Exploring Rollyo, Del.icio.us, and Technorati

After a break from working on the 23-Things project and a vacation, I am back, determined to accomplish the "Challenge" by the October 19th deadline!

This session I explored Rollyo, Del.icio.us, and Technorati.

Number 12.
At the Rollyo website you can "roll your own" search engine. I decided to lump together a number of dictionaries and thesaui into a special search engine. After I selected its name, "Word Search", I visited a number of websites such as Your Dictionary, Urban Dictionary, Ask Oxford, Bartleby, and others. I copied their URLs and pasted them into the Rollyo customizer search. After the search was generated, I had the option to add it to my Firefox search tool. I tested the search several times and have only one complaint -- it seemed slow to me. But, whether this is due to a temporary problem with my cable provider or the tool itself, time will tell.

Number 13.
I have been a registrant at Del.icio.us since attending an InfoPeople workshop on June 15th this year. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking tool. It includes a button tag feature on my web browser making it easy to add and tag web pages I want to save. As I bookmark websites that I want to remember, I add tag words as keys by which I can later retrieve the websites. In addition, a search option or a browsing list of popular tags on the Del.icio.us home page may be selected by any Internet user retrieving lists of websites. It is one way to share with others what websites you use, and likewise discover and explore sites others use.

Number 14.
Technorati is a dynamic website to visit when you want to find out what is happening online -- what Internet users are writing and doing with interactive web tools. Technorati's focus is on blogs, but it also is used for what the Technorati site refers to as "citizen media" covering photos, videos, voting and other forms of user-generated media. On the home page you can watch as posts are updated and scroll live onto their site. You can also search for popular topics or submit a search. I did a search on Libraries 2.0 and received results on 180 blogs. The first three were "Tame the Web", "The Shifted Librarian", and "What I Learned Today" (Web2Learning.net). People can vote for their favorites, and apparently the amount of linking to a particular website is a way of measuring its authority.

I am enjoying my journey into the world of Web 2.0; and with each new website or tool explored I am impressed with the amount of activity I see. I assume most of these web users are not retired; they go to school or have jobs, and yet are still active online. I am continually amazed at the amount of social activity online.