How we discover

Searching and discovery, for searchers

Sparking the imagination by looking at a list of Google search terms

Certainly there are times when you have quirky google searches. Author Tessa Wegert tweeted a few of hers: My searches today:• World’s biggest trophy • Ferris Bueller vest • What are superhero suits made of • Estonian Krooni • Hyde and Eek I’d love to see a list of people’s Google searches for unique topics. …

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Have you ever accidentally used your town’s website to search for a book instead of your local library website?

Funny, I just went to do a search for a book in my local library. But instead of pulling up the library’s website, I accidentally just googled the name of my town, “Glen Ellyn” and pulled up the village’s website. My first thought was, “huh, they did a site redesign.” Without even thinking, I used …

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0803 Blog-How we create, discover, read, share

Categorizing your blog by your passions

Because I work in the media industry, I started this blog in January 2011 to share my thoughts on how to use media better. On the three-year anniversary the site became organized into four categories. How we create (Writing, designing, and illustrating, for creators) How we discover (Searching and discovery, for searchers) How we read …

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Screenshot of pending Facebook Page invites

Facebook Page invites waiting to be accepted

Did you know there is a section on Facebook that lists all the pending invites for Pages you’ve been invited to? Apparently over the years people have invited me to lots of Pages, but I haven’t accepted the invite! How to get to your pending Page invites Just go to: https://www.facebook.com/pages/?category=invites Page invites I just …

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Idea: a script to find Flickr photos being used online

Flickr is a great place to find photos to use. Many photographers assign their photos with a Creative Commons license, so any can use the photos. (there are different requirements with this license. Some require attribution. Some don’t allow profit use.) Whenever I see an article using a Flickr image, I almost always click over …

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In a Google search, WP is a shortcode for Wikipedia

If you do a Google search that starts with the letters “wp”, Google will automatically bring you to a Wikipedia page. (WP is a shortcode for Wiki Pedia.) Sounds pretty handy, right? Why type out the full word “Wikipedia”? You can just type a shortcode, “WP”. Except it’s not so handy, when you really do …

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Rare hashtags

It’s funny to find hashtags on Instagram that are rarely used. When commenting on a photo, I’ll often combine two words together into a hashtag. And then I click on the hashtag to see if there any other photos. Apparently is the first Instagram photo with the hashtag: #comiccompilations in the comments No photo has ever …

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Evernote from tags

The discovery metadata field

The internet would be a really interesting place if every article that was shared automatically had a “via link.” Ok, so the internet is already interesting. But what makes the internet such a great place is its connectivity. Everything is linked together. We can easily share a link to an article. So many links all …

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My Tweetdeck setup on a 3rd screen

My favorite way to set up Tweetdeck as a background stream

I’ve found my favorite way to keep Twitter running in the background at work. Tweetdeck is the tool, with two columns. Yup. Just two columns. If you try to use the normal Twitter stream on the homepage, you’ll have to manually click the “See 35 new Tweets” message. Plus, the homepage of Twitter shows you …

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What's popular: twitter

What’s popular in your Twitter network might be not interesting to you

Twitter is now curating a list of articles that are popular among the people you follow. A bit like what Nuzzle has been offering for years. Twitter calls this section “Popular articles”. Sounds like it would be great, right? “Popular articles” will unveil what your Twitter network considers to be good. However, you might not …

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Argus January 26 1996 Student art show illustrates diversity of field

Finding and sharing archived college memories

Does your college offer digital archives online? If so, you might find some good memories within their files. College memories hidden away in film My alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan Univerity, is a smaller school of 2,000 students. When I attended in the late 90s we didn’t have social media. To my knowledge, there was only …

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Would you like to search Feedly by article length? 

Sometimes I’m in the mood to read longer articles. I would love to be able to search within Feedly for articles over a particular word count. If you would like Feedly to add “article length” as one of the advanced search criteria filters, please upvote this suggestion on their suggestion board.