SURFING THROUGH NOISE

SURFING THROUGH NOISE^TM

by George Lorenzo

What do I mean by "surfing through noise?" Well, since starting this journey into the land of information fluency, I’ve lost my mental footing due to my extensive travels through, and discovery of, an overabundance of good, bad, and confusing information online. Basically, I’ve been trying to harness and really understand the web - how absurd! As I continue to surf through the vast array of Internet pipelines, I find myself, at times, holding up my head with my hands, covering my ears, like I’m attempting to escape from some "noise." In short, the web, with all its new implications that change with the click of a mouse overnight, has become a morass of incomprehensible noise, a cacophony of websites and web services. My goal now is to somehow make it quieter, with a tonal quality that I can control and listen to in comfort, similar to turning the volume knob down a few notches on the stereo or radio, or, better yet, on the iPod or other MP3 player.

To bolster my use of the word noise, I utilized a "define: noise" prompt in Google that brought me the following response, among many: "Noise is incomprehensibility resulting from irrelevant information or meaningless facts or remarks." Additionally, the 2e definition of noise from Merrian-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, is "irrelevant or meaningless data or output occurring along with desired information."

How to surf through all the noise without going crazy became more evident to me when I attended the 10th Annual Internet Librarian 2006 conference last month, where, ironically, I was introduced to even more websites, web services and information about where the web is heading. I thought I had a fairly good handle on what’s happening on the web until I attended this conference.

This was my first annual Internet Librarian conference, and I highly recommend it for anyone who is a student of the Internet and the web. It is put on by Information Today, Inc., and The Special Libraries Association was the main "learning partner" for this event. The conference definitely lives up to its billing as being "designed for information professionals who are using, developing, and embracing net- and web-based strategies in their roles as information searchers, webmasters and web managers, content evaluators and organizers, product developments, and more."

While I did feel bombarded with another case of information overload, I also came to the realization that dealing with overload is really all about making intelligent choices that are based on experience, relatively simple logic, and, in many cases, plain old luck. Plus, it also helps to be tied into a smart network of friends and colleagues - like the folks at this conference - who know a lot about what’s happening online these days.

For the moment, I will talk about a presentation that was one of many eye-openers for me. (There were many unbelievably great presentations that I plan to talk about in future issues.) It was given by Gary Price, director of online resources for Ask.com and publisher of ResourceShelf, a weblog with search engines news, research-oriented resources, and an opt-in weekly newsletter.

Price gave about six presentations at the conference, and this particular one covered a number of his favorite online resources from ResouceShelf (www.resourceshelf.com). Here’s a short list:

Docuticker (www.docuticker.com) - A daily update of new reports from government agencies, NGOs, think tanks, and other public interest groups. DocuTicker’s chief editor is Shirl Kennedy; contributors include Price and other librarians.

Pandia (www.pandia.com) - Helps people surf the web more efficiently. Pandia is currently popular among librarians, teachers, students, webmasters, managers and others who would like to learn more about search engines and Internet searching.

WordPress (http://wordpress.org) - Price gave this free blog and weblog platform tool high praise, as did others at the conference.

Public Radio Fan (www.publicradiofan.com) - Price said this site has been around for a long time, but this was the first I heard of it, and now I love it. It features a schedule of listings for thousands of public radio stations and programs from around the world. Visitors can follow audio links to hear their favorite programs and discover new ones.

Search for Video (www.searchforvideo.com) - An online database of videos, as well as a video podcast directory. Price called this the one of the best federated search tools for online videos, but he added that there are many other similar websites.

FlightAware (http://flightaware.com) - Provides free online flight tracking services for both private and commercial air traffic in the United States.

Bloglines (www.bloglines.com) - A free online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. I started using this website for my RSS feeds, and it works great.

Topix (www.topix.net) - This is a very impressive website that crawls and categorizes breaking news from over 12,000 media sources and over 38,000 blogs, 24 hours a day.

The next SurfingThrough Noise^TM column (coming in the December issue) will feature more information about what was presented at Internet Librarian 2006, as well as other information-fluency-related topics of interest.