Absolutely anything can be a suitable subject for a blog entry; a Website of interest, OpenSource software, breaking news, a personal anecdote, a witty comment from a colleague, politics, a joke, a holiday, Microsoft, music, gadgets, your teams latest victory, anything. Just because someone else (an esteemed blogger or maybe even a professional journalist) has written an article on the same subject, don’t necessarily let that put you off. Lots of people are searching blogs for a personal view and not that of a journalist. For example, if I am considering the purchase of a digital radio for my car, I would rather hear your views on the same make and model rather than read a two year old review in AutoExpress. ...

I used to have a Psion 5. This was a neat little personal organiser in a clam shell case with a mini QWERTY style keyboard. The Psion even had a port of the ‘vi’ editor available. However, after the novelty wore off, I didn’t use it much other than a few short-lived pointless games and as a glorified address book when sending out my Christmas cards. Years later, I worked with some young, trendy individuals who wore Diesel trousers who taunted me as they all gradually acquired new, shiny Palm PDA’s. Of course, I simply couldn’t face them with my aged Psion so I went out and bought a Palm Vx. ...

Doug Burns recently was kind enough to refer to my little, embryonic blog. I had been lurking around the Oracle blogs for a while and had commented on a posting on Doug’s blog about his wife’s positive reaction to the recently launched Teleport service (TV and video on demand) Now this wasn’t purely a trite comment is a desperate attempt to get someone other than the Technorati bot over to my blog. I am a Telewest customer and had previously remarked on the launch of the Teleport service on my own blog. ...

Take some time to think of ideas and develop content for the blog. I tend to jot down lots of different ideas for possible brilliant, informative articles for the blog. However, most get discarded as when I subsequently re-read them, I discover that they don’t even make sense or interest me. Some ideas are developed and refined over a longer period while other blog entries are more spontaneous. As you are composing the article, review the text carefully as you go. If the blog editor has a ‘Preview’ option, use it to review the text again before finally hitting ‘Publish’. When the article is published, review it yet again. I almost always still manage to find a nonsensical or rambling sentence on this final pass. I also subscribe to my own feed and read the article in Thunderbird where there is still scope to find the odd typo which is irritating as it means modifying and re-publishing the entry. ...

Don’t. Build it and they will come (probably). Try and focus on the style and content of the blog. Try to keep updating the blog on a regular basis. Make it easy for people to subscribe to the blog by creating an RSS feed - Feedburner is a popular, free choice. If you have succeeded in getting people to visit the blog and, better, maybe even subscribe to it, try to keep new material coming otherwise the blog will surely wither and die together with the interest of the your audience. ...