Reporters Without Borders has given Global Voices a sneak peak at the Handbook For Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents before its official Thursday release. Click here to download the full booklet. Thanks to Julien Pain for his hard work on this project. It is a valuable gift to the world's bloggers. Lately there has been a proliferation of blogging guides published in English, but almost all of them are aimed at Americans and Western Europeans. Or they're meant for companies and organizations who want to use blogging for smarter P.R., “knowledge management,” or internal communication purposes, or for people who want to turn their blogs into little commercial media enterprises. Then there are the articles about how you can improve your social and romantic life through blogging… or how to use your blog to make yourself notorious, get on TV and become famous… The Reporters Without Borders Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents is not for any of those purposes. It is the first truly useful book I've seen aimed at the kinds of bloggers featured here at Global Voices every day: People who have views and information that they want to share with the world beyond their own national borders. They are often people whose perspectives are not well represented in their own country's media, and certainly not well reported by the international media. Sometimes they are political dissidents, but usually not. Mainly, they are just ordinary citizens with a passion to communicate with the world – and no easier way to do so than by writing, podcasting, and posting pictures on their own blogs. The Handbook for Bloggers is for people who want to be serious participants in the emergent online global conversation: How to set up a quality, credible blog. How to get it noticed. And.. if you're in a country where there government might not like what you're saying, how to avoid getting in trouble when you by-pass the information gatekeepers and talk directly to the world. As Julien writes in his introduction to the booklet, blogging can be revolutionary in countries where freedom of speech is not respected: Blogging is a powerful tool of freedom of expression that has enthused millions of ordinary people. Passive consumers of information have become energetic participants in a new kind of journalism – what US blog pioneer Dan Gillmor calls “grassroots journalism… by the people, for the people” (see chapter on “What ethics should bloggers have?”). Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest. Plenty of bloggers have been hounded or thrown in prison. One of the contributors to this handbook, Arash Sigarchi, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for posting several messages online that criticised the Iranian regime. His story illustrates how some bloggers see what they do as a duty and a necessity, not just a hobby. They feel they are the eyes and ears of thousands of other Internet users. The Handbook for Bloggers is useful for beginners and veteran bloggers alike. It starts out with several introductory chapters, explaining how blogs differ from other kinds of websites, blogging terminology, how to select a blogging tool and web-host, and how to get started. The middle chapters focus on tips that even veteran bloggers will find useful. Journalist, blogger and We the Media author Dan Gillmor tackles the issue of journalistic credibility and standards. Journalist Mark Glaser offers tips on how to “make your blog shine.” I learned a lot from the chapter on how to get your blog picked up by search engines, written by internet consultant Olivier Andrieu. The most inspiring section is the “Personal Accounts,” short essays from bloggers around the world about why they blog and why blogging matters: The final set of chapters takes a hard-core technical look at how bloggers like Arash might avoid arrest, how bloggers like Chan'ad and RFN might avoid being “outed,” and how bloggers and blog-readers in countries like China where the internet is heavily censored can get around the political “firewalls.” Global Voices Co-Founder Ethan Zuckerman has written a fabulous Guide to Anonymous Blogging. In a chapter aptly called “Technical Ways to Get Round Censorship,” the Citizenlab‘s Nart Villneuve gives the most thorough guide I've seen to getting around internet censorship “firewalls” by using proxy servers and other fun tools.