Recently (at TED), I heard James Surowiecki (author, The Wisdom of Crowds) talk about blogs. He mentioned that one reason people get so engaged in blogs and in self-publishing is the build-up of reputational capital.
There are so many people out there doing so many amazing "public service" initiatives on the Internet. One that I came across today (via Micropersuasion) is Preetam Rai's tutorial on using Bloglines (an RSS aggregator). I use NewsGator myself (and Trillian with the News plugin at home where I'm not running Outlook). However, Rai's tutorial gives a good overview on the types of feeds available as well as on the in's and out's of using Bloglines. Really great work! Thanks, Preetam!