Shortly after FHK launched we began searching for ways to increase our rankings on the search engines. The prevailing wisdom was that one good way to do this is to maintain a blogroll (that’s the ridiculously long list of blogs in the sidebar of many blogs), as it is a good way for bloggers to exchange much needed “links,” increase their link count, and move up in the ratings.

There were a few “monster” blogrolls that everyone was trying to get on, and I had one particular one in mind. I e-mailed, and begged and pleaded, and finally, the administrator of the blogroll heard my cries and added Ft. Hard Knox to his blogroll. I was so excited, because I was sure my ratings would double over night. Afterall, Ft. Hard Knox had just been added to every major blogroll in the conservative blogosphere! So I watched Technorati…and watched…lost some sleep watching that night…and guess what?! I didn’t get one single link on Technorati as a result of being added to that HUGE blogroll.

To make matters worse, my link count on Technorati actually started dropping over the next few weeks.

Something had to be wrong…I checked around, and sure enough, the blogroll administrator had done everything correctly. We were there – on all of these blogrolls, but the links weren’t being counted on Technorati. The blogroll administrator was using the popular blogroll service, Blogrolling, which is also the one we were using.

So I began researching. To my disappointment, I learned that blogroll links contained within javascript are no longer counted on Technorati, and neither are any links over six months old. So, no only were we not getting additional links from being added to the blogroll, but links from the bloggers I’d convinced to trade links with us six months ago were dropping off.

What to do?

Fortunately, we use WordPress for our blog, and I’ve checked, and the links from the WordPress blogrolls ARE still counting on Technorati (the other search engines like Google are harder to gauge, because they are not up-front about how their calculations are performed).

If you have a bunch of blogrolls on Blogrolling, you can simply use the OPML code from those blogrolls to import your links to WordPress.

That’s easier than it sounds.

1. Log in to Blogrolling
2. Click “Get Code” under the blogroll you want to import to WordPress
3. Scroll down to “OPML” and click “Click to select the code”
4. Log in to your WordPress blog, and go to the Dashboard
5. Mouseover “Blogroll,” then click “Import Links” on the drop-down menu
6. Under “Specify an OPML URL:” paste the OPML code you just copied from Blogrolling
7. Click on the “Import OPML File” button

That’s it…the links will appear on your blogroll. If you’re consolidating more than one Blogrolling blogroll, you may now need to weed through you WordPress blogroll and delete the duplicates. Within a day or two, your links will be showing on your blog friends’ link counts on Technorati.

Now, all you have to do is convince your friends to reciprocate the favor. Again. Good luck.

Also see:

• How to Prevent your Blog from Leaking Pagerank
• Technorati FAQ
• Technorati Wacks Blogrolling

	(For rolling updates, please scroll down)
	Visit These Web 2.0 Links!

These articles show you how to make Web 2.0 work for you!

• By Tamar Weinberg:
• • Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007
    A treasure trove of useful information!
  • How Do You Network on Different Social Sites?
• By Lorelle on WordPress:
• • Buttons, Bows, and Badges for Your Blog
  • How to Know When to Stop Blogging
  • Do You Care Enough To Keep Your Blog Comment Spam Free?
  • A Day in the Life of a Paranoid Website Administrator
    More details about blocking comment spam
  • Comments on Comments
    Valuable tips on handling comments on your blog
  • How NOT to Comment on Comments
    Do’s and don’ts for commenting on other blogs
  • Mean Spirited Comments and Blogging
    Be prepared to deal with haters!
• About StumbleUpon:
  • Newest on the Net: 65 Must Read StumbleUpon Articles
• About Twitter:
  • Caroline Middlebrook: The Big Juicy Twitter Guide
  • Vaspers the Grate: 7 Reasons NOT to Twitter
• Other Goodies:
  • WWdN: In Exile: on the rise of trollblogs
    How trolls drive traffic to their own blogs for profit
  • BuzzWhack: The Buzzword Compliant Dictionary
    Dedicated to de-mystifying buzzwords
  • Significant Figures: Are You Running Late?
    Your PC’s clock, that is!
  • Hide It Now – Proxy site bypasses “censorware”
  • Copyblogger: Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb
  • Geek to Live: Lifehacker’s guide to weblog comments
  • Added 1/1/2008:
    Smashing Magazine: Web 2.0 Tutorials Round-Up
  • Added 1/1/2008:
    Karthik: 12 WordPress Editors you can use

