Formats

New online formats are appearing virtually every day, so it's nearly impossible to put them in a box today in a way that will make sense tomorrow. But here are the basic three we'll talk about tonight.

Blogs
The grandaddy of them all, the blog, is the tried and true format. Basically, if you have internet access, you can have a blog. I'm not kidding --- watch. Blogs cover every topic under the sun, from a travel journal to blogging the US Supreme Court.

Podcasts

Podcasts are like a multi-media blog -- basically, instead of writing your thoughts you record them via sound or video. Here is an intellectual property lecture podcast and here is another legal podcaster.

Wikis

There's the original, Wikipedia. An online encyclopedia that has been created entirely by reader contributions, Wikipedia showed the potential. Now, however, Wikis are being used as a growing medium for online collaboration both internally and externally. For example, a marketing company with employees spread around the globe can set up a Wiki online that the employees can access to create a marketing project. Just to show you what I'm talking about, here is a Wiki created for the purpose of this seminar about intellectual property and the lawyers who practice in the field.