Digg it. Blog it. Youtube it. If you're the type that has to know what's going on today, right now, this minute – you have a problem. Just how are you supposed to keep up with what's going on?
Of course, you could just shut off the stupid computer, draw the shades, and curl up with a good book and a cup of tea. I'll admit it sounds tempting! But such is life today; the action is online, and chances are something is happening somewhere right now that will profoundly affect your job, business, or lifestyle. This is no time to be flaking out!
So, it's off to the Internet salt mines – but which one? Used to be that relevant information would get posted on Web pages, or maybe news sites. Searching those is a piece of cake, thanks to Google. But now, important information may be posted in a whole slew of sites that Google may not even bother with – blogs, Digg.com (home of the famous “Digg effect,” where opinon makers make or break sites), Flickr, video sites, YouTube, and others. Sometimes, the juiciest piece of info is on some obscure blog out in the ether. Can you really risk not having the relevant information when office folk gather 'round the water cooler and trade insider knowledge?
No, you can't – which is why you need Blabline (http://www.blabline.com/), a Web service that will steer you to where the information really is. Blabline looks sort of like a Google search page, but without the ubiquitous ads all over the place. But with Blabline, it's not just the Web that gets searched. You can check out the “blogosphere,” as well as YouTube, Digg, podcasts, Wikipedia – even sites with Bittorrent downloads of music, video. etc. You can sort the searches by time periods, such as the previous 24 hours – coaxing precious data out of its hiding places.
Using Blabline to “Google” myself (don't tell you don't too!), I discovered that I got cited in blogs five times over the previous 24 hours! Of course, they were all making fun of me, but still. And searching for terms like “Israel” and “Jewish” revealed much interesting information, especially on YouTube. And you don't want to know what I came up with when I searched for “banana.” You'll have to run your own Blabline search to find out!
Friday, March 28, 2008
