Through the Internet and blogging software, the voices of the masses are now being heard loud and clear. Blogs (short for Web logs), have changed the way people communicate with friends and family, express their views of the world and even the way media report the news.
Blogs have made a huge splash since services like pioneer Blogger (blogger.com), LiveJournal (livejournal.com) and Movable Type (movabletype.org) began automating the process for bloggers, allowing neophytes and experts alike to create and easily update a personalized page with interactive features like comments, “trackbacks,” to see who has visited entries, and options to e-mail entries to others on any computer with Internet access.
Paul Bausch, a former Blogger senior developer, worked at the company until January 2001. He said blogs came at the right time as people were getting on the Internet and reading blogs.
“The ability to type into a box, push publish and have it up on the net instantly is powerful,” Bausch said.
Bausch’s Web site, onfocus.com, was one of the original blogs on the Internet along with those of other members of the
Blogger team.
“We were living our philosophy of putting our lives on the Internet,” Bausch said.
Bausch, who now independently develops Web sites and maintains ORBlogs.com, a Web site for Oregonian bloggers, said blogging is powerful because entries are able to reach a worldwide audience, but he wants to see more focus on smaller communities and
local news.
But even Bausch said he didn’t anticipate blogs would become a system for pundits and watchdogs to express views outside of mainstream media and even correct headline
stories.

The best example of bloggers’ impact is when the “blogosphere” cried foul at CBS News and Dan Rather by publishing documents that invalidated President Bush’s National Guard service. Blogs proved, through the font type on the documents, that the document was a fraud created on a word processor despite CBS’ insistence it was not. Finally, the blog Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com) recreated the document in Word and showed how identical it looked to the CBS documents.
“The power of blogs to influence the news media and paint a more detailed picture of world happenings is all very empowering and, frankly, amazing when you consider that the whole blogging phenomenon is just a bunch of people posting on the Web,” University student and blogger Trevor Sehrer said.
Sehrer, however, said his blog, Life as News, focuses on him and his circle of friends. Created to send press releases to friends in lieu of repeating a story several times over, Sehrer’s site mimics the tone of the media as he reports on breaking developments in his life such as “Really Cool Leaf Examined, Put Back On Ground” and ” Area Student Views Star Wars Episode III Teaser Trailer, Desire To Camp Out Ensues.”
Other blogs take a more serious route and follow world events with personal commentary such as “Resistance is Futile!” (http://gullyborg.
typepad.com), a politically conservative blog by a University law student who uses the pseudonym “Gullyborg.” The blog is one of four Gullyborg maintains, one of which is another political blog called “Right Wing Blawger,” described as “trials and tribulations of a conservative law student stuck in liberal hell.”
“It’s therapy,” Gullyborg said. “I get to rant and rave without actually being confrontational with anyone.”
The blog uses Typepad blogging software provided by Movable Type to host and maintain it. Typepad isn’t free like Blogger or LiveJournal, but offers more extensive software features like categories, plug-ins for developers to customize blog tools and blog templates.
Still, Bausch said people will not always consider blogs to be a unique feature on the Web.
“Just like instant messaging, it will become a part of the fabric of the Internet,” he said.

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