Essential Blogging will be available in stores in August. Aimed at a technology-literate O'Reilly audience, Essential Blogging shows how to install and use the major weblog tools: Blogger, Radio Userland, Blosxom, and Movable Type.
Written by bloggers (Cory Doctorow, Rael Dornfest, J. Scott Johnson, Shelley Powers, Benjamin Trott, and Mena G. Trott) who use the tools every day (and, in the case of Movable Type and Blosxom, who wrote the tools!), Essential Blogging aims to be useful without being boring. We need your help to make sure it meets that promise.
Please download the PDFs of the tech review draft of Essential Blogging and give it a read. Is it good? Did we forget to cover something? Did we talk about something that's not really useful? Our goal isn't to be definitive and show you everything that these tools are capable of, but instead to give the beginning blogger enough to be dangerous. Did I say dangerous? I meant productive.
The book isn't aimed at people who already blog, although many such readers will find useful information such as customizing their blogging software. Picture your coworkers who haven't discovered blogging yet--they know how to work their computer, they've seen a couple of blogs and figure they want to run one themselves. You should be able to give them this book and it'll educate them about choices of software and hosting, walk them through installing and using their chosen software.
The zip file contains a cover letter that explains what we're looking for and how to send in your comments. I'll be sending the authors your comments on Tuesday the 28th, so have them in by the end of next Monday!
In addition, we're also looking for contributions to a "Blogging Voices" chapter. Pass on your words of wisdom and experience.
I look forward to your comments!
--Nat
Nathan Torkington is an editor, co-chair of the O'Reilly Bioinformatics Technology Conference, and content planner for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention.