(Posted on 1389 Blog – Antijihadist Tech and Fort Hard Knox)

Technorati : Blogger.com, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pownce, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, Web 2.0, WordPress, blog censorship, blogging, censorware, comment policy, comment spam, hate, links to articles, search, search engine, social bookmarking, social media, social network, social news, spam, troll, video, writing
Del.icio.us : Blogger.com, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pownce, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, Web 2.0, WordPress, blog censorship, blogging, censorware, comment policy, comment spam, hate, links to articles, search, search engine, social bookmarking, social media, social network, social news, spam, troll, video, writing
Ice Rocket : Blogger.com, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pownce, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, Web 2.0, WordPress, blog censorship, blogging, censorware, comment policy, comment spam, hate, links to articles, search, search engine, social bookmarking, social media, social network, social news, spam, troll, video, writing

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“Ping? What are you talking about? Sonar? Golf clubs? A duck in a children’s book?“

Guess again!

In the world of the Internet, ping has two meanings:

• For everyone, ping is a simple test to see whether your computer can connect to a host.
  • Story of Ping, written by its creator, Mike Muuss
  • Accessing ping from Windows XP: Click the Start button, click Run, enter cmd to get to a command window, and then enter ping host_url or ping ip_address.
  • Just Ping is an online web-based ping utility.
  • Example of how ping is used: A service tech enters ping yahoo.com in a command window. If the connection is up, it’ll come back with Yahoo‘s IP address and the time it took to get a response. If the ping fails, the service tech enters ping 216.109.112.135 (Yahoo’s IP address). If the second ping succeeds, there’s a problem connecting with the domain name system; if not, there is a problem connecting to Yahoo.
• For bloggers, ping is a signal that you have changed something. You’ve updated something on your site. Now you need to tell the rest of the world that there’s something new for them to retrieve.

The second meaning of ping is what you need to do whenever you blog.

“But why? Don’t those search engine crawlers go out and get every blog on the planet?”

Some search engines, such as Google, do work that way. Trouble is, they take their time getting to you. If you aren’t already on a link path from another site that they’ve been crawling just now, it may be awhile before they run across your site.

• Use Google Webmasters Tools to monitor your site’s status with Google.
• Google aficionados who are using a Google Sitemap file should remember to rebuild it regularly.

Other search engines, aggregators, blog catalogs, and social websites are user driven. They rely on bloggers to send them a ping whenever there’s new blog content. That’s their cue to go fetch whatever new material is there and save or index it accordingly.

“So how do I issue a ping?”

You issue a ping by sending a message to a ping server that identifies your blog’s URL. The ping does not send any information about the updates you have made to your blog. Instead, the ping server tells the appropriate search engine(s) to go to your blog URL to retrieve that information.

Some blogging systems or blog post editors can be set up to issue pings automatically. Alternatively, you can go to the ping server’s website through your browser. You’ll be presented with a simple form to fill out with your blog URL and sometimes also the blog’s name. The ping is issued when you click on the button to submit the form.

Wikipedia’s Ping_blog article has a long list of ping servers that bloggers may want to use. This list may be somewhat overwhelming, and is not entirely up to date, so here’s a shorter list of sites that you will definitely want to consider using after you update your blog:

• Technorati Ping Form
  If you are a serious blogger and your blog is not already on Technorati, you should sign up and claim your blog.
• Blogrolling Weblog Update Form
  Your site may be included in one or more blogrolls that are supported by Blogrolling. If the blogroll is sorted by most recent update, this will move your blog to the top of the list.
• Google Blog Search Ping Service
  Repeat every time you update your blog.
• blo.gs Ping Form (Yahoo)
  Select Blogs tab, then select the Ping Weblogs.com icon.
• IceRocket
• FeedBurner (if you issue your blog’s feed through FeedBurner)
• Weblogs.com Ping Server (Verisign)
• Blog Flux Pinger (bulk ping utility), login required)
• Ping-O-Matic! (bulk ping utility)
• Pingoat (bulk ping utility, stein hoist to Tom)
• Google Blog Search Ping Service

Also see:

• Blog Troubleshooting: “Uh oh! My blog won’t display!”
• Twitter 101

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Technorati : Internet, Technorati, Web 2.0, blogging, feeds, ping, search, search engine, social media, tech tips, troubleshooting
Del.icio.us : Internet, Technorati, Web 2.0, blogging, feeds, ping, search, search engine, social media, tech tips, troubleshooting
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What is Twitter, anyway?

