Via AITGWN, here is a very interesting article on web activity and blogging from the Wall Street Journal about counting, scale and relevance:

...the number of blogs isn't really that informative, since so many blogs are abandoned soon after they're launched. It's more useful to look at the volume of blog posts. According to a presentation by Technorati's Mr. Sifry at the blog conference, daily volume is 800,000 to 900,000 posts. But Ms. Glance says BlogPulse, which says it has more blogs in its index, counts only between 350,000 and 450,000 posts a day -- and that number has held steady for about a year, even as the total number of blogs has accelerated. Regardless of who's right, notice that these number are well below estimates for the total number of blogs, countering the image of blogging as a multiple-times-a-day activity. Ms. Glance says that based on her research of activity in January, the typical active blogger posted an update just once every 10 days. The total number of active blogs -- those with a post in the past 30 days -- was 3.5 million on May 1, according to BlogPulse. That was up just 30% from last September, even as the site found that the total number of blogs increased nearly 200% over that time. That suggests there's a lot of dead air out there.

I don't know if I'd be calling a once-a-monther "active". [Cyn might has something to say on that point.] What kind of readership would that gather? Anyway, perhaps one of the first actually analytical articles about blog use and blog relevance.

PS: it appears I am up early this because I am sick...or maybe I just need coffee. Feeling you are getting a cold is so close to that part of your life before a coffee.