It's perhaps one of the more frustrating experiences I've endured in a while - all the more so because the content is actually good. 

Maggie over at SMG (via the Canadian Cybrarian) points to Deloitte's foray into blogging with the Women's Initiative Blog... although the purist in me wonders if it is, in fact, a "real" blog? 

No RSS (yet) although it does have a more traditional email "alerting" system... no time/date stamp on the posts (yet)... the frustration of having to include the title of the post when you actually want to comment (grrrrrr... for the inconvenience of it all!). One might want to cry foul.

Then again, who cares?

Does it matter that it doesn't include all the bells and whistles that bloggers - and many blog readers - become accustomed to? Is the definition of what constitutes a blog so ingrained in stone as to lack any flexibility whatsoever?

The content is entertaining and informative, and focused on an important issue that will obviously drive considerable debate and engagement. The posts appear to be regular - though it's kind of hard to tell since there's no date stamp on the archived posts. The author(s) is/are - since it appears that guest bloggers are a regular occurence - generally open and personable, and have something interesting to say. And that's what a blog ultimately should be, no matter how easy (or difficult) it is to get at the information (though I'd really love to read comments from past posts... anyone, anyone, Bueller?)

As an aside, and according to Maggie, the site was internal for the first 18 months of its existance prior to being launched externally - which, in my view, demonstrates the importance of testing the waters first and finding your voice before jumping in... a best practice that I also espouse to my clients.

Update: I stand corrected (thanks Maggie), the site does include a link to Deloitte's RSS feeds - although I'm not sure if the blog is included (though I hope it will be soon). Neither of my feed detectors (IE7 and Firefox) picked it up.