The Buzz in the Blogosphere

It's amazing how new ways are being found to mine the "World Live Web", a.k.a. the Blogosphere. Here are a few of the utilities / sites that I've encountered, which bear a closer look.

• Bloglines. Of course Bloglines ranks at the top of my list, the free, web-based RSS-Aggregator service. They've recently unveiled their new look to celebrate their first birthday. I love the fact that the number of subscribers for each feed is now indicated. And the Clippings feature is great.


• DayPop. Encountered this site for the first time today. They "Search 59000 News Sites, Weblogs and RSS feeds for Current Events and Breaking News". The Wordburst and Wishlist features are new to me, and certainly worth watching.


• Technorati. "Search the World Live Web. Want to know what's being said, right now, about every Weblog or Web page that has something worth talking about? Type in a url, keyword or phrase above and search the World Live Web."


• Blogdex. The Weblog Diffusion Index. "Blogdex uses the links made by webloggers as a proxy to the things they are talking about. Webloggers typically contextualize their writing with hypertext links which act as markers for the subjects they are discussing. These markers are like tags placed on wild animals, allowing Blogdex to track a piece of conversation as it moves from weblog to weblog."

I'm sure there are other sites like these, but so far, these are the ones that I've encountered.

Also worth a close read is The Wisdom of Blogs, published in Blogger's Knowledgebase.