Thing #11

Well it appears that I may have jumped the gun a bit on Thing #10 because I went ahead and subscribed to some feeds. I didn't really use the search features though because I knew what I was looking for already. I can be kind of change resistant so this "Thing" is great for me because I discovered some new blogs! I subscribed to politicalinaction.com, and finally subscribed to The Huffington Post. I found both of those though the Google blog search which I liked a lot. I love everything Google does and I thought that their search process was very straightfoward and got me the results I was looking for.

I also really enjoyed the Topix site, especially the hometown news feature. It was great to be able to glace at one page for headlines pertaining to a specific locality. I thought the site was really easy to use and I liked the bar at the top with basic categories like "Top Stories" and "Off Beat." I tend to be drawn to sites like this that start broad and let the user winnow down to a very specific topic to read about.

I did not like Synic8 at all, partially because I'm kind of appearance-driven when it comes to websites and I thought the layout was pretty ugly and boring. I didn't like all of the random headlines and random feeds displayed. If I'm coming to a site to find a blog I have something in mind. I don't like to be distracted with randomness.

Technorati on the other hand was really simple and pretty to look at too :) I found the categories along the top were exactly the categories I was looking for and I even found an awesome blog that I've never heard of (although apparently I'm the last to know about it) called BoingBoing. It has lots of really cool entries on pop culture and tech goodies and I can't wait to look through back entries until I wear out the clicker on my mouse.

Another way I've always used to find blogs that are related to my interests is to check out the Blogroll on blogs I already read. This is a list of links to other blogs witin the same subject area that a blogger is a fan of or gets material from. I've found a lot of great cooking, fashion, celebrity news, and teaching blogs this way. I feel like I've said the word 'blog' far too many times in this post.