I'd like to create a blog similar in style to http://tastespotting.com where the site aggregates content from other blogs and displays them in a thumbnail post which on clicking goes to the specific blog.
I'm not sure where to start with this and was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction. I'm familiar with Wordpress as a platform if this might help.
Any suggestions most appreciated!
If the blogs exist separately and they all have RSS or ATOM feeds as most do, you can use a blog aggregator to do this.
The best known example is planetplanet - http://www.planetplanet.org/
Basically you write a config file that specifies the names of each blog and the URLs of each feed. From there it's up to you to design HTML templates that format the aggregated site to look the way you want.
I'm not a wordpress expert, but I've tried googling around and found this: http://www.auburnmedia.com/wordpress/2005/04/01/wordpress-aggregator-blog-want-one/
You can use FeedWordPress to automatically create posts using RSS/Atom from other blogs and put those posts in separate categories. To display thumbnails and titles from these posts on the front page (home.php), you can use this function, which displays the first image from a post, including resize.