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By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net How do you create blog? What copyright rules should be followed? How can you ea rn from blogging? Blogger and editor of Digital Filipino Janette Toral hopes to answer these questions in her late st book "Blogging from Home," which she launched at the recent Internet and Mob ile Marketing Association of the Philippines Summit in Makati City. Toral, who has been blogging for the last five years, said that she has been th inking of coming out with a book on blogging since 2006 but realized she needed to understand the blogging community more in particular its dynamics. "I hope to share how [people] could make a presence in the blogosphere and perh aps earn a little, without having to be so gung ho," Toral said in an interview . Watch this video interview with Toral. The book is, however, only taking into consideration blogging trends in the Phi lippines because, as Toral stressed, she would not want to sound like a true ex pert in the subject of blogging. On the other hand, she said she will have to market the book in Australia and t he US, specifically targeted at Filipinos abroad. Toral said the blogging community in the Philippines has grown and among the mo st popular blogs were cause-oriented. These blogs contained information that we re not easily accessible in other forms or web portals. She also referred to th e recently conducted Top Ten Emerging Influential Blogs 2008, which she organized that recognized bloggers that mattered. As it is, a growing number of Filipino Internet users are reading bloggers to g et information they want. As such, bloggers are becoming publishers themselves. "Blogging is serious business in a sense that you have to have a lot of content , and depth. It also uses multimedia. Blogs have to have authentic and unique i nformation for people to stick," she said.

AT LEAST, that's what Six Ap art hopes to achieve as it upgraded TypePad and Movable Type. Make no mistake about it: More companies will see blogging as a vital business tool, and with its upgraded blogging solutions Six Apart aims to help these fir ms create full-blown business sites. Here's an excerpt from the Reuters story that came out on eWeek.com:

"Blogging is evolving," said Chris Alden, gen eral manager of the professional business unit at Six Apart. "Maybe the era of pundit blogging is maturing: The adoption of blogging for personal business and productivity purposes is exploding." The 150-employee San Francisco-based company is introducing an upgrade to its s oftware for business blogging, known as Movable Type 4, that allow businesses t o create and manage thousands of blogs inside or outside their organizations. In addition, the company is expanding TypePad, its hosted blogging software use d by professional bloggers and publishers, to allow users not just to update bl ogs, but also to add more traditional Web pages for storing static information. TypePad is working with Microsoft's Windows Live Writer, its tool for publishin g Web pages offline without an Internet connection. Once the user reconnects, t he site is updated.

Do you have a business that relies on blogging? Are you u sing blogs for your intranet? Have you helped companies set up their blogs? Tell us how you're using blogging to gain a competitive advantage -- we'd love to hear from you and share your success story :)

HEH, good thing I'm officially blogging for INQUIRER.net :) Security experts are warning companies about the risks posed by employees who u se their corporate laptops and other office-issued mobile devices for blogging. Here's an excerpt from the SearchSecurity.com story:

He noted there are approximately 100 million blogs across cyberspac e and many of them are used by organized criminal outfits to push gambling and pornography. When an employee does personal blogging on a company machine and c orporate email account, blog databases are able to suck in a wealth of email da ta. Digital miscreants can then use sophisticated data mining software to scan the blogs for proprietary information that may be sitting in some of those stor ed messages, he said.

"They can analyze millions of messages and use what they find -- tr ade secrets, for example -- for hostile purposes," he said. Over time, he said, online thieves can take seemingly unimportant details from those blog messages and piece them together in a way that allows them to see th e big picture of what a company may be up to. Ulsch said companies need to start taking the blogging phenomenon more seriousl y from a security perspective, and that a good starting point is to put a blog restriction policy in place.

THE DONALDS W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona Sta te University has released an interesting study on business journalism blogging . Of course, INQUIRER.net also believes in blogging business topics, as INQUIRER .net business editor Salve Duplito's Money Smarts personal finance blog shows. Here's an excerpt:

TEMPE, ARIZ.--Three-fourths of the nation's largest newspapers now offer blogs on business-related topics, according to a study released today by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University. These popular online Web journals written by reporters get breaking news to rea ders more quickly, according to 60 percent of the business bloggers who respond ed to the study. However, more than half of respondents also said this also takes away from thei r regular reporting time. "Newspapers, reporters and businesses are grappling with the pros and cons of b logging," said Andrew Leckey, Director of the Reynolds Center, which funded the study. "Our practical research was designed to see how widespread blogging on business topics actually is, what's propelling it and how it affects the overal l news process."

I STUMBLED upon this blog called EntrePinoys Atbp. while browsing through PinoyBlogosphere, a blog aggre gator. First, the blog contains useful information for entrepreneur wannabes. F rom making ramen, spaghetti noodles, etc. to aroma c andles, this blog offers a lot of ideas which will keep you saying, "Why didn't I think of that?" The blog is divided into different topics from tips (for more tips check out ov er very own Money Smarts), from doing business as an SME, to franchising, etc. It has already been featured by Annalyn Jusay for the Manila Bulletin and is currently among the nomin ees in the 20 07 Philippine Blog Awards. The blog is maintained by Eu-Leh who lives in Riyadh. But his hometown indicate s he's a Filipino and was born in Las Piñas City.

THE GROWING INQUIRER.net Blogs network has rolled out its third blog after @play and Blog Addicts< /a> with the launch of INQUIRER.net business editor Salve Duplito's Money Smarts. Duplito describes her blog as a place "where people can talk freely about perso nal finance, business, financial independence, the economy and my personal favo rite, giving the rat race a kick on the butt." Here's an excerpt from Duplito's first blog post:

Look around when youâre malling or just eating out. There are milli onaires around us, never doubt that. Iâm talking about rich people â none of th at millionaire-at-heart blah. Iâm talking about individuals who have worked har d in their professions, and made it their business to understand money. People who want to have a full life and who donât live payday to payday. OK, so the word âmillionaireâ might be stretching it a little bit, but just for the sake of literary appeal, letâs call them your neighborhood millionaires. F or sure they arenât the Henry Sy-types -- they drive modest cars, some even liv e in rented homes (thatâll be the subject of another blog!) but their kids go t o the best schools and they donât drink Starbucks coffee everyday. According to Duplito, Friday blog entries called So What Chocnut? we will try to make sense of business stories that matter to us, while Money Myth Busters will put financial tips to the test. Stay tuned for more blogs in the INQUIRER.net Blogs network.