外國人最想和你聊的時事話題：博客熱潮

　What is blogging fever　什么是博客熱潮
     A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reversechronological order. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
     Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.
     Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (art blog), photographs(photo blog), videos (video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio(podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.
     As of 16 February 2011 there were over 156 million public blogs in existence.
     After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools:
     ?Bruce Ableson launched Open Diary in October 1998, which soon grew to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers' blog entries.
     ?Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal in March 1999.
     ?Andrew Smales created Pitas.com in July 1999 as an easier alternative to maintaining a "news page" on a Web site, followed by Diary land in September 1999, focusing more on a personal diary community.
     ?Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra Labs) launched blogger. com in August 1999 (purchased by Google in February 2003).
     博客最初的名稱是Weblog，由web和log兩個單詞組成，按字面意思就為網(wǎng)絡(luò)日記，后來喜歡新名詞的人把這個詞的發(fā)音故意改了一下，讀成we blog，由此，blog這個詞被創(chuàng)造出來。中文意思即網(wǎng)志或網(wǎng)絡(luò)日志。不過，在中國大陸有人往往也將 Blog 本身和 blogger（即博客作者）均音譯為"博客"。"博客"有較深的涵義："博"為"廣博"；"客"不單是"blogger"，更有"好客"之意?？碆log的人都是"客"。而在臺灣，則分別音譯成"部落格"（或"部落閣"）及"部落客"，認(rèn)為Blog本身有社群群組的意思含在內(nèi)，借由Blog可以將網(wǎng)絡(luò)上的網(wǎng)友集結(jié)成一個大博客，成為另一個具有影響力的自由媒體。