Week 4, Thing #9

I love google's blog search! Whenever playing with a new search system, I like to put in two disparate things and see what comes up. So I searched "library bike" and checked out the results. Most of the blog searches found me lots of library blogs and lots of bike blogs, but few that brought the two together. Google found ME! Yes, this very blog was its first hit. I think this may have been due more to currency than relevancy. I had just finished that post a couple back in which I had written about bikes and libraries. But I must admit that I am amazed by Google's search logarithms which somehow always seem to find what I am seeking. Even when I am not so sure myself. So what if they read my e-mail to send me targeted adds? Surely "Do no evil" does not mean they should sacrifice potential revenue streams.

So now I have a bunch of rss subscriptions. Some comics, some columnists, School Library Journal's Breaking News, and education articles from the SF Chronicle and NY Times. And I find that, like my e-mail in box, I feel guilty if there are unread articles in my rss reader in-box. At the end of the day, I can toss my printed newspaper in the recycling bin, guilt free. But there is something about marking an article as "read" just so it won't show up that seems wrong. I mean, isn't that lying to say you read something when you really just skimmed the first two sentences? How high school! Of course, I could just ignore what I don't feel like reading. But the nagging guilt...

As far as finding feeds, I just thought about what I look at or search for regularly. Or what I would like to know about without going looking for it, like local education news. I skim the headlines in the print paper, but my rss does it for me now. The searches didn't find me anything that seemed worth reading regularly. I subscribed to a couple fellow CSLA bloggers, but those were folks I already knew in the real world.

My favorite thing about Google Reader: There is a button that says "manage friends" as if one click could manage Rebecca or Jess or.... Oh, but according to Google, I don't have any friends. Well!