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Business
K-logs: New frontiers of weblogs
THIS WEEK NetSpeak discusses the new trends that are taking place in the fascinating world of weblogs.
One of the web trends — originated from ordinary netizens — that is going from strength to strength is weblogs. Regular readers of this column may remember a discussion in this column more than a year ago (The Hindu, March 26, 2001). First a quick recapitulation:
A weblog, more popularly known by its short name blog, is a web site that gets regularly updated, generally more than once a day, and whose content is presented in a chronological order, the latest posting appears on top, then the previous one and so on.
The availability of numerous free, easy to use, web-based tools like Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) and WebCrimson (http://www.webcrimson.com) has helped people float a weblog quickly. For example, the free service, WebCrimson, allows one to create a weblog with a domain name of the form http://your-name.crimsonblog.com/.
These services not only host the weblogs, but also provide tools that let you post the content without writing any code- just type the content in the input box and click the `Post' button. Of course, if you want to create the weblog on your server, services like WebCrimson also provide the necessary tools to upload the weblog. Apart from these web-based tools desktop-based tools also let you publish weblogs directly from your computer.
The Radio UserLand (not free, but a 30-day trial version is available at: http://radio.userland.com/ ) is a very popular weblog tool of this kind. The software features tools that permit you to automatically build a weblog that can be published on UserLand's site or on his/her server.
Weblog transformation
During its initial stages, weblogs used to be on-line diary-style sites where bloggers post links, with some comments, to material that is published on the web But the concept gained popularity andwith the availability of many user-friendly weblog creation tools an explosion of weblogs took place. From being a web enthusiast's self-expression tool, weblogs are being transformed into a major communication and knowledge sharing vehicle for people/organisations engaged in diverse activities. Journalists, academicians and business people are increasingly finding this a useful tool.
Business weblogs
Though some analysts predicted that weblogs would be a passing fad, the quick adoption of the technology by people with varied interests emphatically tells us that this is no more a web fad. An interesting aspect of this fast changing blog landscape is that many organisations also have started embracing this concept. The weblogs started by a few Macromedia employees (http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/logged_in/ekrimen_blogs.html/) that gained much media attention recently is an example of this trend.
A company can float blogs that can be used for such functions as customer care, product promotion and generating new product ideas. Apart from hosting public blogs, a company can host blogs on its intranet and effectively use them for sharing information on various projects, products and so on. An interesting offshoot of the various attempts to deploy the blog technology to boost business productivity is the development of new types of blogs called K-logs or knowledge logs.
K-logs
One of an organisation's main assets is its knowledge capital emobied in the employees' skills. Unless there is a mechanism to store and share this knowledge so that it can be accessed at a later stage, an organisation would not be able to leverage its knowledge base. For example, take the case of an IT company with many units countrywide and with highly talented/skilled employees. It is quite likely that many of the employees may regularly discover new solutions and stumble upon new concepts and insights. But, unless there is a mechanism to capture, store and disseminate the newly discovered solutions across the organisation, the company is unlikely to gain any competitive advantage, it may even lose the knowledge when the employee leaves.
So, a company needs a knowledge management tool that lets it capture/store the information as and when it is generated and that provides an interface which allows others to access it. It is possible then for a company to create a weblog and provide the necessary tools that let an employee transfer his/her knowledge to it's the intranet. Weblogs of this kind, used to manage the knowledge of employees of firms, are called K-logs Check out this link for more information: http://www.blogroots.com/chapters.blog/id/4
Daypop: A weblog search engine
Tens of hundreds of weblogs are available on the Net that deal with such subjects as politics, technology, business, science and arts. Naturally, it is difficult to find the weblogs one is looking for. As the weblogs get updated quite often, mainstream search engines may not always be able to list the proper blogs. To address this difficult task, a few specialised search engines have been developed. The Daypop — http://www.daypop.com — news and weblog search engine is a product worth trying. Apart from helping you spot the weblogs, the service also lets you collect the latest news on a specific subject. As mentioned on its site, the Daypop 'indexes over 7500 of the best news sites and weblogs on the Net everyday' and provides the latest news and weblogs that are relevant to your search.
Resources
Klogs: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/klogs/ (A group dedicated to the discussion of K-logs)
Blogroots: http://www.blogroots.com (An excellent site with a lot of news and resources on weblogs)
Blogdex: http://blogdex.media.mit.edu (list of latest popular weblogs)
ScriptingNews: http://www.scripting.com (A technology weblog)
Radio Weblog: http://jrobb.user land.com/ (Weblog of John Robb, President and COO of UserLand Software)
J. Murali
(The author can be contacted at: murali27@satyam.net.in)
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