ReadWriteWeb has evaluated six services that can be used to identify top blogs in any niche. Using all six services, you can determine the highest ranked blogs in a particular topic area. ReadWriteWeb discusses the pro and cons of each of the services for finding the tops blogs you might be seeking. The services evaluated include: Technorati, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, AideRSS, Ask.com and Blogsearch.
Google has added Tasks to Gmail allowing users to create to-do lists and turn Gmail messages into tasks. As noted on the Gmail blog, Tasks is part of Google Labs, so essentially it’s in a beta mode of sorts and could break. It’s fairly simple, but allows for grouping of tasks under to-dos and offer some other features as deadlines. You’ll need to enable tasks in Gmail by visiting the Google Labs setting page.
Gmail Tasks Window
Here’s a great detailed summary of WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco, which is organized by the folks at Automattic, the creators of the best blogging software available, WordPress.
For those of you who belong to a social network (who doesn’t), you have to watch this hilarious video.
The folks at Common Craft have created yet another interesting video, this time teaching concept of podcasting. For those of you who want to understand what podcasting is and how it could be useful to you as a producer of content or consumer of content, then watch the video below.
Another conceptual video from the people at Common Craft explaining the idea behind online social networks. If you are having a hard time getting your arms around the idea of social network services or know someone who is, then this video offers a very straight-forward simple explanation of the idea.
Another great video from the folks at Common Craft, which explains in simple terms the web technology of Wikis. Like their previous tutorial, RSS in Plain English, they offer an easy-to-understand and concise explanation of the technology.
Harnessing collective visual intelligence…. Wow!
Blaise Aguera y Arcas of Microsoft Live Labs demonstrates the power of Photosynth:
Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next.
This video tutorial, RSS in Plain English, not only does a good job at explaining how RSS (Really Simple Syndication) works, but also shows how to setup and use the Google RSS Reader, if you already aren’t taking advantage of the technology.
John Mahoney over at the DigitalEdge Blog and DigitalEdge TV produced a second show of Practical RSS. I referenced his first show in an earlier post which explained the fundamentals of RSS and its benefits for the average user. The second show teaches how to use Google’s Feed Reader with FireFox and RSS to track news events. John also demonstrates how to create custom news feeds on specific topics.