Technorati

It's back to the Web 2.0 assignments!! I played around a little with Technorati today. Since I don't read that many blogs, I doubt that I will be using it much in the future. Even so, I thought it offered a lot of very good searching options. Not only can you search for keywords by tags, you can also search in blog titles and blog posts. Moreover, you can restrict your search by format such as photographs, videos, music, events, and even users.

Here are a couple of features that I liked:

1) If you search by tag, Technorati lists "related tags" that you can also search by to help facilitate your search.

2) You can create a "Watchlist" whereby you can save common searches rather than having to generate the search anew every time.

3) You can register your blog on Technorati in a few very easy intuitive steps (it took me less than 5 minutes total).

4) You can easily add Technorati widgets to your blog for cross-pollination between sites. (I added a couple widgets to my right-side bar at the very bottom).

Also, I had an unexpected surprise while exploring Technorati. I clicked on the "Events" tab while looking at the results of a tag search and noticed a link to the site Eventful.

Apparently, Eventful is a site where you can search for events, post event information, and create a list of "my events" in a fairly easy-to-use interface. I was quite surprised to learn that events held at the State Library of North Carolina are listed on this site!! It would appear that someone in-house is using this nifty Web 2.0 technology as a way to advertise events held at the State Library!

What a very cool idea!!!