#14 technorati

Well THIS seems to be a bit more up my alley. While I really do need to spend a couple of hours on Technorati to search around a bit more, I can see this site really being fun if you have the time to play around.

I really do like the features that offer up the most popular blogs. Not only is this a great way to see what a lot of people online are interested in, I can see it being a great way to discover new and exciting things that perhaps don't cross your mind to "search" for while online. I've become addicted to the bookmarks on my Safari browser, and when I sit down at my computer I find myself getting angry that my favorite blogs and sites have yet to update since I checked a few days, or..hours ago.

Its also interesting to see what changes when refining a search in terms of posts, tags, and blogs. The largest number of searching "Learning 2.0" came up in "posts" and I attribute this to some otherwise irrelevant websites posting something that has something to do with Learning 2.0. The first search I tried I didn't use quotes, and as one can imagine, thousands of posts were found simply because they used both the phrases "learning" and "2.0".

Overall I think Technorati is a great tool for those who are just wrapping their brains around the blogosphere, myself included.

Delicious!

I gave this exercise 2 days to really sink in. This site is a little less sensory-stimulating and so it really took a lot of digging around to get a firm grasp on what the site had to offer. Although I still am a bit weary of it (and annoyed by the site's spelling) I do understand how one could benefit from Delicious for research.

I know many time while I was in college I was surfing Google and other search engines in order to find very specific information. A lot of the browsing I did led to dead ends, not because Google is not an effective search tool, but a lot of times specificity can lend itself to unintended results. Using Delicious I can see how using tagging and a bit of know-how could really cut down on the amount of time one may spend on searching the web. If others have already done the browsing and chosen a website based on its relevance, why spend more time?

Not bad, I say!

JaxCat Search Gadget

Well this was interesting! I'm actually more excited to have the gadget on my iGoogle simply because it will enable me to search for things that I see on new book lists, etcetera. I see the search when I preview my page but when I hit save and view it doesn't show. Hopefully its here now!!