[adamlangsner]

Both. If you want to learn about a specific subject / gain a new skill, then books are the way to go. They tend to be more informationally dense and comprehensive as compared to blog posts. Books tend to be of a higher quality because of the economics involved. It's much harder to get a book published than to create a blog, so there's more curation of what gets published which is for your benefit; there's a higher standard for the content. Also, a lot of blogs are used as marketing channels, trying to sell you something. this can corrupt the information in the blog post because they're trying to sell you something other than the blog post. With the book, you're paying for the book so the incentives between you and the author are more aligned.

But, periodicals, blog posts and forums are good to keep apprised of new things going on in the industry and they can be used to get new ideas like you said and as jumping off points to read books. I often see something referenced online, want to learn more and then buy a book on the subject. I like to think of blog posts as more like op-eds than factual works.