Technorati tags (thing 14)

So... Technorati Tags. The most important thing to know about Technorati Tags is that Blogger Labels are indeed picked up by Technorati and displayed on their tags page. Blogger A Consuming Experience has spent a great deal of time investigating this and has written up some findings... here.

Benefits of tagging:

• Search engines pick up your journal post and send more traffic to you
• Your journal has an index of sorts, particularly if you keep a running list of your tags in a sidebar
• You can index any posts you contribute on other blogs (see Meblogging)
  

So, Del.icio.us has trained me pretty well - I've been "labeling" this blog from the start

Rollyo (thing 12)

I've added my customized Rollyo search to my blog; it seems like this tool would be useful for people who repeat the same search over and over and have specfic sites they trust over others.

As for my general search behavior, I achieve fairly decent results with Google and then start the winnowing process from there. Tangentially, where I'd really like a tool such as this (for searching within LiveJournal), the ability to search within journals can be disabled by account holders and the only available option is a third party engine - A6 doesn't provide a good tool even on the macro level.

Library Thing (thing 11)

Here is what I don't get about Library Thing... why wouldn't they suggest tags to you at the point of entering your books into your "library". Why are they making me re-create the wheel?

Del.icio.us hellpfully lists suggested tags, both the tags that I have used and tags that others who have tagged this very page used to describe it. After all, the value that accrues to tags happens when more and more "taggers" assign the same one to the same item and then use it again for similar items.

Even if I add a title from the Search screen, once I click on edit I loose the ability to see whowothers have tagged it. So basically, I have to have two windows or tabs open and perform the search twice. This is NOT intuitive and does NOT save me time.

CARL was at one time looking closely at Library Thing as an add-on to CARLWeb, but I would not thing it would add much value unless it could operate a lot more like Del.icio.us.

Oh... here is my "library".

Images, avatars (thing10)

So, here is the result of my playing around with the Meez avatar creator. Lots of really wild options, which I declined. I didn't think I needed elf ears, although they were tempting.



The Simpsons avatar maker was also very fun. With both sites you need to register in order to save and post your final masterpiece.

One last image, this one from the catalog card generator:

Library blogs (thing 9)

Although I'm guilty of being a lazy poster, luckily other librarians seem to love blogging. I've added several very interesting blogs to my Google RSS reader:

• Jill Stover's Library Marketing blog which is pretty clear about the topic covered
• Stephen M. Cohen's Library Stuff, which is a bit more eclectic (and covers both personal and professional concerns)
• Jenny Levine's The Shifted Librarian (of course)

Now I also have to admit that I usually just scan the snippets presented to me in my RSS reader; it takes a heck of a snippet to get me to the full post. (tl;dr)

This could also be due to the number of other feeds I have listed: CNN, BBC, Wired Magazine, Lifehacker (♥ ♥), Freakonomics (♥), The Beat (comics industry) and People.com