"Estonia is now developing an e-academy to teach ex-Soviet states how to adopt this kind of technology.

Latvia and Lithuania have signed up.

To encourage people to use the internet, there are 500 public internet access points in Estonia, one of the highest numbers in Europe.

If you want to find one, you just look for an @ symbol on a road sign. "

There are thousands of blogs on the web and they are often interlinked, creating an eco-system of ever-changing ideas on the net.

"Google's buy is a recognition that the news in future will be reported by ordinary people with their own particular bias on stories," said Mr Holahan (CEO of Newbay Software)

"Google buying Blogger validates the importance of weblogs to the internet ecosystem. You can't devalue people and the things they care about."

"It's safe to assume that, before he flushed his reputation down the toilet, Trent Lott had absolutely no idea what a blog was.

"He may have a clue now. Internet opinion pages like Instapundit ([link]), run by University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, and Talking Points Memo ([link]),from leftie political columnist Josh Marshall -- were among the first to latch on to ABCNews.com's brief item on Lott's racist comments during Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday bash.

"And they kept focusing on Lott's hateful past -- until the national press corps finally had to take notice.

'Joshua Marshall, whose talkingpointsmemo.com is must reading for the politically curious, (is) more than anyone else, responsible for making Trent Lott's offensive remarks the issue they deserve to be,' noted Paul Krugman in his New York Times column."