Syllabus Magazine does a great review on Trackbacks for the uninitiated, oddly though they have no trackback facility.
TrackBack: Where Blogs Learn Their Places | Syllabus Magazine

“Someone, let’s say Tom, has written a post on his own Weblog that comments on a post in another person’s Weblog, say Paula’s. How does Paula know or learn about Tom’s interest and reference to her post? Tom could have gone to Paula’s Weblog and posted a note there saying he liked Paula’s comment and wrote about it on his blog at http://toms_log.myblog.com. However, this takes an extra degree of effort, and is just the sort of communication barrier that keeps like-minded people from forming communities. What is needed is a form of remote comment—rather than posting the comment directly on Paula’s Weblog, Tom posts his comment about what Paula has written on his own Weblog, then he sends a TrackBack ping to notify Paula.”

In what is becoming a more regular, and welcomed feature at Forbes.com Davide Dukcevich has critiqued a number of sports blogs, an often over looked sector of the blogosphere, and an interesting diversion from a regular dose of business, politics and current affairs.
Best Sports Blogs | Forbes.com
“The best sports blogs are those that traffic in polemics. This may be because legitimate news sites aren’t allowed to tally the number of athletes caught with marijuana or the incidents of violence by sports parents. Badjocks.com, our favorite sports blog site, fills that void. F&@*edsports.com offers more of sports stars behaving badly. Look for these muckrakers to flower as the football season, the World Series and the Kobe Bryant case swing into full gear.”

Why blogs could be bad for business | Guardian Unlimited

“Being able to publish words, pictures and – ultimately – multimedia to the web without specialised geek skills will remain a important advance, and have a broad impact on the nature of online media.

But the nature of how a business communicates – both internally and to the outside world – has never been as hindered by such technical considerations. There are broader concerns that suggest business weblogging will not be adopted in the way being touted today.”

Scott Watermasysk On .NET reports that Microsoft may be considering going into blogging through either MSN or Sharepoint, with this quote for the forthcoming Microsoft PDC conference from Robert McLaws
“By now, you’re probably familiar with weblogging to some extent. What you may not have known is the extent that blogging is used inside Microsoft. In this BOF session, the heavyweights of the blogosphere will chair a discussion on where blogging is at and where it’s headed. Where does .NET fit into all this? Can we expect any blogging services from MSN? What about bloging with the newest version of Sharepoint?”

An interesting concept in the future development of blogging:
Toward a Weblogging Empire | Wired.comJason Calacanis is back.

The former editor of the Silicon Alley Reporter, the once high-flying chronicle of Manhattan’s high-tech mania, plans this week to launch a new venture, Weblogsinc, that intends to make a go of publishing business-to-business blogs.

Essentially, Calacanis’ goal is to turn Weblogsinc into an umbrella for blogs, a for-profit center that dishes daily on as many as 300 topics and scores revenue from sources like advertising, events and classified listings. He expects the topics to fall under four main categories: media, finance, technology and life sciences.

OJR continues to hit the mark on important ethical issues in the blogosphere
Weblogs Are Pushing the Newsroom Envelope on Writers’ Spontaneity | OJR.com

The blogosphere gets fired up when Daniel Weintraub’s California Insider gets pre-edited after a controversial posting. Should news sites edit their blogs? Here are tips for determining the best practices for online newspaper blogs.