Instead of focusing on library-related blogs or feeds, I decide to approach broader subjects to see if some of the search engines mentioned in "23 Things" and I are up to the challenge.
My first search is for "Barrack Obama". "Finding needle in the vast ocean" is exactly how I felt when more than 590,000 posts related to him came up in Bloglines. As more and more people publish in the web, how do I search? How do I pinpoint the feeds that are relevant to me? Most search engines like to show you what they have but they don't want to tell you how to find them.
Of the 5 search engines listed in “23 Things”, Bloglines, Feedster, Topix.net, Syndic8.com, and Technorati, Feedster is the only one that provides a useful “search help page” and the search tips are fairly easy to follow. In Technorati and Bloglines, I have to pore over their FAQ page only to find unsatisfactory answers. I'm unable to locate the Blogfinder mentioned in "Technorati tutorials" in "23 Things", it seems I have to sign in as a member first to have access to this feature, hopefully I will learn more about it in Thing 14 . Topix doesn't even include a “Help” button on their home page, they expect me to find my own way.
Lack of sorting tools is another major problem for me. Most search engines define search options or categories such as feeds, blogs, citations, hottest news, music, religion, etc. for us, feeds can usually be sorted by dates. However, a lot of these classifications are still too general for me to narrow the feeds down to a more manageable size.
To cut through the clutters, I've finally learnt to be very specific with my keyword search. In Feedster search box, I put in as many words, phrases, dates, and reliable sources as I can think of , as a result, I am able to reduce the 48,945 feeds on “Obama” to 3. I've also learnt if I want to find feeds for a specific news story, I can always go to the Washington Post website where many stories have a feature called “who is blogging”, it is operated by Technorati, through which I can read all the feeds that are related to a specific story.
To find local news, the best search engine is Topix.net. To start a search in Topix, I can either go to their website or to the CNN.COM homepage and look for the local news box, a zip code is all I need to find out the latest local news. Most sources come from local news media. "Ellicott City News", for example, draws the news from Baltimore Sun, Howard County Times, Columbia Flier, WBAL-AM, and WJZ-TV, etc., readers can submit their own stories too. I can also post a comment on "Ellicott City News" forum, one of many topic-driven forums offered by Topix, this is as close to a town hall meeting as you can get online.
My last search is for a popular food blog called “Chocolate & zucchini”. Syndic8.com is the only search engine that delivers. I typed in the phrase, no more, no less, Syndic8 gave me 3 entries that matched exactly what I was looking for, I didn't have to browse through thousands of unrelated feeds or blogs. However, unlike most search engines, Syndic8 does not display brief description nor source for each entry upfront on the result list, it seems people in Syndic8 really love statistics, I had to go through a couple of pages of mysterious codes and detailed statistics before I could see the actual blog or posting.
1 comment:
Interesting Joan. I think you are not alone. The problem stems from the very basic (anyone can get a computer but they don't know how to use it) to something like what you ran into (anyone can do a search but do they really know the best way to search??). I guess most of us out on the web have learned randomly (just poking around, exploring, delving into something). Trial and error is one of my best learning methods....it maybe slower but things stick with me better than if I just read something and do it right the first time. Bet you'll know how to form better searches no matter what from now on. :)
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