Week 5, Thing #12

I created a search engine for information on Led Zeppelin. I only added about ten url's, but I could have added up to 25. I added the main sites that I retrieved through a Google search for the band and the band members.

http://rollyo.com/jennyhowell76/led_zeppelin/

I keep saying this pretty about pretty much every tool, but this is really an amazing utility to be able to create your own, targeted search engine. Of course, by doing so, you can run the risk of excluding some information on those sites that you did not include in your search tool. On the other hand, you can retrieve more precise, relevant results by excluding many of the sites that might have picked-up irrelevant information.

I mentioned in my entry for Library Thing that allowing users to catalog their own items is a challenge to the current publishing paradigm. The same goes for allowing users to create their own search tools. Of course you lose much of the authority and quality control that are provided by publishers, aggregators, and catalogers. Perhaps a hybrid model is emerging? That certainly seems the direction things are moving towards...