Monday, October 16, 2006
blog integrity
I don't think this issue really effects me that much. A blog must have integrity of course, but the trend in the way I read blogs makes this issue irrelevant for me. Lately I've begun reading particular posts about topics I care about. Using things like Technorati's RSS search results and such. Like the python post below. I think I am going to use this more and more to get information about topics I care about (python, system administration and so on...). Ironic that I was led to this path by Steve Rubel, whose company seems to be involved in this whole thing.
My approach seems like the logical step for the rest of the blogosphere to take. Instead of reading blogs, you read RSS feeds of items that interest you. I wonder when Google will wake up to this? They seem to have moved away from search lately. I loved it when they came out with Google alerts, that sent you search results on specific terms in email. A logical progression/improvement would be to create an RSS feed of these results. But no such innovation seems forth coming. Yahoo is a different story. A story I haven't looked into yet, so I can't say anything.
There are other tools that can make the blogosphere richer. Bloglines citations, technorati trackbacks are great tools to track conversations on topics of interest. These tools will help you gather information from the blogosphere regarding topics you care about. I find it strange though that the people who introduced me to these tools seem to be moving away from them. Jon Udell used to use these tools rather than have comments on his blog to track conversations. He seems to be enabling comments on his blog. Robert Scoble also seems to have changed the way he does all this. That might just be because he is transitioning from one job to the next, I don't know.
Anyways, what using the above tools does is make irrelevant all this paid for marketing material. The result is content that you really care about and like to read. No more "browsing" blogs. I hope companies like technorati keep making these tools, and Google wakes up and starts adding tools that make our online life easier.
