Blog search engines allow the user to find blogs on specific subjects hosted by multiple blog hosting sites, not just the one the user is also a member of. The blog search engines are updated on a fairly consistent basis giving the searcher the most up-to-date data available and allows the user to search for blogs in various languages.
Some blog search engines must have blogs added to their site manually by the owners of the blogs, while others are able to scan all existing blogs, much like Google can scan all existing web pages for content.
Search engines for blog users and readers have become important because in the world of weblogs, importance it deemed by the number of links a blog receives. Much the way it worked in high school, the coolest blogs are the ones with the most "friends," which is determined in great part by how many websites like a certain blog well enough to list it in the blogroll and/or link to it repeatedly throughout subsequent blog entries.
• 2RSS (www.2rss.com)
• Bligz (www.blizg.com)
• Blogarama (www.blogarama.com)
• Blogdex (www.blogdex.net)
• Blogdigger (www.blogdigger.com)
• Bloghop (www.bloghop.com/search.htm)
• Bloglines (www.bloglines.com)
• Blogmatrix (www.blogmatrix.com)
• Blogrunner (www.blogrunner.com)
• Blogsearchengine (www.blogsearchengine.com)
• Blogstreet (www.blogstreet.com/search.html)
• Blogvision (www.blogvision.com)
• Blogwise (www.blogwise.com)
• Bloogz (www.bloogz.com)
• Boogieplay (www.boogieplay.com)
• Daypop (www.daypop.com)
• Eatonweb (http://portal.eatonweb.com)
• Fastbuzz (www.fastbuzz.com)
• Feedster (www.feedster.com)
• Get Linked (http://fried-spaghetti.com/links)
• Globeofblogs (www.globeofblogs.com)
• Ice Rocket (www.icerocket.com)
• LocalFeeds.com/GeoURL (www.localfeeds.com and www.geourl.org)
• Memigo (www.memigo.com)
• NewsIsFree (www.newsisfree.com)
• Pepys (http://pepys.akacooties.com)
• Popdex (www.popdex.com)
• RDF Ticker (www.anse.de/rdfticker/findchannels.php)
• Read A Blog (www.readablog.com)
• Rootblog (www.rootblog.com)
• RSSFeedsDirectory (http://rss-feeds-directory.com/directory)
• Search4Blogs (www.search4blogs.com)
• Search4RSS (www.search4rss.com)
• Sindic8 (www.syndic8.com)
• Technorati (www.technorati.com)
• Waypath (www.waypath.com)
• Zopto (www.zopto.com)
Technorati--www.technorati.com
Technorati describes itself as the "authority of what's going on in the world of weblogs." This blog search engine tracks about 43.5 million web sites and 2.5 billion links. Technorati keeps a pulse on the world of weblogs in real-time manner, with continual updates of all the latest links and references.
Technorati tracks the number of links and hyperlinks through automatic notification, as soon as the blogs are updated. This means that thousands of updates each hour are occurring and being reproduced for ease of data retrieval by the user doing the searching. Technorati estimates that about 75,000 new blogs are being started every day and this combined with those of the previous blogs which are updated regularly, means that about 1.2 million new posts are produced every day which translates into about 50,000 blog updates for Technorati every hour.
Founded by Dave Sifry, and headquartered in San Franscisco, CA, Technorati uses and contributes to open source software and participates in a public developer's wiki to allow developers and contributors to work together. Technorati won the Best Technical Achievement and Best of Show awards for the SXSW 2006 and was nominated for a 2006 Webby award for Best Practices.
Google Blog Search--www.blogsearch.google.com
The blog search engine by the google team got its start on September 14, 2005 and pulls link results out of all blogs, not just the ones hosted by Blogger. Google Blog Search gives users the option of searching blogs in the languages of English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese.
Google Blog Search operates in much the same way other blog search engines do, by allowing the user to simply type in the website, word, or phrase they want to see the results of and clicking "search." There are advanced searching options available in which you can get more specific with titles, authors, languages, etc. And they offer the option to display either the most recent results or the most relevant results which the ability to switch between these choices. In addition to this you can search a specific blog or even search within a specified date range. Google Blog Search also supports SafeSearch filtering to protect the user from coming across unseemly websites in their search.
Feedster--www.feedster.com
Feedster is a blog search engine which claims to have "the largest and richest archive of indexed feeds on the web" and provides links to millions of news, blog, and podcast sources.
Founded in March 2003 by Scott Johnson and merged with RSS-Search and
François Schiettecatte in June of that same year, Feedster was designed as another tool for searching weblogs, and also serves the purpose of indexing and archiving individual blog posts. Feedster supports both RSS and Atom feeds.
