Blogger you say? A blogger is not a new specie of bug nor is it some newly discovered alien life form. To understand what a blogger is one must start from the beginning. That of which is the blog, a blog is a website wherein one posts entries of personal or public interest. Blog entries are displayed in reverse chronological order. Blogs are commonly used like online journals which can be viewed publicly or privately, blogs can also display general information, tutorials, political point of views or even just a compilation of random thoughts or ideas. What is put into the blog depends on the blogger’s personal preference. There it is once again mentioned; a blogger if you still did not catch the drift is the person in charge of either the entire blog or contributes entries to a public blog community. A blogger is a noun used to call the person behind the words.

To repeat, a blogger is a term that refers to a person who writes or does some blog entry input. A blogger in ever sense is similar to writers, scribes, journalists and every other synonym there is that is related to one who writes. Blogs can have one or more bloggers depending on the blog owner or the blogging options.

However on the internet Blogger is also a common word associated to a blogging community. Blogspot.com uses the term blogger hand in hand with their site. Blogger is a free blog community that allows newbies and old timers to blog using either a paid service or the free one. The site is pretty good in terms of blogging options. There are a lot of available widgets and editable layouts that even the free blogger can enjoy. Paid users though get the option to use any layout they wish. They also give users the freedom to manipulate their page just like any free standing website as well as allow users to purchase their own domain name.

To recap, Blogs are the sites, the online journals or publishing portals that are available for private or public use. Blogs are either free or upgradeable via payments. Blog communities and blog hosts are available to everybody. Bloggers are the people behind the posts, their humans not aliens not bugs. Blogging is a verb referring to the act of posting and publishing entries. Lastly Blogger is associated to Blogspot, a blog community and blog host.

Online Diaries - also know known, as Blogs or Webblogs are the best things that happened to the economy of the world, in the past ten years or so. You must thinking I am crazy writing this, but really, Britney Spears’ opinion on the Sub Prime loan fiasco, could raise or drop the market points. Why? Simply because, normal people like you and me are interested in what Britney Spears has to say about it. Imagine, Her blogs about the economy of the country, brokers would have a field day. Don’t get me wrong this is not about any countries economy, but its about the most gratifying feeling, any human being has after he or she tells his or her story.

How? Well, using Blogs. Blogs are tools that help share our day-to-day lives with people around us. And with more and more celebrity bloggers using blogs and blogging, blogs promise to offer the everyday experience of stars from all walks of life, at our fingertips. This potentiality of blogs, is being used world wide by rooted main stream media based companies like CNBC, CNN and so on. So much so that, people today log on to blogs created by celebrity bloggers and read their dinner experiences, parties these guys are gonna be at, sunsets, the usual quotidian experience.

At the risk of rephrasing the old phrase of ‘one mans trash, is another mans treasure’; ‘one celebritiy blogger’s quotidian experience is another mans dreams’. Even though, these day to day events of celebrity bloggers might be inane, I mean no celebrity blogger ever faces a situation where in he or she has to, under normal circumstances, disarm a nuclear bomb and save the world.

Even those uneventful blogs, bogged down by celebrity bloggers are quite the general populations’ eye catchers, and this may be the sole reason for biggies like Coke, Durex and other companies to buy advertising space on such blogs. A very good example would be, to quote from Shatners Blog “We are preparing for our yearly charitable paintballing event”. Being an advent celebrity blog reader, I find myself in a fix, I mean, Sure I have to look for scoop, but What I have found out reading these blogs is that most of them are inane and mundane, and these are no different then our day to day life, citing another example from Britney Spears blog, where she squabbles over the fact that she needs to “potty train” the dogs so they don’t spoil her white carpets, I mean, if I had dogs and white carpets, I obliviously would need to do something about that, but still she had close to one million hits on her blog the first two weeks itself. No wonder, Media Channels are paying millions and millions of dollars to buy out advertising space on such blogs.

Bloggers guide to using news photos

Bloggers everywhere use different media additions or resources to their entries whether it be a private post or a public one. The most common addition to a blog post or blog entry is a photo. The common mistake done with these additional resources would be the failure to credit the source. Any source for the matter should be given proper credit. Cyberspace is now rule by the Creative Commons Law or the Creative Commons License that is typically found in connection to photos. Creative Commons is generally a non profit organization whose goal is to make certain that legal rights are kept and upheld especially over the wide expanse that is known as the internet. Creative Commons allows copyright owners some freedom to manipulate certain licenses, rights and restrictions on certain works that are displayed over the internet and are available to the public.

Not everyone on the internet is a thief; most people even kids are unaware of the rights they violate by using images, text, data or any other resource from another individual without that persons consent or permission. This concept is similar to an act of plagiarism or piracy. Bloggers must be constantly aware of their rights as well as the rights of others around them especially over the internet.

There is no known manual or user guide published at the moment pertaining to how bloggers are to conduct themselves in cyberspace especially with the availability of various resources. Below is a short unofficial list or guidelines a blogger must be aware of regarding the use of various media resources especially of news photos.

When using other people’s work, check for any available info regarding its usage. Did the owner state specific requirements regarding the use of their work? If there is nothing stated look for this person or this company’s contact information, email them. Ask permission, it is better to ask now that receive complaints about it later from its original owner. When adding words of wisdom or another person’s exact word per word though, quote them, this shows your respect for their work and your good intentions of merely using their thought and not claiming it as your own. The same is to be said with news photos, look for the publisher, photographer or the original owner, if there isn’t any available contact information again quote them for their work. Give credit where it is due.