Thing 3: Blog Search Engines

As far as I'm concerned, Google Blog Search beat the others hands down in regard to finding relevant information. It was the most user friendly, and had the best relevance compared to Technorati or Sphere. The "Search" window was easy to find, and when I searched "choosing a dog", the results were far more relevant with Google than Technorati or Sphere; in fact, for this particular topic, Technorati had only one relevant hit, even if of dubious authority. However, many of the Google hits were not actually blogs, making it useful for finding relevant information, but not neccessarily relevant blogs. I guess this would vary depending on the topic searched and the terminology used, but I had similar results with searching a more general topic (travel). I liked the way Google had popular recent blogs on the home page, and I also liked the organization as well as the relevance of the results of my search. Like Amazon, it also had related topics that were useful and interesting. I couldn't even figure out how to search in Sphere(!), and although the directory was interesting and helpful in Technorati, the scope of topics browsed was pretty limited compared to Google, and there were no appropriately related topics-in fact, some of the topics weren't even vaguely related to my query. As good as Google is for searching relevant information, though, it may not be especially effective for searching blogs. But considering how seldom I would be inclined to search for blogs beyond those of people I know and would actually be interested in following, I don't think for my purposes a blog search engine would be a particularly useful tool.

Thing 2

Ahh, growth...both exciting and painful, (and much less daunting when I was younger!). This world of expanding technology and the accompanying potential for communication and access to increasingly vast amounts of information is both wonderful and terrible. It's like being at Publix, and being both grateful and overwhelmed by the incredible number of choices we have. Without any motivation, I have the tendency to stick with choices I've already made: Tried and true, and the path of least resistance. But when I do decide to get outside my comfort zone, I have to admit that the fun of a new discovery usually makes it worth the effort to get there.

I'm doing 23 Things to better familiarize myself with what's out there....when family members or my friends share their favorite websites or "something cool" they found on the web, or blog a trip they took to somewhere in the world, I want to know what they're talking about. To me, 23 Things is like a guided tour; it may not be everything that's out there, but it's way more than I would otherwise even know to look for. The price is the time I will expend (I still haven't figured out how to get on and off the computer in a timely fashion-I'm always off on a million tangents), and the overload of stuff I'll have to weed in order to keep it from being too overwhelming for my personal 'hard drive' to handle. Without the motivation of 23 Things as a 'mission', I would be much less likely to ever get around to actually exploring, as opposed to thinking about it.

Yes, technology is just a tool, but as with all technology to date, it is a world-changing tool, and as the upcoming generations grow up with these tools, so their uses will continue to expand exponentially. Just as technology changing the way we as a society are evolving, so will we change the way technology evolves. Like it or not, ignoring it will not make it go away. So our choices are: test the water, jump right in, or sit on shore and wish we had just stayed home!

The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said...

THING 1: OK, so I'm off on this journey. Aside from the initial feeling of being overwhelmed with too many things to remember, and the knowledge that all of the user names, titles, passwords, addresses, etc. will continue to mystify and elude me, I think even I can follow step-by-step directions and fill in the required boxes. Anyway, I guess I'll find out, and hopefully be a savvier surfer by Thing 23.