How can I find it?

We learn about real time information exchange and social networks, and get an introduction to real time search tools.

Class held on 10/07/2009. (student notes; possible questions).

Class structure

1. Go through “At beginning of class” information
2. I'll lecture for a bit — but no slides today
3. Work on today's exercises

At beginning of class

On your own

1. Read the current to-do list on the course home page.
2. No grades (too much other prep going on)

What I'll cover

1. I loaded all of the slides from this semester for each day I did a lecture.
2. RSS search experiment results
3. Search engine analysis assignment

Notes

1. When Twitter results are included with other results, they overwhelm everything else.

Resources

General

1. bit330 realtime at delicious
2. The ultimate guide for everything Twitter
3. An Illustrated Guide To Using Twitter
4. Hashtags explained
5. 50 Useful Twitter Tools for Writers and Researchers

Real-time search

1. Scoopler (about)
2. OneRiot (about)
3. Collecta — realtime search for blog posts, articles, comments, twitter, flickr, twitpic, youtube
   • Collecta says its the fastest contender in real-time search race
   • Real Time Search Engine, When Breaking News Isn’t Fast Enough
4. MicroPlaza — "welcome to your personal micro-news agency. Discover relevant information filtered by the people you follow."
5. Surchur — "the dashboard to right now";
6. Addict-o-matic — "inhale the web"; instantly create a custom page with the latest buzz on any topic
   • seems best for actively tracking a topic versus coming to it with a random query
7. Yauba — search that tries to be all things to all people
   • How Twitter helped make Yauba into a global search engine
8. FeedMil (about) — "real-time feed search"

General search based on real-time information flow

1. Topsy — "a search engine powered by tweets"

Twitter search

1. Search at Twitter
   • Basic search
   • Advanced search
   • Searching Twitter -- the options
2. Tweetzi (help) — "real-time Twitter search & trends"
3. TweetMeme — "hottest links on twitter"
   • TweetMeme’s latest Twitter search tools take on Scoopler, OneRiot
4. TweetGrid (how-to, FAQ) — "create a Twitter search dashboard that updates in real time."
5. CrowdEye (about) — "what all the twitter is about"
6. Twitter Power Search
7. BackType (about) — "a conversational search engine"
8. TwiST — "Twitter Search Tool"
9. Tweetag
10. Combining Twitter search with regular Web search
    • Twiogle — "search twitter & google at the same time"
    • BingTweets — "fusing twitter trends with bing insights"

Twitter trends

1. TwitScoop (watch the live buzz cloud; search; hot trends)
   • Twitscoop lets you track live buzz on twitter
2. Twazzup — "search twitter. get real insights."
   • Twazzup, Twitter search alternative
3. Twendz (about) — "exploring Twitter conversations and sentiment"
4. Twopular — "trends on Twitter aggregator"
5. Twemes (about) — "twitter memes — global tags for twitter" (hashtag grouping and searching)
6. Twitt(url)y (about) — "We track and rank what URLs people are talking about on Twitter."
7. Retweet Radar — "Finding trends in the mountains of information 'retweet'ed on Twitter."
8. Trendistic (help) — "see trends in twitter"
9. TweetVolume — find out how frequently specific words appear in tweets.

Distribution

1. TwitPic — "share photos on twitter"
2. TweeTube (about)— "sharing stuff on Twitter"

Local search

1. NearbyTweets — finds tweets in your neighborhood
2. AskTwitr — look at tweets on a map
3. TrendsMap — "real-time local Twitter trends"

Twit search

1. Twittorati — "Twittorati tracks the tweets from the highest authority bloggers, starting with the entire Technorati Top 100 and soon including many more of the web's most influential voices."
2. TwitSeeker (about)— "who you're looking for…by what they're talking about"
3. Twibs — Twitter business directory
4. LocalTweeps — "a ZIP-code level Twitter directory"

Other Twitter tools

1. BackTweets — "search for links on Twitter"
2. Cloud.li — real time cloud generation of search results
3. TwitterFall — "Twitterfall is a way of viewing the latest 'tweets' of upcoming trends and custom searches on the micro-blogging site Twitter. Updates fall from the top of the page in near-realtime."
4. PollDaddy — polls on Twitter
5. TwitLinks — "The latest links from the worlds top tech twitter users."
6. MySkyStatus — Real time flight tracking updates. Shows your flight's location to twitter and facebook followers

Organization

1. TwTask — manage to-do lists from Twitter
2. Twit2Do (faq) — "create to-do lists with twitter"
3. Postica (faq, twitter) — create and share sticky notes across the Web

Other real-time tools

1. uberVU (tour, tools) — "easy way to find and follow conversations"
   • ContextVoice: Real Time Tracking with Big Picture Analytics
2. ReadTwit (about)— converts Twitter feed into an RSS feed (with URLs un-shortened, filter users in/out of feeds, and filter out #hashtags).
   • ReadTwit: All the Links From Your Twitter Stream in A Filtered RSS Feed
3. Near real-time search on Google
4. Enable real-time updating of RSS feed readers from publishing blogs
   1. RSSCloud
      • Real-Time RSS Feeds Coming Soon to Your Favorite Feed Reader
      • WordPress Just Made Millions of Blogs Real-Time With RSSCloud
   2. PubSubHubBub
      • World's Largest Paid Blogging Platform Goes Real-Time

Using Twitter

1. TweeTree (about) — "we built this site to help us better use Twitter"
2. TweetCloud — "what's being said?"; gives you a tag cloud that helps summarize the tweets of a specific user. Can help you decide whether or not to follow a twit.
3. Twitter Karma — helps you see whether or not you are following your followers, whether your followers are following you. (Click on the "Whack!" button after logging in to Twitter.)