2 free services help you filter out the chatter, key in on topics

July 16, 2005

By VICTOR GODINEZ / The Dallas Morning News

Keeping track of all the entries on your favorite blogs can be tough, so it's no surprise that many people seldom branch out to new blogs.

Technorati Technorati.com's free service lets you set up a watch list of people, topics, places or subjects you're interested in. Or you can visit a page that shows most-popular topics.

But if you want to know what unfamiliar bloggers are saying about topics you're interested in, there is a way to filter out the people chatting about their pets or cigarette lighter collection.

Technorati.com and PubSub.com are two free sites you can use to monitor the latest blog and Web site entries on particular topics.

Each has its advantages and drawbacks, with Technorati taking a slight lead, at least for now.

On Technorati, you can either enter different search terms every time you visit to see what people are babbling about, or you can set up a watch list of people, topics, places or subjects that you want to monitor.

Each result contains an excerpt of the post, the time it was posted and a link to the site itself.

Technorati also has a fun "Popular" page that shows the current most-read articles, most-linked blogs, most-blogged-about movies and so forth. It's a cool way to check the cultural pulse of the blogosphere.

Technorati is also very fast. When you enter a new term to search, results pop up almost instantly.

Of course, the number of hits on a topic depends on how hot that topic is. Search "London bombings" or "Karl Rove," and you'll be deluged with links.

Grover Cleveland and the Crimean War — subjects that aren't cutting a swath through the blog world right now — each returned a handful of posts no more than a day or two old.

PubSub works basically the same, with one notable difference.

There's a PubSub sidebar you can download for either Internet Explorer or Firefox that lets you track your favorite blog topics without going to the main PubSub site.

The sidebar sits quietly on the border of your browser, and you can see instantly when your favorite topics are mentioned.

This handy tool is similar to RSS programs that let you quickly check when new posts have been added to your favorite blog without having to actually open the blog site.

One problem with the sidebar is that some corporate firewalls make the sidebar inoperable.

Another problem is that PubSub is slower than Technorati. The company said the volume of new users in the last few weeks has been tough to keep up with, but new servers will soon make it a smoother experience.

PubSub also says it is working on a blog statistics tool similar to Technorati's "Popular" page.

If PubSub can turbocharge its site and you can get the sidebar to work, it's the superior service.

Technorati is the faster, easier service right now.

Pros: Both sites introduce you to blogs you've never heard of but that have interesting things to say.

Cons: There's still no software that can filter dumb blog entries from smart ones, and there's a lot of stupid commentary out there.

Bottom line: While separating the wheat from the chaff can be a chore, both services open a new world to blog readers. They should be standard gear for hard-core blog fans.