The Hindu : Business : Weblog navigation tools

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 14, 2004

Business

Business

Weblog navigation tools

A FEW tools/services that can be used to tap weblog content more efficiently are discussed in this week's column.

Though there are several on-line tools such as newsgroups, discussion boards and mailing lists, the popularity gained by blogs among the netizens is unparalleled. One of the reasons for this, as mentioned in this column several times, is the availability of free blog hosting services such as blogger (http://www.blogger.com) and many easily deployable free blogging programs.

From being just a personal publishing tool, blog technology has evolved into a major vehicle for people with similar interests to share their expertise and knowledge. Many business organisations are encouraging their employees to exploit this tool for effectively harnessing their knowledge/skills. Even Bill Gates appreciates the potential of blogs as a business tool (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml? type=topNews&storyID=5210903). Recent adoption of this technology by Sun Microsystems is another example. Check out the Sun Bloggers page (http://blogs.sun.com/roller/) for more details.

Blog aggregators

As tens of hundreds of blogs are available on the Net that deal with a range of subjects, it will naturally be difficult for a netizen to know what is being discussed on each of them. Hence the need for a service that provides netizens accurate information on what is current in the blog world. The class of products created for this purpose is known as blog aggregators. Basically these services track bloggers, collect information from each blog, organise it on some criteria and display it on their pages.

Blogdex (http://blogdex.net/), a project of MIT Media Laboratory (http://www.media.mit.edu/), is one such service. It tracks blogs, analyses the links, spots and displays the popular ideas being spread across the blogging community; a good tool to spot what is hot on blogs.

Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/) is another blog aggregator that provides services such as NewsTalk (most talked about news items), Top 100 (most popular web logs) and Current Events (discussion on current events).

These blog aggregators are general ones that track all types of blogs. Specialised weblog aggregators that aggregate weblogs on specific subjects are also in place. Medlogs (http://www.medlogs.com/indexfeed.php), the Medical `News and Weblog' aggregator, is a typical example.

Blogring

Blogring is another tool that has emerged in the blog world. Like a webring that connects a circle of web sites with common content, a `blogring' connects blogs with a common `focus or theme.' That is, if you are looking for blogs with information on `web design,' rather than searching for each and every blog in a haphazard fashion, you can access a blogring created for `web design.' For more details on blogrings and to create/access rings that suite your tastes, check out: http://www.xanga.com.

There are several desktop-based news aggregators that include AmphetaDesk (http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/) and SharpReader (http://www.sharpreader.net/). However, as they are desktop based products, these programs will be of little use if you want to access your favourite feeds from another PC on your LAN. For this purpose, take a look at the Java-based RSS aggregator, `Flock,' available at: http://flock.sourceforge.net/.

Though the project seems to be inactive now, the available software functions rather well. To make the software operational on your PC, download the archive, extract it on to a directory and click on the file `start.jar.' At this point the newsreader server will become live and you can access it through your browser by typing in the address http://your-domain-name:8080.

TodaysPapers: News feeds

with comments

News aggregators help you subscribe to newsfeeds and automatically draw the latest news from your favourite news sites. Though you can read the latest content available on your favourite sites with an on-line news aggregator, none of them provides a facility for making comments on news items that can be read by others.

The new on-line news aggregation service (http://www.todayspapers.com/) is an attempt to bring this feature to you.

When you open the site, it will display a set of RSS feeds under different categories that include Business, Sci/Tech and Sports. Select your favourite category and access the feeds with suitable content. Apart from reading the feed's content, the service also displays the comments made by other users.

MoreGoogle

A notable aspect of the Google service is the proliferation of several products created for extending its power. The browser add-on, `Moregoogle' (works with IE only), is one such product. Once attached to IE, whenever you start a Google search, MoreGoogle intervenes, examines each of the links in the output, gathers more information on it from the Web and integrates this additional information on to the search output page. Check out: (http://www. moregoogle.com/)

Apache/MySQL/PHP bundle

As regular readers of this column would know, many powerful open-source free application packages are available on the Net that operate on the L/WAMP (Linux/Windows Apache MySQL PHP/PERL) environment. As Linux comes bundled with all the LAMP components, Linux users do not need to worry about installing them.

To help Windows users avoid the trouble of downloading/installing/setting - up each of the components separately, Net enthusiasts have created many web server software bundles by combining all the tools into an automatically installable archive. The `Complete Webserver' (http://www.paehl.de/server/) archive is one such product. By just downloading/installing the archive that contains such tools as APACHE 1.3.31, PHP 4.36, MySQL 3.2.58, PHPMyAdmin 2.53 and Mini PERL, you can turn your machine into a web server with MySQL/PHP/PERL support.

A `software' search engine

Special search engines help you focus your search on to a particular area of the Web. The science search engine (http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/) mentioned in this column a couple of weeks ago is an example. The software search engine, DownSeek (http://www.downseek.com/), which can be used to look for programs on the web, is another of this kind.

J. Murali

Email the author at:
murali27@satyam.net.in

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Business

News Update

Stories in this Section

Production falls even as reserves rise

A re-look at the rupee

Exports: Need for corrective action

Size is critical

Two-way price moves in stocks

Weblog navigation tools

Is the assessee bound to disclose source of income?