Week 4 Thing 9: RSS Search Engines

As with the previous exercise, I have already done the tasks on the list. I have enough links on my reader for the moment. I did play a bit with making my reading list public (I added my blogroll to the main page of my blog), and also with using the search engines suggested to see if there were any new sites that I really ought to be watching on my favorite topics.

So far, Feedster has been of little use to me. I disliked the way it skipped sites I already know of that do interest me in terms of my chosen topics, and selected sites that had little or nothing to do with my purposes. I decided to play with it a bit and find out if I could use it in some capacity, and make myself a widget to place on my blog as an experiment. But then I realized I'd have to make an account with Feedster, which seemed unappealing, so I scrapped that plan. It was nice that one could choose to search in various media, but then the search engine did not allow a combined search for more than one type. Overall, I'm not impressed with Feedster.

Topix is a little more interesting. It's helpful to be able to search for coverage on a topic, and in fact I did add the topic feed "Santa Cruz, CA" to my Bloglines. I regret that it doesn't cover blogs, but you can't have everything.

Now, Syndic8 appeals to me because of the user-submitted links. It is necessarily limited, however, for the same reason, and also tends to operate like many user-oriented sites do. It draws in users who find things there that appeal to them, and they add more links on the same or similar subjects, and eventually there are large, useful networks of links: on very particular topics only. The site maintainers do seem to be attempting to overcome this tendency, and I hope they are successful. The best thing about the site is that I find user-generated links seem to be of more reliable quality than random sets.

Being fond of blogs as information networks, I really like Technorati. The site design is easy to follow, the search engine allows for refinement, and their lists of currently popular search terms and subjects is good for both interest and a laugh. Blogs on a topic are great sources of related, non-commercial links. The only real drawback to this site, for me, is that many bloggers set their blogs to be "dark" to search engines, and won't be discovered here.

I was pleased to find that one of my favorite feeds, the Gizmodo feed, is on Technorati's Top Blogs list.
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(The above is an emoticon; read it as a person throwing their arms up in triumph or joy. I mean it here as something like, "Go Team Gizmo!")