CCLS 23 Things #9: Finding Feeds

Bloglines is not exactly winning my affection today -- the search function worked for a couple of searches, but then seemed to forget how to display search results. There would be some tiny text saying "showing 1 of 1 feeds" but no result displayed. Then on the right, there would be a list headed "Related Results" but clicking on any of these just produced the same blank page -- albeit with a different list of Related Results!

Next I went to Topix and plugged in my zip code. I immediately discovered that I live in a very boring area -- the "breaking news" was mostly obituaries from towns in the surrounding area. I can see using this site to search for news on a very specific topic. But it isn't very valuable for general searches, as the search engine doesn't seem to be very sophisticated. A fair number of the hits appear to be irrelevant to the topic-- maybe the search term appears somewhere in the text of the article, but that doesn't mean the article has anything to do with the subject being researched! Also, I was kind of bothered by the prominence given to advertising on the results page.

My first experience with Syndic8 was pretty disasterous. I searched for a feed, went to the "feed URL" provided in the results, and found myself at a site called newsisfree.com (http://xml.newsisfree.com/feeds/29/2029.xml). Every link I clicked on this page returned an error message "The Link You Followed Has Expired." The page provides a list of possible reasons for this problem, but it seems much simpler just to go to the site of the newspaper itself and look for the RSS feed.

Technorati looks different and interesting. I've been there before, but never really explored the site. I don't have time to do so now, either! Maybe next time...