Thing 14: Getting not-so-technical with Technorati

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So now that you’ve been blogging for awhile, you might be wondering just how big the blogosphere is. Well, according to Technorati, the leading search tool and authority for blogs, the number of blogs doubles just about every 6 months with over 51 million blogs currently being tracked by the site. If the blogging trend continues, it is estimated that Technorati will have tracked its 100 millionth blog in just 5 months.

Yes, these numbers are astounding, but as you’ve already seen for yourselves, blogging is so easy that these publishing tools are being taken advantage of by almost every industry, including libraries.

So how does a person get their blog listed as part of the blogosphere and how can you tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search? The answer to the first question is that your blog is probably already being captured by Technorati due to the fact that you're already using Blogger, the most popular blogging tool. But if you want to join the party and have your blog officially listed on Technorati and also take advantage of the watchlist and other features, you’ll need to claim your blog yourself. As for tagging posts with Technorati tags? This is easy, too. All you need to do is add a little bit of HTML code to the bottom of your post and Technorati will pick up these tags when it spiders (or web crawls) your site.

There are a lot of new features that have been added to Technorati, including new ways to search for blogs. You can search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like photography or libraries).

Discovery Resources

Technorati Tour – videocast of new features & new look Technorati Discover & Popular features

Discovery Exercise

1. Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for “Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different?
   


2. Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?
   


3. Create a blog post about your discoveries on this site.
   
   OPTIONAL: If you're up for a challenge, learn how to tag your posts with Technorati tags so they can join tag searches. Create a post about something. It can be anything you want and add the HTML code to the bottom to tag it as “Canberralearning2”. You may also want to consider claiming your blog and creating a watchlist.
   NOTE: When adding HTML code, you'll want to make sure you're in Blogger's Edit HTML window.

There's a lot to explore.

Thing 13: Tagging, folksonomies and social bookmarking in Del.icio.us

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Tagging is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content (webpages, pictures & posts). Unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines (i.e.Library of Congress subject headings), tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want.

In the past few weeks, we’ve already explored a few sites – Flickr and LibraryThing to name two - that allow users to take advantage of tagging, and in week 3 many even used a common tag (Canberralearning2) to create an association between photos that we individually uploaded. This week, in addition to exploring Technorati tagging, we want to also take at popular social bookmarking site called Del.icio.us (typed in as http://del.icio.us/).

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking manager which allows you to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize your bookmarks.

Many users find that the real power of Del.icio.us is in the social network aspect, which allows you to see how other users have tagged similar links and also discover other websites that may be of interest to you. You can think of it as peering into another users’ filing cabinet, but with this powerful bookmarking tool each user's filing cabinet helps to build an expansive knowledge network.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at Del.icio.us and learn about this popular bookmarking tool.

Discovery Resources

• Otter Group Del.icio.us tutorial (12 min video) - Highly recommended!!!
• Us.ef.ul: A beginners guide to Del.icio.us
• Several habits of wildly successful Del.icio.us users

Discovery Exercise

1. View the 12 minute Del.icio.us tutorial to get a good overview of its features.
2. Take a look around Del.icio.us using the PLCMCL2 account that was created for this exercise. Note: In this account you will find resources that have been highlighted or used throughout the course of the Learning 2.0 program.
3. Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by a lot of other users. Can you see the comments they added about this bookmark or the tags that they used to categorize this reference?
4. Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about this tool.
   Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere?

OPTIONAL: If you’re up to the challenge, create a Del.icio.us account for yourself and discover how this useful bookmarking tool can replace your traditional browser bookmark list. You might even want to explore Del.icio.us’ latest addition, a network badge.

Note: If you do setup a Del.icio.us account, here’s a quick word about the Del.icio.us Buttons. On PCs that have the toolbars locked down, these will install as options in your browser bookmarks. Use the “Post to my Del.icio.us” link to add the current webpage to your account (you may need to log in). Use the “My Del.icio.us” link to view your online account.

Thing 9: Finding feeds

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Now that you have a newsreader (your Bloglines account), you can begin adding other newsfeeds that interest you. There are several ways you can locate newsfeeds:

• When visiting your favorite websites -- look for news feed icons that indicate the website provides it. Often a feed icon will be displayed somewhere in the navigation bar of the site. (Here's an image that contains a sampling of several feed icons).
• Use Bloglines' Search tool - Bloglines recently expanded search tool lets you search for news feeds in addition to posts, citations and the web. Use the Search for Feeds option to locate RSS feeds you might be interested in.
• Other Search tools that can help you find feeds:
• Feedster - One of the largest collections of RSS feeds, Feedster lets you search for feeds in three categories: news, blogs & podcasts
• Topix.net - This search tool allows you to locate recent newsfeed items based upon keyword or phrase searching. The tool focuses specifically on news and media outlet RSS feeds for information, not weblogs.
• Syndic8.com - Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.
• Technorati - Technorati is a popular blog finding tool that lets you search for blogs. Since RSS feeds are inherent to all blogging tools, Technorati Blog Search can help you find RSS feeds for topic specific blogs you may be interested in.
• Additonal Resource: Technorati Tutorial on finding and adding your blog

Discovery Exercise

1. Explore some of the search tools noted above that can help you locate some news feeds.
2. Create a blog post about your experience. Don't know what to blog about? Here some questions to think about ...

• Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?
• Which Search tool was the easiest for you?
• Which was more confusing?
• What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?
• What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?

EXTRA STUFF -- Feed icon information:

In February 2006, the adoption of a standard feed icon among websites and browsers finally began to assist in stopping the madness and confusion caused by so many variations. So far this icon has been adopted by many websites and browsers, including Opera and FireFox, where it displays in the address bar:




The next release of Internet Explorer is suppose to have this as well. For more information about this emerging new standard, see Feedicons.com