Just when I start to try to get my head around all the various blogging tools and the use of RSS, there's this report about a coming fight about the RSS specs. Evidently, a power struggle over RSS technology has developed, which "pits blog pioneer Dave Winer against opponents at IBM, Google and others clamoring for a different format" [CNET News.com].

I'm still working on understanding the simple parts of blogging and RSS. For example, I'd love to be able to include a list of my favorite news sites in the right side column, and have the current top 3-5 stories on those sites automatically listed every time this page is opened. More importantly (depending on whether I ever develop this particular blog into something interesting for others and not just myself), I'd like to syndicate this particular blog. This is not something that's available with the free version of Blogger that I'm using. Moveable Type looks like a great blogging tool, but the requirements are such that I'm not in the position to use it. I did read last week that the group who puts this out is starting a blogging hosting service, called TypePad, ranging in price from $4.95 to $14.95 per month. I'll keep an eye on this.