So Far Behind It Is Not Even Funny

Yep. 2008. The latest post from the Powers That Be is numbered Thing 25. This is about Thing 18. Technorati. Didn't I already say something about this? Ah, yes. Right here.

But that was a different age. A happy time. A time when I was right there on the cutting edge of Virginia Beach's experiment with The Information Superhighway®. Now, I'm pedaling my bicycle along the service road, jealous of all those fancy-pants with their expensive automobiles.

Sorry, what?

Technorati. Riiight. This time I signed up and claimed my blog, for what it's worth. I was supposed to watch a tutorial or something, but those always put me to sleep. Besides, I'm usually at a public service point when I work on this stuff, so donning headphones and rocking out is not an option. I did search for blog posts and such containing "Learning 2.0". The results confirmed most of my suspicions, that this whole thing is by librarians, for librarians. Take a gander at the people making videos on the subject. Yup, librarians.

I noted another interesting trend. There has been a serious drop-off on posts mentioning Learning 2 point 0. Take a look at this chart. Telling stuff. September and October seem to have been the "Learning 2.0" season. Now, the levels have dropped off to below their pre-August 11 numbers. What happened to make such a flurry of activity? Is it related to our own program, which started in October? I doubt that VBPL accounts for any significant percentage of those posts, rather that the sheer volume of Learning 2.0 related material provided fuel to the Sparks in our department who gave rise to this conflagration.

Too much?

Technorati is very nice, by the way. Real cute, what with the hearts and all. It even has that cutsey name. Like a cross between technology and literati. Double plus good!

Feed Finding. or How to Lose Your Social Life Within 72 Hours

I started this whole thing with about a million feeds, so finding new ones from the list of recommended sites was not exactly what I would call enjoyable. Nevertheless, I dove in and played around a bit. Of the four, only Technorati was really worth the effort. Topix had the local fix, but lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. I couldn't get any of Syndic8's links to work (perhaps a result of poor network speed or some other X Factor) and poor Feedster seems to be locked in perpetual beta testing.

They all seem to do similar things, though. Find cool stuff for you. Not like Google, which tends to find Wikipedia. Technorati's beauty lies in movement. It changes right before your eyes, lending a sense of urgency to what would otherwise be a mundane quest. YouTube does the same thing, but is focused solely on videos. Including this little gem. Which I found thanks to Technorati.

Funny how things work.

Actively searching for feeds is not how I've become the diseased specimen you see before you, however. I've contracted most of them virally, because they were mentioned or linked to in a blog I was already reading. Click-click, and I've got another digital contagion. By the way, you should check out Questionable Content.

Someone told me I should delete some feeds. Not a bad idea, but what if one day I want to know just what is going on in Israel?

Enough links for now, neh?