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging environment. If you’re wondering what this means in real life, Twitter is a place where you can let your friends know what you’re doing, network and meet new people, and keep a shared record of interesting things that you encounter on the Internet and in real life. There are even “tweetups” in various locations where Twitterers can get together in person.

How does Twitter work?

When you bring up the first Twitter screen, it asks you, “What are you doing right now?” Although people do use Twitter to answer that question, Twitter is far more than that.

Once you have signed on, you can recount your daily activities, share news items and links, or converse with other Twitterers, in messages of up to 140 characters each. Messages are sometimes known as “tweets” or “updates.” If your text is longer than that, you can continue it in the next 140-character message.

Each user can page back to see earlier messages. This means that you can communicate either in “real time” or by posting messages that others will see when they sign on later.

How do I access Twitter?

You can access Twitter from just about any device that has an Internet browser or messaging capability: a PC, Mac, or Linux machine; a smartphone or PDA such as Blackberry or iPhone; or any cell phone that has a web browser and/or text messaging (SMS or IM). Once you have a user ID, you can use any combination of these methods.

To access Twitter from a desktop or laptop browser, enter http://twitter.com in the address field. That’s all you need.

It’s free; just follow the simple instructions for signing up.

For those who prefer other user interface styles, various downloadable desktop clients are available, including a plugin for Facebook.

To access Twitter Mobile from a cell phone or other mobile device, simply enter http://m.twitter.com in the browser address field. Here again, there are other interfaces you can use, depending on the type of device. If you wish, you can also associate your cell phone number with your Twitter user ID, so that you can send SMS text messages to 40404 and have them appear with your user ID. This also lets you receive “tweets” as text messages on your cell phone. If the text messages get to be too much, you can turn that feature on or off at your convenience.

Tech Tip: If you plan to use Twitter from any mobile device, make sure that you have a service plan that allows for unlimited web browsing and a sufficiently large number of text messages per month. Keep an eye on the amount of data traffic through your account. Even if the company’s television ads claim that they offer “unlimited access,” read the fine print on the service agreement before you sign!

Who will see my messages?

Twitter lets you send two kinds of messages: normal “tweets” that can be viewed by anyone, and direct messages that go to one specific individual.

Direct messages are useful if you want to send someone an email addy or a personal invitation, or if you are communicating with family members or business associates. To send a direct message, enter a “d” followed by a space and the other Twitterer’s user ID (e.g., d 1389 for a direct message to me).

Anyone can see your normal “tweets” if they are watching the public timeline or if they view your profile page. You have the option of preventing this access by locking your updates for access only by friends, but most people choose not to do that.

To direct a normal “tweet” to a specific Twitterer, put an at-sign followed immediately by the Twitterer’s user ID in the message (e.g., @1389 for a message to me). Everyone else can still see the “tweet,” but it will also appear in the other user’s Replies tab.

The real question is not who could potentially see your messages, but who actually will be reading them. Twitterers generally stay on their own home page most of the time. Your home page shows you only the messages from other Twitterers whom you are following. In order to have a conversation, the “following” relationship needs to be mutual. This structure helps to make Twitter self-policing, in that spammers, trolls, and other bad actors find themselves tuned out. On the other hand, it does make it more difficult for a new Twitterer to begin establishing a network of friends.

So how do I start building a network on Twitter?

Once you have your user ID, you can start the process by choosing to follow other Twitterers whose messages you find interesting. To see another user’s profile, you can click on that person’s user ID or enter http://twitter.com/their_ID, substituting the other Twitterer’s actual user ID for their_ID. On the profile page, you can click on a button if you want to begin following that user. Whether other users choose to follow you in return is up to them; some will and some won’t, for whatever reason.

It helps if you already know someone who is an active Twitterer. Some people display their Twitter user IDs in MySpace or Facebook or their blogs. Once you have set up an account on Twitter, you can begin following him or her, and perhaps send an email asking the other user to start following you on Twitter and to help you get started by introducing you to others.

If you’re not comfortable doing that, you can always follow me by clicking on http://twitter.com/1389, or you can leave a comment here asking for my assistance. I check my follower list regularly and will follow anyone in return who is not a spambot and who behaves in a civil manner. Let me know what your interests are, and I’ll try to introduce you to other Twitterers who share those interests.

