Spent some time tonight reviewing blogs and their capacity to amuse, delight and bore me with results from my search on the art of Herculaneum.
Technocrati: tons of stuff, lots I found irrelevant to what I wanted. Favorite yield:
ancient-history-tiara.blogspot.com and
archaenews.blogspot.com -- interesting post on the fabulous villas of Herculaeum
Blogscope: answers the question, "How can one blog-finding tool pack in more visuals than any other?" If you love graphs, maps, popularity curves, juxtaposing related terms, and information bursts, this is the place for you. I found the results page cluttered and specious. Favorite yield: Stunning photographs of Herculaneum's sculpture from Aldo van Zeeland's blogspot.
Sphere: finding your subject/topic in the news. Only one result for Herculaneum, off the beaten track but quite interesting...an announcement for the Plone Conference. Apparently Plone is yet another technology -- that purports to replace Java. The good news: the conference is being held in Naples, Italy in October. Who wants to go? I could pretend to be a tekkie (techie?) Where are my wire rims? Ciao!
Ask.com: mostly traveler's photos from Flickr taken in Southern Italy. Nice photos, not enough content.
Also,
Smithsonian's blog: Aesthetic Grounds, an arts journal weblog for public art and, Eyelevel, good reading on a variety of art based topics.
From the LibDex list:
The Invisible Librarian, hosted by Keith Kisser from Georgia. "In his spare time he writes fiction, takes pictures of his cats and thinks way too much about everything."
I'd have to say that Technorati will yield the most variety although Blogscope looks more academic. Like I said, if you love graphs....
I didn't really prefer any of the engines over the others. Success will depend upon the user's search terms and the topic. And the patience to slog through multiple pages.
