In my last post I mentioned books about weblogs and how I like my information about the Web to be free. Well, I just bought Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook. Its a good read so far, and is going to be helpful to me for this presentation. It'll probably be an excellent handbook for the beginning blogger, and Rebecca puts the short history of the weblog in prospective for those who have yet to blog.

I'll give a full review when I'm done with it, but so far I'd highly recommend it to new bloggers. There's plenty of good advice on both the technical and social aspects of blogging. So far I've agreed with everything Rebecca teaches, but I have to admit, trying hard not to sound snooty, that I haven't gotten to anything I didn't know yet. But Rebecca will be the first to admit that the advice will be basic knowledge to anyone who's done this for awhile.

"But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much I've learned in three years of maintaining my own site--some of which is so obvious to experienced online denizens it doesn't seem worth explaining, but that as a newcomer I wouldn't have known to ask. Thus the weblog handbook was born."

I should comment on my surprise in finding it at my local Barnes and Nobles. They didn't have any of the other weblog books in stock.

Those of you who feel strongly that information should be free, or for those who can't afford the $14.00, Rebecca's chapter on ethics is available online.