What are some of the “unwritten rules”?

• You gotta “tweet”! If you don’t interact with the people who are following you, they’ll figure that you aren’t on the system any more and they’ll drop you. Get to know people, say hello or good morning, remember who they are and ask them about things that they are interested in. Check your direct messages and your “replies” tab regularly.
• Don’t “spam.” People do converse about what is going on in their workplace, and about products, services, or intellectual property that they or their company are offering, and that’s generally okay. But people will block Twitterers who spew out blatant sales pitches or advertisements. By the same token, feel free to block and/or report any user that appears to be a “spambot” or is abusing the system.
• It’s okay to send links to interesting news stories or blog posts, whether on your blog or someone else’s. Twitter uses Tiny URL to convert long URLs to shorter ones. This allows the link to fit into a short text message, but the downside is that other Twitterers won’t be able to see where the link is going until they click on it. So be sure that your message includes a few words explaining what the link is all about. If you want people to visit your blog, tell them what you posted there!
• Don’t be shy about inviting people! There are some prominent Twitterers, including media people, politicians, campaign managers, well-known bloggers, and tech industry innovators. Go ahead and follow them; many of them will follow you back, and some will converse with you if you have something to say with regard to their areas of interest.
• Controversial topics are not off-limits. This may surprise you, but prominent Twitterers generally will not flame you or drop you just because you expressed a point of view that they don’t happen to agree with. It’s true that Silicon Valley and media people have a reputation for being left-wing, but some of them are willing to hear other points of view, if expressed in a civil manner. If you speak your mind, and back up your statements with verifiable facts and logic, a few people will drop you, but a far greater number will begin following you!

Anything else that would be helpful to know?

Tech tip: Did you know that you can claim your Twitter account as a blog on Technorati?
It’s very easy to do. It will make your tweets searchable and it will give you more of a presence on Technorati. After you do this, be sure to ping your blog(s) on Technorati regularly to keep Technorati up to date.

Also see:

• Twitter FAQ
• Twitter Fan Wiki (highly recommended by Twitterer Thiothixene)
• Top 10 Twitter Apps from Readwriteweb
• Twitter vs. Pownce – Comparison with Rolling Updates
• Paper: Why We Twitter (hat tip to Twitterer Jeff Quinton)
• Updated: Two MORE Takes on Twitter
• Why Bloggers Need to Ping
• In Disasters, Everyone, Not Just Bloggers, Should Use Twitter

Also on FHK

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Technorati : Technorati, Twitter, Web 2.0, blogging, instant messaging, mobile web, ping, social media, tech tips, wikis
Del.icio.us : Technorati, Twitter, Web 2.0, blogging, disaster preparedness, instant messaging, mobile web, ping, social media, tech tips, wikis
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I practically never post anything to this blog about myself and my day-to-day experiences. After all, this blog is not about me! But this time, I’m making an exception, simply because, on my travels, I recently witnessed an odd series of events, and those events raised questions that need to be answered. I liveblogged these events on Twitter, along with more mundane details of the journey.

Event #1: Last Friday, northbound through rural Georgia on I-75, we were caught in an unexpected traffic jam. The slowdown turned out to be a “gaper’s block” caused by a roadside vehicle fire. When we got to the scene, we saw a motorhome that had burned all the way down to the chassis. We saw no other damaged vehicles, nor anything else indicating why the motorhome had burned.

Event #2: That same day, just a few hours later, we were westbound on I-24 through the mountains of Tennessee, when, once again, traffic came to a complete halt. When the traffic flow started up again, all motorists were herded onto the left shoulder, while a hazmat response vehicle sped by with its siren screaming. This time, we saw a truck cab that had burned all the way down to its chassis. Some liquid, probably fuel, had spilled onto the pavement. Little remained of the truck cab, but the remainder of the rig appeared undamaged. Here again, it was not apparent what had caused the fire.

Event #3: While I was still pondering the odds of having seen two roadside fires involving large vehicles on the same day, traffic stopped again, just up the road on I-24 in the mountains of Tennessee. Sure enough, we could see clouds of smoke in the distance. When we finally went past the scene, we saw two active grass fires, with firefighters working on putting them out. At one of the fires, I saw a large rectangular area of burned grass. It appeared that a burned vehicle, the size of a truck, bus, or motorhome, had just been removed.

