So has everyone been reading all the hype on this newly-launched “search engine” called Wolfram|Alpha? Some have billed it as a challenger to Google, although it’s really quite different. I’d call it a “fact engine,” or even an almanac on steroids. Chock full of statistics in particular, it seems useful in its own way. I like that it supposedly uses authoritative sources of information, but I don’t see any source citations in the search results, so I don’t care much for that.
I’ve now received a copy of the social networking tipsheet Barbara Gray promised us during her presentation last week. Make sure to take a look. Could easily be some quiz material on there.
As we get closer to our social networking lesson next week, I found another good Twitter search tool called Tweetag in addition to the ones I listed in my earlier Twitter post.
On April 7th, Barbara Gray, who put together the immigration handout, will give you the same social networking presentation she gives to New York Times reporters. I’ll be “along for the ride,” but the research lesson that morning will be hers. It looks like we may also have a special visitor.
In the meantime, I’d like you to read the Times policy on social networking as well as the social networking material I’ve posted to the blog since the fall. Although I won’t be able to hold you accountable for reading any of it prior to the 7th, I can hold you accountable for it on the final quiz, so you may as well familiarize yourself with it now, when it makes sense.
Also, for a laugh, check out the Twitter video below!
(2/28 update: check out this story in Saturday’s New York Times.)
I attended a seminar on Twitter at work today and although I still don’t get the microblogging site’s appeal, I do understand its usefulness. The session included a lot of talk about Twitter as a promotional tool, the importance of making your profile look professional, and being careful about what you say once you’ve identified yourself as a company employee (which would even apply to students who will eventually be company employees, given that “tweets” never die), but of course, I was most interested in the reporting and research angles.
Mentioned prominently were the uses during the recent Hudson River and Buffalo plane crashes, gathering eyewitness accounts. Just yesterday, Poynter Online posted a similar story about the Amsterdam crash. But as useful as Twitter can be during such breaking news events, the point was also made that it’s only a matter of time before some news organization gets “pranked” by a supposed eyewitness.
Anyway, two good sites to check out are Twitter Search and Monitter. Enter a word into the search box, and you’ll get the most recent tweets including that word. Twitter Search even lists the top trending topics on its home page, and TweetStats has a page with both current and historical trends. Another interesting site is Twitterholic, which provides a list of the most followed Twitterers.
We’ll have a lesson on social networking later this semester.