"Today it's my birthday and my grandson, who is very stingy, gave me a blog." So reads the first entry by one of the world's oldest Webloggers, Maria Amelia Lopez, who, at the age of 95, has surprised herself by a sudden conversion from Web-illiterate to cybercelebrity.

"At first I thought a blog was just a type of paper notebook," said Lopez, a great grandmother. "When I saw my grandson using the Internet, it caught my attention. I said to myself 'What's this? You can find out about anything. I want an Internet!'" With 60,000 regular readers so far, Lopez's homely mix of memory and chat, available at amis95.blogspot.com, attracts regular readers from around the world and has put her back in touch with the younger generation in a way she had never imagined.

"No one pays any attention to old women any more. Not many people love us. But I was surprised by the Internet, because young people who were 18 years of age, or 14 or 15, tell me about their lives and what they think and ask my advice," said Lopez.