I’m interrupting the Purple Library Series this Sunday to address some reactions to the newly launched LISZEN search engine. I have some answers and thanks to give, so here we go:
From Confessions of a Science Librarian post: LISZEN: Coolest. Thing. Ever.
Interestingly, it’s a rather modest search engine, as it has not picked up any discussion on itself yet. As of right now, if you do a search on “liszen” you will get no hits (for some reason, I can’t create a link to the search results page in the engine, perhaps a bug with Google CSE?). Compare that with 16 hits on Google Blog Search. I wonder how long the Google CSE database is out-of-sync with what should be more-or-less the same info in Google Blog Search?
Since I didn’t talk about LISZEN before the launch, Google didn’t have time to index the site- which is why it’s hard to find in a search. Also, I believe that since the site is masked (see below) Google doesn’t like the site.
The reason you can’t see your search link is (http://www.liszen.com) is a masked domain over a (libraryzen.com) directory. This problem will soon be fixed as I am adding the (liszen.com) domain to a dedicated area. After that I will no longer have to mask the domain.
I found the statistics interesting for Google Blog Search, but with a recent search as LISZEN have found results to be about the same. Of course it will be something I monitor in the future.
From Library Stuff post: Where’s the Beef?
While I absolutely love the concept of LISZEN, I can’t help but notice the big grey elephant standing in the corner that nobody wants to talk about.
Or maybe that should be a big orange button with three letters inside (pick your choice of which letters to use).
This post was later clarified the comments, with the following explanation:
Let’s say I want to get updated anytime anyone in the library blogging field has something to say about RFID.
I love this idea and I am hoping that it is something Google adds to their Co-Op Site. Believe me, when if/when they do it will be implemented.
Another great post is from ricklibrarian with a review of LISZEN. Check it out!
Finally, I want to thank everyone for talking about LISZEN over the weekend, the results have been phenomenal:
(Site stats before and after LISZEN launch)
Bookmark to:
Love it. It’s woken me from blog slumberdom – so please ignore the shambles my site fell into when I gave up on a redesign sometime back:
I’ve put together a quick LISZen OpenSearch plugin for Firefox and IE7 — it’ll have to be resolved to the new URL when that kicks in. I haven’t figured out how to embed the results with your nifty Buddha reader yet – but it’s early…
If you want the source or for me to drop it or whatever – shoot me an email…
Thanks Kevin. As soon as LISZEN (http://www.liszen) kicks in I will be sure to offically announce the plugin on your site. Also, I’d be interested in the source… I’ll shoot you an email later today. I’m thinking I will be creating a “LISZEN” page on my blog where I would also like to put the plugin (if you don’t mind).
Hey. The comment about having a single RSS feed for all 500 blogs!!! I’ve almost done it in the past. In fact it was the point of origin for my own http://www.infolitwordnews.com – where Google CoOp is just the search box, an all the rest is feed agregation.
I’ve built this on top of previous engenuity developed on mini “BlogLines-Like” sites for an association I’m a board member of: http://www.incite.pt/blogs
The problem is… 500 blogs at 2 posts a day is 10000 posts a day , which is 416 posts an hour, meaning 6 posts a minute… is anyone capable of digesting every single thought a librarian exudes to his/her blog? However it can be done.
Using my own knownledge about feedonfeeds (the engine behind Info Lit World News) it would take forever to harvest the 500 blogs (15 seconds a blog: 5000 seconds per cicle, 83 minutes… hum… seems feasible, but we would never have the blog posts up to the minute ).
To put an feed instead of a site as the delivery mechanism is a piece of cake.
If I have time I’ll do it this weekend.
Julio: Sounds intesting. I think what Library Stuff was getting at was the ablility to track not all blogs, but certian topics of keywords. Would this be possible?
Hi all!
Track the emergence of words on blogs blogposts? Is that a problem? I track “Information Literacy” on googleblogsearch, technoratti and googlenews without a problem at http://www.infolitworldnews.com . I’m going to add “ask” blog search and “yahoo” news search in a couple of days.
The fully aggregated feed for all the 400 blogs LISZEN searches and I could find a rss feed for (with a valid and inteligible datestamp) is from now on (and forever) available at http://last25.janjos.com/ with a complimentary rss feed at http://last25.janjos.com/rss.php (I think that due to a glitch in my php.ini it now searches only the last 24 hours)
Update time is at each 15 minutes (00, 15, 30 and 45) of every hour!
Share and Enjoy!!!
PS: If you don’t mind I’m going to copy the LISZEN concept for portuguese library sites and blogs.
Hum… “Only certain topics and Keywords” and only “on certain blogs” (like the collection behind liszen)?
Now that would be a challenge … my only problem is that I do not have the bandwidth to do it from scratch , and I also do not have the necessary amount of ask.com shares to make it hapen on bloglines where it would be a piece of cake (they allready to most of the job anyway)!
Please contact Gary Price directly. He has leverage there!
Also, LISZEN isn’t searching feeds it’s using the actual web page. I think the best example of a customized feed is from Google news (http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/news_feed_terms.html).