Was this a coincidence, or something else? I discussed this with someone else who shares my interest in counterterrorism and tracking unusual events. He said that fires like these are strictly local news, and that if they don’t take place near a city or town, they might not be reported at all. Even when they do make the local news, it’s very unlikely that anybody would put them all together and report on the fact that an unusual number of vehicle fires happened on the same day. These three fires might well have been a coincidence, but we have too little data to draw that or any other conclusion.

On the other hand, what if it wasn’t a coincidence? If a group of people wanted to cause havoc and destruction, and to have a good chance of getting away with it, what might they do? We’ve all been led to expect an apocalyptic attack one or more major cities, which would make the national news and launch an immediate manhunt. But what if they were to sabotage and burn dozens, or hundreds, of vehicles in rural areas instead? How would anybody connect the dots?

Since then, I’ve been searching for any mention of these fires in the local news, to no avail. As of this writing, I’ve yet to find any news story that I can associate with the date and location of these particular fires. That’s frustrating, but it tells me that we can’t rely on the mainstream media, or official sources, to recognize these dots, much less connect them!

This is where citizen journalism comes in, which means you and me. Use whatever tools are available to do the job. If you don’t have a video camera or a camera phone, at least get a phone with web browsing and text messaging capability, so that you can transmit the details of what you encountered.

How would a database or wiki help? The task of “connecting the dots” would be much easier if we had a database or wiki that everyone could use for reporting unusual events and local-scale disasters, and that everyone could search to find patterns and causes of events. In order to be useful, this would have to be a large-scale project that takes in and organizes detailed data from all over the U.S. It would take plenty of resources to start up such a database or wiki on a server that could handle the traffic, to launch and promote the project, and to sign up enough participants to give the project a good start. This is not a one-person job; clearly, it would take more funds and more time than I presently have at my disposal. Nonetheless, this is my proposal for the future, and if enough other people are interested, we could get it done!

For now, we can improvise by using the “blogosphere” itself as our database. If you witness anything unusual, regardless of whether or not you think it is terrorism-related, just blog about it and then pass the information along to others. If possible, set up your blog so that you can make blog posts from your mobile device. Even if all you have is a forum membership somewhere, a Twitter account, or a MySpace page, use it as a vehicle for recording what you saw! After awhile, the search engines on the Web will find these blog posts, and anyone will be able to use them to look for patterns in unusual events. Using even the simplest blogging or microblogging system will get your data out into the world where good use can eventually be made of it.

Tech tip: Did you know that you can claim your Twitter account as a blog on Technorati?
It’s very easy to do. It will make your tweets searchable and it will give you more of a presence on Technorati.

On Digg, I posted a comment to elaborate further on what this database or wiki should contain:

If you can find an interactive, real-time map of disasters, please let me know. But I’m looking for records of disasters on a local scale, that are never posted anywhere but the local news – or are not posted to any media at all. And I’m also looking for a repository of data that goes back into the past, to make it easier to search for patterns over time.

Noteworthy things to track include the following:

• Disease outbreaks in humans, animals, and plants
• Unusual numbers of, or disappearances of, wildlife (such as the recent bee dieoff)
• Power outages, Internet and phone service outages, and other infrastructure failures (such as the recent bridge collapse) whether there were casualties or not

The vast majority of these things will result from natural causes or human error, and not from terrorism. Nonetheless, knowing about those other causes could potentially save many lives also.

Update – August 16, 2007:

Here’s a link to a very disturbing incident. I have no further information about this, and do not know whether there is any connection between this new incident and the ones that I noticed previously. In this instance, the news story implies gang activity.

Bomb blows up truck, owner inside

I found out about this incident by using this resource:

Global Terrorism Incident Map: Here are the Links and Contact Info

Your thoughts, ideas, and comments? Post them here!

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Technorati : American South, MySpace, Technorati, Twitter, al Qaeda, claim Twitter on Technorati, counterterrorism, current events, disaster preparedness, homeland security, incident reporting, incident tracking, media, social news, tech tips, truck bomb, vehicles, wikis
Del.icio.us : American South, MySpace, Technorati, Twitter, al Qaeda, claim Twitter on Technorati, counterterrorism, current events, disaster preparedness, homeland security, incident reporting, incident tracking, media, social news, tech tips, truck bomb, vehicles, wikis
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For quite a while, I’ve been keeping a separate “scratch pad” blog, called 1389 Message Blog. Throughout the day, I post various links, along with comments and messages, sometimes through the blog editor, but mostly by cell phone. I use this later on as raw materials for other writing that I do, including articles on 1389 Blog, the Ft. Hard Knox Wiki, and other places.