Feedster became popular quickly because it was able to index new information at a very fast pace and allowed the searchers to look for information chronologically.
Others--
Many of the websites listed in the previous section on the various blog search engines are gaining in their use and popularity and serve the purpose of a blog search engine very well. For further information on any of those, check out their websites and take some test runs. You may find different things you prefer from one of those.
Sources:
www.wikipedia.org
www.blogsearch.google.com
www.technorati.com
www.icerocket.com
www.feedster.com
www.liv.ac.uk
www.aripaparo.com
The terms podcasting and vodcasting refer to both the content that can be downloaded as well as method of delivery. Often times, a podcast or vodcast features a show with new segments appearing at later (planned) times and their focus is to create content for a group of people who want to listen to a program or watch a show where, when, and how they choose.
Some use the term podcast to refer to anything with an audio or video feed, while others have come up with new words to describe all the various aspects of podcasts. Some of these terms are:
Podcasters--Anyone (or organization) who offers syndication feeds
Podcatchers--RSS aggregators which have the ability to transfer podcasts to hardware or software of the media player.
Podmercial, coined by John Iaisuilo in 2005
Poditorial, coined by John Hedtke, also in 2005
• Supplements to news organizations and newspapers
• A way around the traditional broadcasting rules for various organizations
• Educational use for lectures and homework
• Political uses
• Religious uses including sermons and talks
• Audio and visual tours of museums, cities, and other cultural points of interest
• Space communication
• Commentaries on television shows
• Sports broadcasts
• Conference and meeting updates and feedback
• Digests for academic journals
• Public libraries
• Law enforcement
• Alternative for live music audio streams and DVD commentaries
• Computer teaching tool (screencasting)
USA Today came up with a "top ten" list in February 2005 and of those ten, four of the presentations were on technology, three were about music, one was on the movies, one centered on politics, and one was a "couplecast" called The Dawn and Drew Show. Soon after this, several podcasting networks began appearing including the GodCast Network, the Tech Podcasts Network, and the Association of Music Podcasters. The first internet podcast community, Podcast Pickle, began in March 2005.
John Edwards was the first "national-level US politician" to host his own political podcast in March 2005 which, shortly after included all the extras: a website with subscription feeds, guest appearances, Q&A from the audience, and more. Later that year, President George W. Bush entered the podcasting scene as well when his weekly radio addresses were given an RSS 2.0 feed for the purposes of downloading. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was the first head of government to issue a podcast in June of 2006.
Pod and vodcasting became quickly popular by way of being spread around the Internet via weblogs. On September 28, 2004, Google tracked 24 hits for the word "podcast." Two days later there were 526 hits, and three days later, there were 2,750 hits. Just under two years later, Google tracks 345,000,000 hits for "podcast." You could say the popularization of the concept happened pretty quickly.
The first Guinness Book of World Records award was given in February of 2006 to The Ricky Gervais Show, which is produced by Guardian Unlimited and hosted by Positive Internet. It has averaged 250,000 downloads for each weekly episode.
What is considered to be the world's first live podcast theatrical event was held on February 24th, 2006 in Ormskirk, West Lancashire, United Kingdom, at The Rose Theatre.
The pro of a downloaded podcast or vodcast is that it can be played, replayed, and archived just as any other computer file one might download. In addition to this, there are major benefits to both publishers of pod and vodcasts as well as the subscribers. The publishers are able to "bundle" content for their audience and the subscribers are able to consume the content when they want and don't require the use of either a keyboard or a mouse to choose what they hear and/or see. This is akin to flipping the channels on a television with the touch of a remote, and new programs automatically appear, making the consumption all the more easier for the subscriber.
Pod and vodcasting weren't totally loved by everyone, however. In the middle of 2005, several of the media outlets began claiming that there was nothing really extraordinary about the pod and vodcasts, but that they were just a form of blogs and mp3s, and that the peak for its popularity had passed.
Soon after this, Asia entered the fray with a Philippine based "infotainment" program referred to as HIT.
A server connected to the Internet, and the faster the better
A website that can host the XML file in order to allow iTunes to access it
QuickTime Pro 7
There are detailed instructions available on the Internet for creating your own vodcast, but in short, the steps are to:
Create your movie
Compress your movie
Put the movie on the server
Create an XML file
Place the XML file
Test the file in your browser
Check the file in iTunes
Announce your vodcast to all interested parties
Sources:
www.wikipedia.org
www.edmarketing.apple.com
http://playlistmag.com
Interested in becoming the guide for this category? Send an email to jennifer at beginnersguide.com to request more information.
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