Very recent – the ‘buzz’ search engine

Tom Churm commented on this blog recently about what I assume is his search engine, Very Recent. It’s an interesting idea. It’s a search engine that searches for information on sites like Twitter, Google Blog Search, Technorati, Yahoo News, Digg, FriendFeed and Flickr. So what you’re getting when you search is the latest ‘buzz’ from people making comment and producing content in this networked world.  

How useful it will be for education is something to ponder. There’s always the risk that the returns will be potentially inappropriate – we are, after all, dealing with social networking sites where people offer relaxed commentary. However, I could see the benefit of this search engine for finding information about world events as they happen. It’s often the social networking sites that are buzzing with info straight away. If you operate in a network like Twitter you will know that the links people provide are often good.  I searched for Beijing Olympics and found some interesting information and some great photos from Flickr. You could set a task for students to find what the latest buzz is surrounding this world event. By going to a Technorati link I discovered that protestors in Beijing must give 5 days notice and ‘not harm China’s vaguely defined “national interests” ‘.  Let’s see how that goes!!

You don’t get a lot of detail about what is listed there- just the title of the blog post, article or YouTube video etc. Hard to know if there is any relevance for what you need. Phil Bradley recently wrote about it and you might like to read his take on it. It’s an interesting idea though, and Very Recent is a search engine I’ll be remembering the next time something big happens and I want to see what the world is saying about it.