 2010

2. OBJECTIVES You will learn About blogs and why you should blog How to search and find Relevant blogs How to create your Blog

3. BLOGS IN PLAIN ENGLISH This video will introduce blogs in a simplified manner, explaining their purpose and why we should have blogs.

4. WHAT IS A BLOG? A website Where entries are made in Journal style and displayed in a reverse Chronological order. They could be Personal Organizational Company

5. CONT’ A blog (a portmanteau of the term "web log") is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.Blogging especially on the CJA portal.(word and audio)

6. CONT’ Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.

7. FACTS ABOUT BLOGS A “blog” is Organised chronologically by date Self achived by date Updated somewhat regularly with relatively short entries. Includes links, more links and still more links Uses a unique URL called a permalink for each individual blog Uses blogging software.

8. MOST BLOGS…………… Are comprised of short posts. Allow readers to comment on each post Display a calendar or a date list for accessing achieves Include a blog roll that lists the various sites that particular bloggers read Provides an RSS feed that syndicates the content and lets you read posts in a separate reader called aggregator

9. SOME INTERESTING STATISTICS 133,000,000- No. of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002 346,000,000 – No. of people globally who read blogs(ComScore March 2008) 900,000 –average No. of blog posts in a 24hr period 77% of active internet users read blogs 59% of bloggers have been blogging for atleast 2 years

10. FINDING AND SEARCHING BLOGS Weblog specific search engines and /or directories wFeedster-http://www.feedster.com/ Bloogz-http://www.bloogz.com/ Blogstreet-http://www.blogstreet.com/ Blogline- http://www . blogline.com/ The above are search engines that specialize in blog searches. Ask the participants to check them out

11. YOUR BLOG You can create your blog in many sites including xanga, msn,blogger, blogstream, wordpress etc.

12. CREATE YOUR OWN BLOG www.blogger.com www.wordpress.com