A Web log (or blog) is often described as an online diary, but they have developed into websites that may contain commentary on events and media (such as reviews), original work (such as fiction, or comics), or contain various other media besides text, with video now becoming fairly common. As such, the main feature of blogging software is that it allows the blog's author to regularly and easily add content to it, and this content is typically displayed in chronological order (much like a diary), usually from most recent to least recent. Blogs also provide some functionality to the reader, such as the ability to search through the various entries, or to leave comments for the author and other readers. Blogs can also be written by more than one person, and the software will usually keep track of which author has written which entry.

A wiki is a content management system that allows people to view, add or modify the content that it contains. Unlike a blog, which always has a specific person or group of people acting as an author, a wiki usually lets anyone edit the content, and can be described as a collaborative content creation effort by all of its users. Here are some of the common features:

Prior registration to use the service is not typically necessary. This is meant to encourage everyone to contribute, although it does mean that vandalism can more easily occur.

The editing process is often simple, and requires no review procedure prior to publication. In other words, changes are immediately made available to everyone. Again, this is to encourage high levels of contribution.

A wiki system may keep track of the changes made to the content, allowing the users to see the individual changes and when they were made. It also makes it easy to revert content back to an older version if necessary.

One of the main advantages of a wiki is that the knowledge and content that it contains is community-based. This might not mean that the content is more accurate, just more representative of its users' views. A good wiki page should contain a wide variety of views, and as such censorship is frowned upon in many wiki sites. Another advantage is that the system allows for information to be kept up to date with minimal maintenance by any one group of people.

Sakai is an online educational course management system. It allows for managing course resources (notes, exercises, answers etc.), supplies forums, chat rooms, surveys, electronic hand-in facilities, schedulers and calendars, among various other features. The system allows both teachers and students to make use of it, offering them each features appropriate to the different roles that they play. At the University of Cape, our Sakai instance is called Vula, and all students have access to it.

A digital library, like its real-world counterpart, is a collection of books and reference materials, albeit with the exception that the content is electronic and usually provided over a network. An example of a digital library is Project Gutenberg, a collection of freely available books no longer under copyright protection.

Digital libraries have a number of advantages of traditional libraries, including increased capacity, lower costs and easier accessibility. A digital library can contain large volumes of information that compared to the amount of physical space that it requires. It can also be cheaper to operate one as it requires less maintenance and staff costs, and being available over a network means that it can be used to by people all over the world if the library is made available over the Internet.

However, there are also some disadvantages. For example, there are concerns that copyright issues are hampering the effectiveness of digital libraries, while the sheer volume of information has caused the traditional techniques of finding information to become inefficient. Additionally, many people find it difficult to read long documents on a computer screen, and so they are often printed out, costing money and wasting paper.