In the Parlance of Our Times

I was watching YouTube today. It was work related. Really. Actually, my work takes me to YouTube quite often. Usually I watch whatever video I went there to see and then go back to work. But today, my mind and eye wandered over the the list of related videos and I started to explore.

What a trip! Starting from an educational technology related video I went through a series of clips that eventually led me to "Michael Jackson" dancing to Mr. Roboto to videos arguing that Michael Jackson's looks have or haven't changed over the years and then back again to an educational technology related video of a really cool design application.

If you have some free time - make that lots of free time - hop over to YouTube and enjoy the ride. Or just watch this video demonstrating an application that will translate what is drawn on a Smart board into a design in motion.

I enjoyed reading Jason's post about Technorati and del.icio.us, partly because I have a lot of the same reactions to both of these services. I just find it all too much to keep up with and know that most pages I bookmark I'll probably never return to.

In addition to that, I'm still standing on the edge of the Web 2.0 ocean occasionally dipping my toes in to test the waters. I'm not ready to take the plunge for a variety of reasons, privacy not being the least of them. In the case of del.icio.us, the convenience of having my bookmarks available from everywhere doesn't quite outweigh my fear that I will lose access to them if they are stored on a third party site. I'd rather be without them sometimes than potentially be without them all the time.

But all that having been said, these sites are definitely useful. I think the biggest need Technorati serves is to make information about current events easily found, even as the event is still in progress. Google web search, because of the way the Google database is compiled, just can't keep up. (Note that there is a Google blog search, which works just like Technorati. I wonder how many people use that?)

In fact, in working through the exercises in the del.icio.us section of this project, I found a blog post that describes using Technorati to find interesting information about the recent explosion of posts containing the code to break HD-DVD encryption. I thought that was a timely example of how del.icio.us and Technorati can work together.