Available online free, or at a small cost, 'Blogs' are pre-designed websites.  You can name your blog and choose a template (design) from one of the many providers online.  You can update or 'post'/'blog' as regularly as you like including pictures and even audio or video.

Mainstream media are adapting to both the new format and realising the growth of media access and information created by blogs.  The likes of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and The New York Times carry their own blogs.  CNN even has a dedicated reporter, her sole task, to give a four-minute summary of the 'blogsphere' each morning on the cable network's 'Inside Politics' show.

Jamaicans are also taking advantage.

ONLINE PORTFOLIO

Peter Dean Rickards is a Jamaican photographer who, since 1999, has used his website 'The Afflicted Yard' (www.afflictedyard.com), which includes a blog, as an online portfolio leading to work and recognition from leading international style magazines such as Fader, i-D and Vanity Fair.

"The Web's been a very effective tool for me.  It serves primarily as a portfolio and allows me a great deal of independence as it relates to my own work," Mr. Rickards said.  "It's allowed me to compete with writers and photographers around the world who have the advantage of being able to walk into offices and present their work in person."

THE BAGHDAD BLOGGER - press freedom in practice

When the United States attacked Iraq in 2003, somewhere in between the voices of Saddam Hussein's relentless optimistic information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf and embedded Western media, an alternative voice also made himself heard.

Thanks to patchy Internet connectivity in the Iraqi capital the 'Baghdad Blogger' Salam Pax was each day posting to thousands of loyal readers worldwide.  Real name Salam Al-Janabi, he was not a journalist but actually a 29-year-old architect who nonetheless was able to provide a different perspective.

"One day, like in Afghanistan, those journalists will get bored and go write about Syria or Iran; Iraq will be off your media radar.  Out of sight, out of mind.  Lucky you, you have that option.  I have to live it," blogged Mr. Al-Janabi.

Now working as a columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian he covered the United States election in 2004.  A book of his blogs Salam Pax the Baghdad Blog was also published by The Guardian.

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