There is a sphere of meta-web technology surrounding weblogs. I mean, there’s entire protocols devoted to making these things talk to each other, increasing the connected-ness of the web – we’ve truly created a blogosphere. I’m not sure that I think about that…
However, my unflagging interest in technology requires that I learn more about how these things work. The site www.optiniche.com that has an excellent post on trackbacks in general – probably the best simple explanation I’ve seen. There’s another page that has a pretty good HOWTO at tamba2.org.uk. There is a more complete Guide to Wordpress Pingbacks and Trackbacks at the Untwisted Vortex site.