comparison shopping, news style

Speaking generally, finding new sources for information isn't really a problem for me. On the contrary, my challenge comes from deciding which of the myriad of options I should actually pay attention to. Usually, the process is pretty organic. I have the sites and the sources that I like. Sometimes they link to others, so maybe I will like that one too ...

Very rarely, then, do I avail myself to things like news feeders or searches. And when I do, it tends to be Google News. These other utilities get a lot of buzz though, and I admit that I like to know what people are buzzing about, so it was swell to do a bit of exploring.

Now then, I was planning to write my usual expansive response here, but I'm on the edge of getting a cold, so my headspace is a little trippy. As such, I will offer only scant impressions. Sort of the way we are supposed to, only usually I like typing to much to do so (I've always had a problem with self-editing my writing. I was critiqued for it in front of the class in elementary school, so you know it's true. And my sharing that fact with you now, even at a moment when I say I'm not going to write very much right now is an excellent example.)

So, Technorati seems to be popular, but I find it overwhelming. Probably not for me. As short as my attention span frequently is, you still go too fast for me. Also, your search results seems hit-or-miss and not quite as intuitive as I like.

Syndic8 only appeals to the part of me that wants to pretend that it's still the early-90s and I've just started using this new-fangled Internet thing. (Um, hey - why aren't I using Mosaic to look at this page?) And that part of me is very, very, very tiny. Practically non-existent, even. Also, when I did searches I got zero results on topics that the other places were finding hundreds.

I do like both Feedster and Topix. I worry that I only like Feedster because it is so pretty (so green! so mod!) , but I'm also very keen on the podcast search. And, even when I searched for semi-obscure topics, I found timely, interesting blog results. Which I may have found on other searches too, but not before mining a lot of inapplicable links. Topix just seems to have a lot of good qualities overall. It's well-designed, pulling and mimicking aspects of both print and new media. It's easy and intuitive to use and the presentation is clean. Of all of them, it's probably the one that I will actually use the next time I want to do a little information scavenging. Which, knowing me, will probably be within the next hour. After I have taken some more vitamin C.