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by jason mcdonald, senior editor | read other blog posts

what is a blog? years ago there were these strange organizations called newspapers, or in our industry, magazines. they are dying out, in case you didn't notice. so many journalists (or former journalists) now write part- or full-time, and 'blog' this content on the internet. many companies have joined in the ring with their own (self-serving?) blogs, which if you like the company can still be a good resource. here are some thoughts about blogs in electronic design, especially in embedded systems. happy blogging!

contents of this post:

1. blog philosophy - blogger and reader beware
2. blog example: embeddedgurus.net
3. blog examplea: windows embedded & ventureblog
4. feedback - read it
5. feedback - give it

blog philosophy - blogger and reader beware

Blog. Look it up on Wikipedia, here , if you'd like. A blog is a very quick, often very unedited stream of information about a topic. As you probably know, there are blogs on all sorts of topics, especially the mainstream press. One of the most famous is the Huffington Post , founded by Arianna Huffington, who after her failed bid to become governer of California went into the blogosphere and became one of its most successful. Huffington even wrote a book about blogging, The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging .

So that's mainstream blogging. In our industry, what you have to realize, is that in many cases blogs are the children of companies, and these companies are almost always trying to sell you something. That's not necessarily bad, but don't expect corporate blogs to be objective and independent. But, heck, don't expect the mainstream media to be unbiased as nowadays, the industry's mainstream press organizations (think EE Times, Embedded Systems Programming, RTC Group, or Open Systems Media get much (most?) of their content from what is euphemistically called "contributed content".

So blogging eliminates the middleman and gets you right to the source of the disinformation. As always, reader beware!

blog example: embeddedgurus.net

Let's take an example of a 'good' blog, embeddedgurus.net, at http://www.embeddedgurus.net/ . This blog is the brainchild of Michael Barr, an expert on the design of embedded computer systems. He has provided expert witness testimony in federal court, appeared on PBS’ American Business Review, and been quoted in various newspapers. He is also the author of two books and more than forty articles on related subjects. Michael is busy commenting on things, embedded, and plugging his consulting and training firm, Netrino . No harm there, but most of this blog is really about consultants who are true gurus in the field, showing off their knowledge and looking to build relationship with potential clients.

Another blogger who often appears here is our good friend, Niall Murphy, of Ireland. His company, Panelsoft is a great resource if you or your company are looking for expert help in designing user interfaces for embedded systems. Niall also has a nice list of books and websites on embedded GUIs, here . So this sort of blog is both self-promotional and a nice resource for you to read up on some technical issues in embedded systems.

blog examplea: windows embedded & ventureblog

Another example of blogging in our industry is what you might call shameless, self-promotional corporate blogging in favor of one company and its products. Not that this is bad, but be aware when you read this sort of blog that you are reading the company's 'party line' as it were. The best - and Mike Hall's is probably the best - are still 'selling you' on using the company's products, but that said, they are doing a good job at it, and the product that they have to sell is a respectable and useful product. Enter Windows CE and Mike Hall.

Mike Hall is a product marketing manager at Microsoft, and he maintains a very up-to-date blog on Windows Embedded at http://blogs.msdn.com/mikehall/default.aspx . What's great about his blog is is is both very techie about Microsoft's Windows Embedded products, and Mike also highlights interesting announcements for the Windows Community, such as the recent winners of the Spark contest. "The finalists for the SPARK contest have been named – this from the SPARK contest web site..."

So if you are into Windows CE or considering it, this sort of blog is a good one.

Finally, another example of a blog type would be the industry blog. These blogs like TechCrunch or Ventureblog really function like magazines or newspapers used to, and they chart information and trends. This is what eg3.com 's blog will ultimately be like. A quick and dirty way to keep up with industry events, and highlight the most important news and technologies.

If you are interested in venture capital or angel investing, here's a good one: http://www.ventureblog.com/ . It's about VC and Angel Investing, mainly in Tech and mainly in the Valley. It does do one thing that annoys me about blogs - you can look forever for a succinct summary of what the blog is about. So you are confronted with a stream of instant posts, and if you stumble across it from Google, you might have some trouble figuring out what it's actually about, and if it's for you. (Note to self: add an explanation for this to the eg3.com blog...)

Fortunately, eg3.com tracks all sorts of blogs for the embedded systems and electronics industry. You can find them by keyword on the website, and you can also do a quick search for them here . If you know of others, please let us know, via email .

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Express Logic develops, markets and supports the ThreadX® real-time operating system (RTOS), NetX™ TCP/IP networking stack, USBX™ USB stack, and FileX® embedded file system, and PEGX™ GUI toolkit for embedded applications. ThreadX is a royalty-free, full source code, small-footprint, low-overhead RTOS that is extremely easy to learn and use. ThreadX is one of the most widely deployed RTOS products in the world, with over 700 million products based on ThreadX.