Grasping the blogsphere

Micah Alpern‘s great Trusted Blog Searching tool is a truly wonderful tool. Like he says:

– Some times I want to know what the world thinks (google)
– Some times I want to know what I think (my weblog)
– Some times I want to know what those I respect think (blogs I read)

So, Micah the interaction designer thought, why not wrap up a one-stop shop for all my search needs? And why not release it with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, so that others can use it? And then he just went away and did it … Thanks Micah!

Tadaaa: Allow me to present the new Gotzesphere search!

var myweblog = “slashdemocracy.org”; var mygooglekey = “8VnwzO3OM3LdajzToxLLjRnicWi5AIHB”; var myopmlfile = “http://slashdemocracy.org/links/75.opml”;

document.s.opmlfile.value = myopmlfile; document.s.googlekey.value = mygooglekey; document.s.weblog.value = myweblog;
the Web
my Blog
Blogs I Read

The tool is using the Google Soap API with PHP to do a series of domain specific searches with the site:foo.com advanced operator. The list of sites to search are fetched from an OPML file. All the results are collected together and presented on a single page. Elementary. Genious.

I already provide OPML-feeds from my GotzeLinked. I produce my blogrolls from here.

Radio UserLand users can easyly create an OPML-feed. If you use blogrolling.com, you also have an OPML-feed.

You can add this service to your own site in several ways. You can download the source like I did, and run everything yourself. Or you can use my site as an intermediate. Feel free to do so, but please let me know, so I can inform you of any changes; if there is interest, I can wrap up a number of related services, such as connecting Newsisfree web services.