#14 Technorati and tagging

Apparently I signed up for a Technorati account in September, although I don't recall doing it. I've now claimed each of my blogs using the Technorati claim page and it seems to be regularly pinging them. I did have a problem claiming my blogger blog, but I filled out a support ticket last night and it was working when I checked this morning.

Using Technorati tags in a blog posts looks like more html work than it's worth but that's primarily since I don't expect to see much traffic to my site. Then again, I suppose if I used Technorati tags, I might get more traffic so maybe it's a chicken and egg thing.

I was surprised by how little I found by searching "school library learning2.0" and various permutations of it. It seems not many people are really blogging about it or at least they're not using tags that I would expect them to use. I think I ended up tagging most of my posts SLL2.0 so I tried that as well, but still there were few results (and I didn't find my own posts either.) I can definitely see value in using Technorati to find information on current events and opinion pieces. I don't see many of my co-workers using it on a regular basis though.

#13 del.icio.us and social bookmarking

I don't recall when I signed up for del.icio.us but I'm so glad that I did! Like many people, my bookmarks easily become unwieldy because it seems there's always some new site I want to be able to find my way back to again. I attended a training a few years ago where I learned that I could make folders for my bookmarks and about the bookmarks toolbars and that knowledge changed my browsing life at that time. I didn't think it could get much better until I began using del.icio.us! One thing I learned from reading today was that I probably should be putting notes in with my links because I appreciated using others notes on sites they've bookmarked.

One site that I've found is really useful for all things web2.0 is Educause: they do brief one or two page "Seven things you should know about (fill in the blank)" which is a great way to learn about new tools--their brief on social bookmarking was done in 2005.

One of the things I'm happiest about with del.icio.us is that I was actually able to install the Firefox extension at work--so many things are blocked here including much local control over the desktop, but I was able to install without a network admin password, which is nice because it's nearly impossible to get someone to agree to do that kind of override.

Recently, my husband and I have been talking about moving closer to where we work. Along with that has come searching for homes and for floorplans on the off-chance that we decide that we can afford to build. While visiting my mom over the holiday I was able to log in to my del.icio.us bookmarks and show her our favorite with no problems locating the site or the plan.

#12 Rollyo customized search

I've looked over Rollyo and I guess there are ways it could be useful, but frankly, I'm not very impressed. The best possible use I could come up with for it didn't work. I was really hoping to be able to search both my school library catalog and our public library catalog at the same time but that didn't work. I would love if I could make it search multiple databases we subscribe to, but it doesn't seem to work for that either. I don't like that there are a bunch of advertisements in the results list: things like Google's search at least keeps sponsored links separate from the true results.

I even tried searching through other participants' blogs in hopes of finding someone who used it and liked it so I could figure out why I should like it too, but I didn't really find much positive feedback on it that way either. If you can tell me why you like it, please share!