You might not know it but blogs turn 10 in 2009. Whilst they’re one of the newer online communication tools, they have been around all of the 21st Century.

The term blog, which was a contraction of Weblog was coined about 1999 and since then, millions of blogs have been developed across the world. Blogs are more like a webpage than an email or a forum.

Some people liken them to a publishing tool that anyone can use. They made on-line publication available to every one of us. In a blog you can use different fonts. You can use different colours for your letters. You can vary the sizes of text. You have the capacity to add photos, illustrations, diagrams and links to other websites. And anyone can do this.

Some blogs are public for the world to see. Others are private.

In a subscription blog, notification of new posting usually comes by email to the recipient. This is so much easier than adding an attachment to an email. This way, you’re not filling up their email box but they can have access to whatever you want to publish. An advantage of blogs is that you can search them. Most blogs, like travel blogs, you can search, you can find things that people have done at a place you’re interested in. You can get information about the kind of weather that exists.

There are also search engines on-line that are designed to allow you to search for a particular topic or a particular blog. You can’t do that with a forum. And many allow you to link to allied blogs on particular subjects. Most blog tools allow you to copy and to print. Others have commercial printing capacity available to you and they don’t have to be difficult to use. There are millions of blogs on the net. They are very popular and valued publishing tools. Many people find that they are attractive, fun to use and that they can do them easily and in their own time.