Week 6, # 14 Technorati

Babies are amazing. They have an extraordinary capacity to absorb and process all kinds of complicated information from their environment. People frequently compare them to little sponges. On the other hand, adults often have difficulty learning new things. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it may take awhile. This weeks' discovery exercises have been a little more challenging for me, because unfortunately I am not a little sponge, and haven't been for a long time. The web sites Del.icio.us and Technorati each contain enough information and obtuse jargon, on a single page, to make my head hurt. And with our library's power failure, it is a daunting task to find time to "absorb and process", as well as play catch-up with our work routines.

A wonderful kind patient coworker pointed out to me how I can set my Del.icio.us bookmarks to "private", and thus put to rest my concerns about privacy. She also pointed out that with Del.icio.us, I can bookmark my favorite sites and easily go to them from any computer with internet access. For some reason, that concept went right over my head when I initially explored the site. Now, the whole Del.icio.us world seems much more palatable!!!

Thus reassured and enthused, I braved Technorati. Egad. This is yet another universe of labyrinthine (is that a word?) information. But I bumbled onward, on my unsteady baby feet, into the advanced search. I liked the blog directory search better than the tag search because the results seemed less overwhelming. I got sucked into an interesting blog for awhile, fought my way out, and plunged into Top "Favorited" (does anyone else take exception to the way the English Language is constantly being mangled in naming these sites?) Blogs. I looked at one: Top 10 Distraction Stoppers from LifeHackr ...gee I wonder what attracted me to that? There I found an incredible little tool, called The Chatter Blocker. It's supposed to filter out backround noise, conversation, etc. with white noise, so you can more easily concentrate while working. Ingenious! I can't wait to try it. I also want to try the "Bozo Filter", which is supposed to help you avoid spam. I am hopeful that at some point in the future this will evolve into a more sophisticated site with the capacity to filter a wider variety of bozos.

Maybe when I'm older, I'll claim my blog and tag my posts, but I think right now I'm still too young for the blogosphere.