With tens of millions of blogs online today, major corporations have started to recognize the value of a corporate blog for communicating with customers. However, corporate blogging is far different than the more traditional blogging that most of us encounter on a daily basis. Corporate blogging brings its own unique set of challenges and opportunities that must be considered and addressed by the company in order for its users to have a positive experience.

In this article we’ll examine the issues that face corporate blogs, we’ll observe some current trends, and we’ll look at a large sample of blogs from companies of various sizes in a wide variety of industries.

When her 21-year-old daughter died in a sledding accident in early 2007, Pam Weiss had never logged onto Facebook. Back then, it was used almost exclusively by the young, like her daughter Amy, a student at UCLA. But Weiss knew her daughter had an account, so in her grief she turned to the social-networking site to look for photos.

She found what she was looking for, and more — she was soon communicating with her daughter's many friends, sharing memories and even piecing together a blueprint of things Amy had hoped to do in the future through posts she'd written. "It makes me feel good that Amy had a positive effect on so many people, and I wouldn't have had a clue if it hadn't been for Facebook," says Weiss.

One reason for the surge in texting abbreviations—more than 2,000 and counting, according to NetLingo—is the boom in social-media sites like Twitter, where messages are limited to 140 characters. Text messages, too, are limited in length, so users have developed an alphabet soup of shorthand abbreviations to save time, and their thumbs.

Running a corporate blog is a totally different ballgame from running a personal blog. Based on my experience starting the LinkedIn blog, here's a quick primer - just 10 easy steps (encompassing strategy, tactics and measurement) that you need to focus on to get any corporate blog off the ground.

The following steps may or may not be applicable to every company so if your company has a unique challenge feel free to leave a comment.

Convert any text to MP3 audio for use in your iPod or Mp3 player.

Logitech introduces a new application to make video calling easier.

Yesterday, we noted that “Web 2.0” had been recognized as the “one millionth English word” by The Global Language Monitor. Today, the AP Stylebook, which you might remember from journalism classes, has officially added Twitter.

The significance of this is that journalists now have an official way that they should – if they’re following the Stylebook – refer to the microblogging service in any articles that mention the service. So how does The Associated Press define proper Twitter usage, and what new ammunition do grammar trolls have for assailing would-be Twitter commentators?

How we acquire, use, and trust information is changing. Blogs and RSS are indicators (not drivers) of a much larger change in the information ecology.

A simple procedure for setting up an RSS aggregator. It is recommended that you view RSS in Plain English first.

Twitter is a micro-blogging, social networking platform that asks users to answer, “What Are You Doing?” in 140 characters or less. It allows people to share breaking news, links, information and reach out to community and customers.