Some good links from around the FOX Sports blogosphere (can anybody come up with a better name than "blogosphere"???)

• The Next Great Sportswriter judges have launched a blog. Check it out for tips on what they're looking for in the NGS contest.
• Jay pontificates on why there are so few female sports journalists, along with his picks for most likely females to win the NGS
• Jon asks whether you'd take steroids for $3M (good question--I don't think I would, but then, they wouldn't help me do my job better either!)
• Finally, Con Chapman has a great take on bringing beach volleyball to Iraq

Enjoy! I'm off to the Christmas Chanukah etc etc Holiday party! Kareem

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." Instead of having to come back to your favorite blog every day to see whether new content has been posted for you to read, you can subscribe to a site's "RSS feed." Then, using an RSS feed reader, like FeedDemon (for Windows) or NetNewsWire (for Mac), you can find out whenever a blog has been updated, without needing to check it yourself.

Still not sure what that means? Think of a microwave. When you stick dinner in the microwave, you could come back and check the microwave every twenty seconds to see if you're food's done - but that would be ridiculous! Instead, of course, the microwave beeps to let you know when the mac and cheese is warm.

In the same way, an RSS feed reader saves you from having to constantly check your favorite blogs. Rather, your feed reader tells you when there's new content to read -- and all you do is tell it which blogs to keep track of!

Your FOX Sports blog offers an RSS feed with summaries by default, which you can change in your Blog Settings.

If you're a registered member of Fox Sports Blogs, when you browse through other users' blogs, you'll come across an "Add to Favorites" button in the sidebar for each one.  In fact, even our blog has one, over there on the right.

When you click "Add to Favorites," you'll add the blog you're reading to the list of favorite blogs that's displayed on your own Fox Sports Blog.  That way, it's easy for you to find your favorite blogs again -- and you can show your readers which blogs you frequent.

Good question!

A blog is a personal publishing platform.

With talk radio, you have to wait for the DJ to answer your call before you can share your well-reasoned opinions about what coaches have their heads way up their behinds.

With a blog, you can tell the world -- instantly.

On FOXSports.com, your blog is your space. You can voice your thoughts on anything and everything. And when you share your blog with your friends, they'll be able to read what you have to say, and even to comment back to you.

And, of course, once you start reading other blogs from other guys here at FOX Sports, you'll probably want to blog about their blogs, and share your thoughts on the teams and players that they're discussing.

Categories are used to "tag" your blog posts. That way, your readers can quickly find everything you've ever said about the Philadelphia Eagles or NASCAR or Kobe Bryant. You can attach as many categories to a blog post as you'd like!

If you'd rather not tag your posts, of course, you don't have to. Categories are completely optional.

To add a category to your post, just start typing in the "Category" field. Some suggestions for what category you're after may appear as you type; you can use our predefined categories, or create new categories of your own.