Blogs appear to be all the rage these days. Everywhere I turn they are in your face.

I went to Dr. Hardy’s for my six-month checkup last week and there was a Business Week in the waiting room. The cover story was about blogs and it said, basically, that if your company didn’t have one, you better get one or you’ll be left behind.

And the key to a successful blog, it said, was being linked from other blogs.

Big companies like General Motors, it seems. are hooking up with bloggers, perhaps even paying them, to give good reviews to vehicles. They are turning away from traditional media advertising like television, radio

and even newspapers.

There are millions of blogs on the Web, most of which are inane, like this one at times, but there are few that can match the new huffingtonpost.com in terms of inanity.

I read about it first in the New York Times about a week ago. Arianna Huffington’s new blog launched Monday amid great media attention. For some reason, I can’t access from my computer at work – which turned out to be a blessing — but was able to reach Tuesday night from home.

Huffingtonpost’s hook is that it is populated by celebrities. It’s supposed to be a liberal alternative to the Drudge Report, mixing mostly liberal opinion with news. I spent about an hour on the site and read blogs by Jerry Brown, Gary Hart, John Cusack, and Ellen Degeneres. Joe Scarborough, Bill Maher, none of which did much for me. I did not bookmark it. It’s mostly just self-indulgent tripe – while I enjoy John Cusack’s movies I have no interest in his thoughts on Hunter S. Thompson’s funeral, or that Ellen Degeneres is upset that wild horses are being sold off federal lands.

I like the idea, though of lots of people blogging at one site – perhaps we’ll work on doing something similar with this site as it evolves. I think it would be cool to have lots of divergent local opinion on one site. If you’re interested in being a regular blogger with us, give me a call at 934-9611 or email me at andy.rutsok@suffolknewsherald.com.