Technorati

I had a brief look at Technorati, and tried doing a couple of searches. Some of my basic searches didn't yield much that I was after, but after doing an advanced search, I used the function where you search within particular blogs about a particular subject (for example I looked for content in fashion blogs). The only problem with this is that some people blog across a wide variety of topics (basically whatever takes their fancy really, as is the case with my blog!!!)

I'm not sure how the search logic works, but I am assuming that if it works on a tagging system, the search only searches the tags that people assign themselves- or is this incorrect? Are tags assigned another way? Because if they are assigned by blog authors, and the search only searches these tags, then I think this type of searching would be even less reliable than even doing a google search. (By the way, I learned that perfoming two google searches produces the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle of water- who would've thought?)

Ways the library could use this technology: if there was a library blog, we could tag each entry and have links to the Technorati search engine from the library webpages. Of course, this would be much more successful, becaue the library member of staff tagging their own blog entries would be using a uniform tagging system across the University of Sydney Library... (haha!)

Just a random aside: how do you show that you are making a joke/being sarcastic/droll/poking fun online? I have a big issue with this, as it causes no end of tears and tantrums as people miscontrue what others say online... any thoughts or comments anyone?