‘Blogs are the new phone in modern society’, according to online coffee retailer Boca Java. In a report issued by the company it states that there are now around 50 million blogs on the Web – with the blogging community expanding by around 65,000 a day. So significant a group is this new breed that the company has decided to target bloggers as a consumer market with a new line of coffee called Blogger’s Blends. They're holding a contest where bloggers get to design and name a new blend of coffee. The climax of the contest is a prize - a  free year of coffee. Certainly some form of energy-giving drug is required to keep up a blog, but my efforts pale into insignificance when compared to those of the anonymous Iraqi woman whose blog, Baghdad Burning, has been nominated for a literary prize. The blog, started in 2003, recounts how the Iraq war has affected the daily lives of ordinary citizens and has been nominated for the most valuable award for non-fiction – the Samuel Johnson Prize. Baghdad Burning is being published by the independent publishers Marion Boyars and is among 19 candidates for the award. Other contenders include Untold Stories by Alan Bennett, After The Victorians by AN Wilson, and a biography of Mrs Beeton by Kathryn Hughes.