technology in translation™

it's easy to create a custom google search engine

Most of us have been building a collection of web sites we turn to when we want to do research for business, school, health, activism or hobbies.  And just about everyone uses google for broader searching on various topics - but most searches yield thousands of results. 

You can combine the capabilities of google with the work you've done as a curator of web sites to build a search tool that simplifies your own research and gives other people the benefit of your knowledge to find better information.  It can also promote your site or sites you support - as long as they have a depth and quality of information that will lead to valuable searches.

I've created the search engine below to provide relevant searches on local and sustainable food, cooking, farming and the policy and politics of food and agriculture.  It uses 48 different web sites and blogs which have the best information I've seen on these topics - so the chances of getting dead end results are minimal.  Try it and let me know what you think.

 

 

 

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The home page for this search engine is here.

Read on for information about how to create  your own search engine, invite people to contribute to it, link to it - or put it on a web site or blog.

library of congress and flickr - folksonomy meets history

The Library of Congress has over a million historic images in its online catalog.

Launched in 2004,  Flickr is the first social photo sharing service developed using "web 2.0" technology, with comment features, interest groups and tagging to create a rich collection of images and an engaged community of users.

In what may turn into one of the most interesting and useful applications of social technology, Flickr and the Library of Congress are partnering to put photos from the LoC's collection online in a social environment and users to interact with them. (ReadWriteWeb)

A tag is a key word or label attached to a photo, web page, blog post, video or other web-based information.  Folksonomy "is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate content." (wikipedia)

As part of the pilot program with the Library of Congress, Flickr has launched a new tagging initiative called The Commons. The Commons encourages people to help describe the historical photos being added to Flickr by institutions like the Library of Congress by tagging them or commenting on them. (ReadWriteWeb)

This means that we can each organize the photos with tags that make sense to us, attach relevant information and add personal perspectives.  These folksonomies and comments have the potential to deepen the meaning of the images and create new contexts and narratives for them.

It offers an opportunity for people to discover and participate in conversations about history and culture.  It also risks silly, meaningless or false annotations.  It's an experiment with precedents like Wikipedia and OhMyNews.

"From the Library's perspective, this pilot project is a statement about the power of the Web and user communities to help people better acquire information, knowledge and -- most importantly -- wisdom," said Matt Raymond, the LoC's blogger-in-chief. "One of our goals, frankly, is to learn as much as we can about that power simply through the process of making constructive use of it."  (ReadWriteWeb)

Some tips on on how to explore the archive:

online document sharing - a "plain english" video explanation

The Common Craft Show is a terrific series of videos with the clearest and most fun explanations of social media I've run across.  Its tagline is "sensemaking for the masses". 

The videos are hand-made, using a white board, simple sketches and paper cutouts to explain social bookmarking, RSS, social networking and online collaboration.

Google hired them to create the video below to describe its tools, but the concepts apply to numerous services such as ThinkFree or Zoho.  Sharing online documents is central to effective online project management. If you're comfortable with Word and can set up an online account, you've got all the experience you need.

Click To Play

Jon Udell pointed me to this great technology in translation resource in a post about designing effective screencasts.