So blogger, you say you’ll publish what I write instantly on the web do you? And there’s no editor - no filter - so when I idly scribble the world gets to look on or (better idea) ignore me totally? Is this freedom at last? If so, what price this freedom? The obvious problem (for a journalist) is that no-one is paying for this writing and I’ve no sub-editor to blame for my spelly mistakes. But these are worldly worries. Face it – what I’m really scared of is that in the noise of the Internet, nobody will notice me. And why would they?

There are millions of web loggers, live journal writers, bloggers or whatever you want to call them, out there. There they go, tappety-tap, updating their web pages, putting up a journal entry, punching in a comment, or posting to somebody else’s site. They talk about anything you can think of, tell each other of good articles they saw on their way to this particular page, and give accounts of what they found interesting that day, whether their day was shopping in Dunnes Stores or making preparations to leave their home in Baghdad. Of course America has the most weblogs, but Ireland’s getting in on the act too.

I’m writing this to find out what the deal is with web-logs while I’m writing one. Feel free to give me your opinions and observations (like how to sort out my punctuation glitches) and you never know… this might get published in a paper newspaper – after the editor has agreed, and the sub-editor has ironed out the typos, and I’ve got paid, of course.