Technorati: another way to keep up!

As in the case of Delicious, 27things has changed my thinking about the possible usefulness of Technorati. Using the advanced search option for "Learning 2.0" as a tag produced fewer but more relevant results, of course, than doing just a general keyword search. Then I did a similar search for genealogy and realized that Technorati could be used as another way to keep up with what's new in this area - it gave me the top blogs, videos and images. Off the subject of genealogy, when I explored popular blogs, searches and tags I was surprised by the popular searches. I'm not sure why "taskbar" would be the most popular search, and some of the others seemed odd. Although most of the popular blogs looked too technical for me, I did find Boing Boing kind of interesting. For one thing, it led me to another blog: Awful Library Books, which is dedicated to weeding (Diseases from Space is one of those titles). Maybe if I follow this blog it will help me with my weeding hangup...

Dealing with Delicious

Way behind again on 27things, it's definitely time for me to deal with Delicious. But before I do, I want to thank the birders again for their help. I posted the picture of the unknown bird in my yard on the Sacramento Birders Yahoo group and got one response from someone who felt sure it was a juvenile black-crowned night heron. Of course it was only one person, but he seemed pretty certain.

I learned the basics about Delicious some time ago when an account was set up for our use at Central Library and I was asked to add some genealogy web sites. I have to admit that I didn't really use Delicious much after that. When looking for good sites for stock quotes the other day, though, I realized that our Delicious account was readily available on the links toolbar in Telis. That made it really convenient, and I had several good sites in no time at all. So maybe now I'll set up my own account and add it to the links toolbar on my work computer - and my home computer, too. Another thing I like about Delicious is that you can combine tags when you search to get more specific kinds of web sites. Hopefully I can start thinking of this site as a really useful tool when doing reference work.

Bird ID Help Needed

Yes, I should be focusing on the next step in 27Things - learning about Delicious and Technorati. Before I do, though, I have a favor to ask of any birders that might be willing to give me their opinion. The other day while I was away from home a bigger-than-average bird landed in my smaller-than-average yard (a deck, really). My friend who was home at the time managed to take a picture - but from inside the house and with no zoom (he said the bird was about 12 inches tall). I'm still a novice birder, so I'm not sure what it is - my guess is it's an immature something - some kind of heron? I'd really like to hear what other people think it is - and sorry for the quality of the picture. If I don't hear from anyone on the blog, I might post the picture to the Yahoo group for Sacramento Birders. Thanks for your help!