Welcome to our shiney new HedgeCo Websites (HCW) blog!Over the last year of operating HedgeCo Websites we”ve found that the key to successful projects is a clear and informal communication. Whether you are an existing HCW client, a hedge fund manager interested in our platform, or a technologist/designer who is interested in our technology we are interested in communicating with you, and hearing any comments that you have.In this spirit, we”ve set up this blog to create an easy way to let all our visitors stay up-to-date with what’’s going on at the HCW HQ, and provide an informal forum for interaction between the users of our products and the HCW team.Following are some of the topices that you”re likely to find discussed here:

• Annoucements of newly completed sites to the HCW family
• New feature annoucements
• Clarifications regarding Frequently Asked Questions
• Posts discussing some of the project management issues which we encounter
• Interviews with developers, project managers
• Conference / Event news
• HCW News
• Links to other sites of interest
• … and any other fun topics that we feel like blogging about.

If you are new to blogging please visit the pages that we have set up about blogging, so that you can familiarize yourselves with the medium.Let the blogging begin.

A blog (or weblog) is an journal which is frequently updated by one or more authors (bloggers). The entries are displayed in reverse chronological order.

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.

The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999. This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb (”to blog,” meaning “to edit one’’s weblog or to post to one’’s weblog”).

In the last 2 years blogging has picked up steam in the corporate world. Market research shows that 35 percent of large companies plan to institute corporate Weblogs in 2006. According to the research, combined with the existing deployed base of 34 percent, nearly 70 percent of all corporate website operators will have implemented corporate blogs by the end of 2006.

More than 5% of the Fortune 500 companies blog externally.