62% of Americans have no idea what a blog is.
The answer: A frequently updated website consisting of personal observations and excerpts from other sources, typically run by a single person.
Jacob Crossman, a software engineer at Soar Technology Inc. in Ann Arbor, MI, uses blogging tools from Palo Alto, CA-based Socialtext Inc. to keep an up-to-date
engineering notebook on his ideas about a particular project that can be accessed by other project participants.
"One of the disadvantages of a paper-based engineering notebook is that it's hard to find things unless you want to go through it manually," Crossman says. "So I decided
to use the blog feature of Socialtext's software to keep track of my ideas. I would type them in, and then they're immediately searchable using another feature of the software." He is also able to link to other documents about the project using the blog entry.
Crossman is not alone. Weblogs, or blogs, which let anyone with an Internet browser and some easy-to-use software publish a personalized diary online, have started to emerge as a valuable knowledge management and communication tool in business.
Sources: ComputerWorld, Jan 26, 2004 and BusinessWeek, Jan 31, 2005