OK, Dr. Weatherly.
Having been a choirpractor for 33 years most assuredly does give you the right to use the title of "Dr." whereever you go. So does having a doctorate in any subject of study.

And so now I'll add just a bit to that education because it is not only you but lots more folks who don't know what a blog is.

Blogs have been around since about 1998 or so. The first of them was one known as blogger as it still is today altough it was bought out by Google about a year ago. That made blogs an instant hit with everybody. At first blogging was tremendously difficult since the coding was not at all standard and still isn't today. Then they added what is known as a wysiwyg editor. Wysiwyg simply translates into "What You See Is What You Get" meaning that as you type it is automatically converted into code just like it is here. Some such editors are extremely versitile and others are almost brain dead and have very limited capability.

Blogs are often described as being personal diaries because anyone can write about anything they want. There are untold millions of blogs on the internet today and while the majority of them are written by kids talking about school work or dating or parties they went too and just plain people in different lands talking about friends or family or life in their country or whatever. But since Google bought out Blogger
the major corporations are now getting into blogging big time. The first real use of Blogging by major corporations was probably the media during the recent invasion of Iraq.

If you followed the news back then as most of us did you were probably pretty quick to pick up on the fact that the coverage was done by what was called "embedded reporters" who were right there with the troops on the front lines. They had laptops and were connected to their newsrooms by satellite and we got to see what war was like first hand. It was almost as if we were there in person. Photos were done with digital cameras and so could be uploaded almost instantly.

Then big business began to get into the act and now all of the big players are into blogging one way or another. Sometimes it's done by some big executive and sometimes by some company employee. GM, Ford and most of the auto makers are into to it and that isn't even the tip of the iceberg. I started my blog several years ago but the coding was so hard to do that I didn't do any actual blogging until they came out with their new editor. That wss in the early part of 3003 if I remember right and I started doing something with mine in May of that year. Now I've got over 50 Blogs scattered all over the internet. They cover a wide range of topics. Just after blogger got easy to work with they also implemented what is known as RSS or Really Simple Syndication which is a language all of it's own. Then Google came out with what is known as API keys and together they actually feed the blog to the search engines and are used in what is known as aggregators. Now RSS is also being used in what is known as PODCASTING and VLOGS. Podcasting is audio broadcasting and VLOGS are blogs which have a lot of video on them.
Then they came along with the MP3 players such as the IPAQ by Apple and many more.

People are buying them by the millions because they can download music into their IPAQ and listen to music on the go. They can also plug them into their car stereos and listen to the music on their stereos. Now we have regular podcasting stations just like radio stations. Advertisers are picking up on that and they are putting out the music, commentaries and what have you interspersed with advertising just like you hear on regular AM or FM radio.

Blogs that deal with interesting subjects, have lots of fresh new content every day and lots of links are what the search engines are looking for and if your blog has good content and lots of links both coming and going then the search engine "spiders" will come crawling very frequently. If your blog talks about your high school football team or your latest drinking party or your latest and greatest date it will never make the search engines. Most of mine have lots of traffic and lots of content because I am always posting new articles and have lots of links.

Of course, most of those here probably have visited the j-accuse blog and some have visited my Creditwrench Blog but I also have one which deals with news coming out of the Oklahoma State Legislature. The media relations departments of the Oklahoma State House of Representatives and the Oklahoma State Senate constantly send me all their press releases and I post most of them to the blog at http://magnacartanews.blogspot.com so that gets a lot of activity.

I also have one at and the debt collectors really hate that one What I have to say about them on that blog isn't real complimentary to say the least. Probably about the most complimentary thing I have to say about debt collectors is that if they had a brain they might be a bit dangerous.

So go check out the blogs and see what they are all about. Then you may see why they are so important. What it might take a long time to figure out on your own is that in today's business world you must have a web site and you must hae a blog that talks about your business or you just might not be in business for all that much longer. It is just that simple and those business people who don't realize that are going to have an increasingly tough time staying in business as all their competition jump onto the bandwagon.