I'm brand new to actively seeking out newsfeeds. Sure, friends would pass on the occasional link and I'd subscribe through google reader. But go looking for feeds? Why on earth would I?! I preferred to stalk my favorite websites instead. Unfortunately, many comics-related websites are no longer being regularly updated, their creators & contributors having jumped on the blogging bandwagon. So this is a very timely assignment for me. With several search tools at my disposal, I set out to find feeds dedicated to covering comic books, graphic novels, and manga, primarily for kids.
Syndic8.com
Of the five search tools I tried, Syndic8.com was my least favorite. It's extremely cluttered. The information given about the various feeds isn't especially self-explanatory or helpful. Creation date--meaning when the feed was listed with Syndic8.com? When it started "broadcasting" on the web? What's with the various statuses? "Awaiting repair"? "Polling"? "Awaiting Approval?" By whom? And what does this tell me about the site's reliability and content?
The layout is awkward--I'd click on various links and find myself unable to return to the previous page. Clicking back to the front page and starting from scratch seemed to be my only option and I had to click on the Syndic8 logo in the upper left corner. I thought I'd hit the jackpot when I accidentally clicked on categories and found a "comics" category. But what did I find? A list of feeds from Topix.net! It was surreal.
I'm extremely leery of the results generated through "search for feed" on the main page. My search on "all-ages comics" turned up a few sites I was familiar with...and "Free 3D Adult Comics" among other just as unlikely prospects. Really not what I had in mind. I have no idea how the search results are generated--key words in posts? Blog titles & post tags? Tags generated by the blogs' authors? I had no idea how to refine my search. (And anyone who knows me knows I'm a big fan of filters, exact phrases, and Boolean operators. I blame my early encounters with LexisNexis & Dialog. And yes, I AM that old.) To top it all off, Syndic8.com doesn't seem to have a help page. I don't think I'll be making a return visit.
Topix.net
Topix.net wasn't what I expected. The description on our Learning 2.0 blog had led me to believe I'd only be finding feeds from major news and media outlets. I wasn't planning on finding much of anything to subscribe to--while the major media feature the occasional article or even column about comics and graphic novels, they've usually got a much bigger focus. Much to my surprise, Topix.net's advanced search lets you limit your results to "just blogs" or "no blogs." (And if you're looking for news, you can limit by city or zip code, too, which is a very spiffy feature!) Limiting my search to "just blogs" I found a couple that I'd missed on Syndic8 & Technorati (either through faulty searching on my part or lack of inclusion in those particular tools) so all in all it was a productive visit. I could see myself using this site again. I do wish they'd list the url for the feed directly, though, rather than hotlinking it beneath the name. When I'm browsing I use urls to help me pick and choose--some I recognize from other sources, some I weed out based on type of site, etc. I miss having them readily visible. Sure I can mouse over, but that takes longer than a visual pan & scan. (And yes,the irony is killing me because I've been mostly hiding the links in this blog to save space and clean the place up a bit. I may have to re-think this particular position.)
www.bloglines.com/search
Bloglines' search tool is pretty easy to use. You can search your terms in posts, feeds, citations, or the whole world wide web. Since I'm looking for news on a fairly specific topic (comics/graphic novels/manga for kids) I narrowed my search to feeds, hoping to find blogs devoted to my obsession. Failing to pull up much of anything I hadn't seen before, I tried searching for posts with my search terms that excluded my feeds. Sound good, doesn't it? Find new blogs with content I'm interested in! Unfortunately...it didn't work as advertised. I pulled up a bunch of posts from feeds I'm already subscribing too. Ah well. The results were still more on target than what I pulled up over at Syndic8.
Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader/)
I'm a Google Reader dilettante. And since I'm in the process of comparing bloglines to Google Reader, I thought I'd give Google Reader's search tool a try. Only first...I had to find it. Which proved more difficult than I imagined. Bloglines search tool is soooooo easy to find--it's a tab right at the top of the page, dead center under your account name. Google Reader's on the other hand... Logged into my account I was drawn immediately to the very prominent search box at the top of the page. No joy--this search box searches ONLY feeds I'm already subscribed to. I'll give it points in that I can limit the search to certain folders and I do love the ability to limit my search...but it's only searching what I've thoeretically already read.
Help was...unhelpful. The articles about "How do I find a feed?" and "How can I subscribe to feeds?" assumed I already knew what I wanted to subscribe to and just needed to find the feed info. They 'helpfully' suggested using GR's "add subscription" button and pasting in the url, or searching the blog for the RSS button or the "subscribe" link and then following the instructions.
Poking about on my page, I discovered the tantalizingly named "Browse for stuff."
I'm a big fan of stuff. And I like to browse. So I clicked on it. Success! At last we had a search tool! Sort of. Browse for stuff is divided into two sections--Reccomendations & Feed Discovery. I was curious about the recommendations. As were other GR users, based on the comments in the help section. No official answers were forthcoming as to how these recommendations were generated, but users speculated they appeared to be based on a combination of feeds you most recently subscribed to and content you most frequently subscribed to. Suffice to say, about 1 in 5 were of interest to me.
