#9: Feeding Frenzy

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The easiest and quickest way to find feeds is to search for them. Bloglines has a built-in search engine on the top right of the My Blogs page. You can search for posts (individual blog entries) or feeds (whole blogs) by changing the drop-down selector. Like most search engines, you can get closer to what you want by using the additional search options. Google has a specialized search page just for blogs at http://blogsearch.google.com/

But there are quite a few specialized feed tools that you'll want to explore and add to your wagon:

• Feedster - One of the largest collections of RSS feeds, Feedster lets you search for feeds in three categories: news, blogs & podcasts


• Topix.net - This search tool allows you to locate recent newsfeed items based upon keyword or phrase searching. The tool focuses specifically on news and media outlet RSS feeds for information, not weblogs.


• Syndic8.com - Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.
  

We'll explore more feed-finding tools in Week 6 when we look at some more funny sounding things like del.icio.us and Technorati.

Discovery Exercise: Using the various search tools mentioned above, go exploring for feeds. (Remember that this is a "discovery" exercise. You can delete feeds later on if you find yourself getting swamped!) Pay particular attention to the kinds of information you find with each search tool.

• Find and add a couple of blogs about personal interests or hobbies and about professional or academic interests


• Using Topix.net, create a search for a particular subject in the news. Do you like how this search engine opens with feeds from your location?


• Check your Favorites or Bookmarks. Some of the websites you visit frequently may have RSS feeds. Add them to see the difference between going to a web page and having the new information come to you.

Tell us what you think! Here's where you come in. Write about your experience. In Blogger, you can create a new post and edit it as often as you want without publishing it. Or you can create several blogs on different topics and work on them as you go. Just make sure to save your entries before you leave Blogger.

Don't know what to blog about? Here are some questions to think about ...

• Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?


• Which Search tool was the easiest for you? Which was more confusing?


• What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels?


• Or what kind of unusual or wacky ones did you find?


• What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?

We'll be watching for your blogs in our feed readers!