Well…I finally realized that I am not going to get around to using all of this material myself, so I’ve decided to open it up to public viewing.

Please don’t expect anything fancy! I treat 1389 Message Blog as a workspace, so it’s always “under construction.” The posts that come directly from my cell phone might not have titles or tags. If I happen to be testing something new, I might change or delete a blog post. If I’ve used the material in an article, I may move everything to another blog or to a Wiki page and link to the new article from the post in 1389 Message Blog, so that I don’t have to update it in two places.

Thus, if you find a link on 1389 Message Blog to something interesting that you want to do some serious writing about, I suggest that you link directly to the source, not to the post in 1389 Message Blog.

Here’s the 1389 Message Blog feed.

Other 1389 Message Blog features:

• Both 1389 Mobile Blog and 1389 Message Blog are on Technorati. However, individual posts on 1389 Message Blog are not tagged or labeled by subject matter. In fact, the subject matter on that blog can be literally anything at all!
• Comments on 1389 Message Blog are open, so feel free to communicate!

Technorati tags:
1389
1389 Message Blog
blogging
cellular
feeds
Ft. Hard Knox
mobile web
Technorati
wikis

DigiDave discusses the changes in Technorati’s user interface in Technorati’s New Design. Also, please read the comments posted there.

Seems as though Technorati is de-emphasizing the blog search and blog networking features that made it so worthwhile, and instead trying to be a news aggregator for the general public. It’s possible that they are afraid of competition from Google’s blog search, which is much less powerful and does not have the infrastructure to promote blogger networking. 1389 thinks that they’re making a mistake in trying to reach the mass market by downplaying their strong suit and becoming a me-too player in the already crowded news aggregator arena.

Technorati tags:
1389
blogging
Google
Technorati
social news
tech industry
Web 2.0

The Register (UK) reports: Digg buried by users in piracy face-down.

Forbes.com explores Digg’s dilemma in all its ramifications, and discusses the online uprising at Digg and what it means for Web 2.0.

Australian news website news.com.au covers the huge revolt at Digg.

Gadget and tech news site Gizmodo covers the enormous digital riot at Digg.

Tech industry blog Techcrunch tells why Digg capitulated to the demands of its angry members in what appears to have been a spontaneous online rebellion.

Ryan Block tracks the online revolt that erupted when Digg’s admins tried to stop its users from porting the HD-DVD cracking codes.

Wired warned that Digg was melting down.

The story even appeared in the New York Times.

And here are two stories on where it all started, at doom9.

Technorati : Bury Brigade, DRM, Digg, Digg meltdown, Digg user revolt, U.S. law, censorship, cyber riot, online riot, social news, software piracy
Del.icio.us : Bury Brigade, DRM, Digg, Digg meltdown, Digg user revolt, U.S. law, censorship, cyber riot, online riot, social news, software piracy
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I’ve been using the Omgili search engine to locate online discussions on my favorite topics for some time now, but today I discovered two new beta projects by the Omgili folks: Omgili Thumbs, and Omgili PowWow.

First, what is Omgili?  Omgili is to the discussion forum what Technorati is to the blog.  It is a search engine designed specifically to find online discussions using queries.  More info is at the FAQ page and the Recent Queries page.  The process is very simple; users simply enter the topic they are researching, and Omgili provides a list of online discussions on that topic.

Omgili PowWow added the feature of allowing users to register, and develop profiles, so that they can find and be found by users with similar interests.   Users are able to exchange messages online, either publicly or privately.  Users can post new discussions, and there is a polling feature in the works which looks interesting but is not yet functional.

Omgili Thumbs takes this search engine to the next level, by allowing users to submit existing online discussions (from any forum), comment on, and vote for and promote online discussions they like or give a “thumbs-down,” to those they don’t like.

I still have one question, and have not yet been able to find the answer.  I have posted the question as a discussion on Omgili PowWow, and will post and update on this blog when I receive an answer. The question is this: ” Where in the world did the name ‘Omgili’ come from?!”

Jenn Sierra

Technorati tags:
forum
Jenn Sierra (author)
Omgili
search engine
social news
Technorati
Web 2.0