Tuesday, December 9, 2008

TheCorey's Thought #6 - Thing # 7: trying to catch up

I've heard the comment about those who run perpetually behind as "You'll be late to your own funeral". To me, that doesn't seem such a bad thing. One, you get to live a bit longer - always a plus. Two, you get to see who showed up and what they're saying about you. Three - if you're lucky, thy'll think you're a zombie and you give 'em a funeral they'll never forget. On to Thing #7- finding news feeds:

Google Blog Search felt very "free form" to me. Which makes sense given its a Google thing. I'd definetly need to play around with the advanced search tools to fine tune what I'm looking for.

Topix felt very constrained and clunky. With Google, by playing around I could likely home in on a feed that appealed to a topic I wanted. With Topix, all I could find were links to latest articles rather than directing me to a feed that I would want.

Syndic8 was alright. I would have liked some advanced options on the search feature from the get-go, like Google. But, for me, it was much more intuitive and easier to direct my search to find a feed that I wanted. I'll definetly keep this one in mind.

Technorati was a mixed bag. The search feature was the nicest of the ones I sampled. It really helped me to hone in on my searches. However, it flet kind of cluttered and not as organized as Syndic8. It didn't feel very intuitive to me.

Of course, the biggest challenge I face with finding blogs, feeds, etc. is motivation. Having spent more than a little time on various community boards, etc. I am all too aware of how much garbage there is out there. Finding the nergy to wade through all that garbage to find the few true gems is a lot of work, even with RSS. I'll have to percolate this concept in the ol' gray matter for awhile and consider how this might work for me. My luck, by the time I figure this out, we'll be onto Web 3.0 and RSS will be "so 15 minutes ago".

No comments: