Blogs, blogs, blogs!

So we are entering section #2 of the ever illustrious Learning 2.0 challenge! The next two weeks are going to be about blogs.

Chances are, you've already encountered blogs as you went along your daily business of finding information. This section is focussed a little bit more on how to create a blog and why they are so popular. However, there are a few more things that might be of interest to you.

Searching for a blog is a little bit more challenging than your average website. That's why there are search engines like Technorati and Google Blog search that specialize in searching for them. The main difference between a regular search and a blog search is that a regular search will tend to focus in on *particular* blog posts. Blog searches will get you the particular posts and then provide links to the entire blog, in case you want continue reading the authors thoughts about your favorite subject.

Technorati also provides authority rankings for blogs, based on the number of people who link to the blog. This is a helpful (though not perfect) way to see if a blog is worth the page it's written on.

Later on, we will be doing some "things" related to RSS. RSS is a great way to read blogs (among other things). In my view, RSS is *the* most important subject area for libraries to know right now. Itsa little bit tricky for beginners, so you'll find that I will be offering as much help as I can on the subject. Once you know how to use it though, I think you'll find that it can really help keep information overload under control.