#9 shuffling through sh.t!

I hate it, exploring pages of search results in this case for newsfeed items that I can actually understand. My criteria for judging a search successful were obviously too high.

• I did not want an advertisement or product guide disguised as a blog.
• It had to be a topic of interest to me
• I had to be able to understand the posts
• Technical stuff that I am desperate to know about had to be pitched at my level
• Australian content is a bonus point
• It had to come across as if written by a real person

Using Topix and Google Blogs a search for embroidery blogs took me to pages of unloved ads disguised as blogs. Searching for Ipod blogs got me lost in a maze of largely illiterate posters with weird pod problems or apple news stories. Any gentle musings about how to get the best out of your ipod might have been there but were buried pages down.

Technorati was better, its list of the most popular turned up more blogs of the 'I would like to try when I have time type' (after the 24th thing).

I had another go using the tags concept that works so well for web pictures. I wanted tags like 'well written' or 'for the older blogger' BUT of course you actually need to work with tags that bloggers already use. Off I went to find a list of tags that will define the blog of my dreams. Technocrati had the top 100 tags ,but none quite did it for me.

Bother, am back to the old 'who you know' style search. My golden oldie bookmarks. I liked Bleeding Edge and he is still writing a blog, the Better Days page looks good. My absolute favourite Marylaine Block, let me down though; she doesn't blog.

Her many pages don't have cute little RSS buttons. A quote from a google search page reads " exchanged e-mail with Marylaine about this, and she admitted feeling guilty about not having the time to develop some expertise with RSS and news .."

I am looking for a blog that reviews blogs and that search will have to wait for a while.

So thats almost it on newsfeed search tools except to say my EBSCO journals of interest got as far as my bloglines account but died the death when I needed passwords and logins i did not have to actually read them. One to many hoop to jump through. But I did master the link on the toolbar so something achieved.