Before launching upon my own blog, and I'm still trying to get a hang of this, I'd not paid all that much attention to the phenomena. Until about a year ago I'd not read many blogs, and if I did, it was in passing amusement from searching my own name on Google and finding it in someone's blog, linked to a story I'd done. Recently blogs have been gaining prominence for political, social, artistic and marketing aims. In the near future they will likely also be turned into learning tools.

In " My So-Called Blog&lrquo; for the New York Times, Emily Nussbaum chronicles in-depth the rise of blogging among the cbyberjugend ...

" M. is an unusually Zen teenage boy -- dreamy and ruminative about his personal relationships. But his obsessive online habits are hardly exceptional; he is one of a generation of compulsive self-chroniclers, a fleet of juvenile Marcel Prousts gone wild.&lrquo;

Joi Ito, in an op-ed for the South China Morning Post about the lack of Democracy in Japan, sees blogs and the Internet as a way for the youth of that country to get their voices out of the silence the older generations have surrounded them with.

" The Internet, and the " blogs&lrquo; in particular, provides opportunities for the passive Japanese public to wake up before the catastrophe. The Internet also is a way to enable the youth of Japan, currently silenced by the older generation and destined to get stuck with supporting them in the future, to speak up and organize before it is too late. This is critical both for themselves and also for Japan as a whole.&lrquo;

Other weblogs, such as TJ's weblog, highlight the lay of the land in arenas such as technology, venture capital and entrepreneurship.

During the Iraq War last year, Salam Pax blogged live from Bagdhad and throngs of people in search of alternative, live and uncensored news, found his site.

And blogs are not only political, or informational ...they can become commercial. In the end, Salam Pax got a book deal out of his sporadic reporting ... a reproduced blogel? Novlog? Nogel? What is the name for a blog cum novel? I've not found it yet. Something I would like to try, and may very soon is a blog novel ...live and uncensored.

Other bloggies have turned their daily grunts and groans into book deals. Here, Biz Stone writes about the trend at Blogger in ' How to turn your blog into a book deal' ...

What influence does this cacophony of disunited voices and their daily bloggle have on government and democracy? How close are the politicos actually watching? The Pew Research Center has a program on Internet and American Life with recent studies on political behavior on the Internet.

Well, for one, Democratic front-runner Howard Dean has a semi-official Blog for America and has seemingly used the Internet much more wisely than his competitors. Other candidates seem to have blogs sprout up as supporters take up the flags willy-nilly, but it's hard to discern if any of them are official or not, or if you are getting accurate information. Though all of them are catching on.

And President Bush has a blog now...

In a display of how far things have gone, even Presidential ' First Dog' Barney has one as well ... showing that perhaps some blogs may deserve euthanasia more than others.

On the education front, weblogs called Edulogs are only beginning to show their metal. This site tells educators how to adapt blogs into their curriculum. And this site from the City University of Hong Kong also provides some history on Edublogging and highlights how educators are turning to blogs to help teach their students, and more importantly, how to help students teach themselves.