So I ventured forth into Feed Discovery. Feed Discovery comes in two flavors (2 1/2, but who's counting?): (1) Feed Bundles & (the oh-so-descriptive) (2) Browse. Feed Bundles are groups of feeds on a certain topic that are "generated by comparing your interests with feeds of users similar to you." Similar to me how? That we share a feed subscription or two? It's a big web, and that leaves a lot of room for error... The Feed Bundles were extremely disappointing. For starters, the "Comics" bundle was a collection of 10 "recommended" webcomics, 3 of which I already subscribed to via a google reader, 2 of which are delivered directly to my inbox, and the others of which are all bookmarked by me over on delicious. 10 recs and NOTHING I hadn't seen before. There were no "comic book" or "graphic novel" or "manga" feed bundles. Based on my other subscriptions, I tried "Games" and "Gaming" and found blogs devoted to specific platforms or specific electronic games--none of which I owned. There wasn't a board game or library gaming blog to be found amongst them, despite my subscriptions to blogs of such ilk. These feeds were also somewhat redundant as many of the links were then replicated in the "Nintendo" and "PS3" bundles further down the list. The "library" bundle was also disappointing--again, I subscribed to several of the blogs already and the others weren't of interest to me. (After all, why should I read someone else's rants about working in a library? I'm quite capable of ranting on my own, thanks, and with better spelling.) And nothing popped up in terms of early literacy or working with children and youth.
Browse wasn't much better, alas. Here I could finally enter search terms and "search for feeds." But what was I searching? Key words in posts? Tags? Blog titles? All of the above? And from where? All of the web? Or only blogs already subscribed to by other google readers? There was no explanation. And no instruction as to how to state my search. No limits, either... As to how many results I retrieved, well, I really don't know. No numbers were stated. Just page after page of hits with a "next page" link at the bottom. I don't even know how many pages were retrieved. I do know that I found 1-2 links per page to actually be what I was looking for. How extremely frustrating.
And now for flavor 2 1/2--Browse by Category. (It was cut off in the screencapture--it lurks at the very bottom of the "Feed Discovery" window.) Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Expect there are only 7 categories. 7 very broad categories. And again, no way to limit within those categories or know how many blogs are contained within each.
I found this whole Google Reader exploration process to be very depressing. I've been a big google fan for a long time. And I love my igoogle page and all its little widgets. For the most part my google experiences have been very easy and the tasks self-explanatory. And when in doubt, I've had detailed and easy to access help files to fall back on. Google Reader just doesn't live up to the standard Google's set with its other products.
http://www.technorati.com
Technorati was probably my favorite of the five search tools. For starters, it's got some great help and FAQ files and a spiffy "site guide" that explains just how Technorati differs from RSS search engines. Technorati isn't searching just xml coding or blogs with RSS feeds--it's searching ALL blogs and the html coding, too! Assuming it's doing what it says it does, it's searching a much bigger chunk of the web than others.
Technorati's search tools come in a variety of flavors. All of which I hope I understand fully and am using correctly. There's a Blog Directory (http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/) that lets you browse by general category. I was a little disappointed in the categories, actually--no "comics," naturally, but no "books" or "reading" either--instead the term of choice is "literature." That's a little too, well, stuffy for my tastes. Looking at profiles for the blogs contained therein DID provide me with my beloved "books" tag, however. There's also an advanced search (http://technorati.com/search?advanced) that lets you search for exact phrases, urls, even use boolean "nots." It's also got a spiffy feature that lets you enter the url for a blog that you like...to find other blogs that link to it! For the most part, though, your basic Blog Search should do the trick. Start off by running amok through the blogosphere at http://technorati.com/search where from your initial (usually huge) results list you can limit your search to just keywords within a post, limit your search to keywords within a post's tags, or limit your search still further to keywords pulled from the BLOG's tags. This is where Technorati's really spiffy--you, the blogger, can "claim" (a.k.a. register) your blog with Technorati and then tag your own blog. How you describe/designate your own content determines how easily or not readers are going to find your material. That puts a lot of power in the hands of the blogger/author.
I was intrigued by the idea of the author indexing their own material. And a little bit leary of it as well, fearing a repeat occurrence of Syndic8's "Free 3D Adult Comics." (For the record--I clicked. They were definitely adult. And 3-dimensional. But definitely not comics. And definitely not for kids or all-ages.) I couldn't find anything mentioned as to whether or not Technorati was verifying that the tags being used by bloggers in their profile pages actually reflected their blogs' content. I did find through the "Blog Quality Guidelines" that they monitor for "over-tagging." And that they don't want spam. And won't index "objectionable, obscene, offensive content or content that promotes or displays pornography." So some form of oversight seems to be taking place. In any event, I didn't find any adult content in my search for kids comics, so I was a happy camper and, overall, pretty darn satisfied with my searching experience at Technorati.
To be honest, though, I'm still finding feeds more through word of mouth than anything else. Sometimes a blog is recommended by a friend, sometimes by a favorite website. My feed subscriptions tend to be ... serendipitous. And I think I prefer it that way. That being said, my blogroll (off to the right in my links section, go check it out!) has grown exponentially over the course of this particular homework assignment.
Next up: Newsreader Deathmatch! Two readers enter (google reader and bloglines), one reader leaves. See you next post, live at Thunderdome!
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