Tools for bloggers

Multimedia Journalism

Basic search: How to read Google results

Using cached pages

Your key words are highlighted at top in colors

You can quickly scan page to find where those keywords appear.

Narrowing your search

• A phrase search. Use of "quotes" -- you are telling Google to consider the exact words in exact order without any change.

• Terms you want to exclude. Use a minus sign. Example: Dolphins –football

• Fill in the blank or wildcard. Example: • Linsey Lohan loves *

Advanced search

• You can search within a specific site• The query iraq site:nytimes.com will

return pages about Iraq but only from nytimes.com.

• You can do this via Advanced Search or use site: from regular search/

Google News

• Different from Google web search• Automated news aggregator• Service covers news articles

appearing within the past 30 days on about 4,500 news sites

• Best source of timely and topical blog items.

Set up a Google alert

• Google Alerts are emails automatically sent to you when there are new Go

• Six types: News, Web, Blogs, Comprehensive, Video and Groups.

• Allow you to determine the frequency in which checks are made for new results. Three options: "once a day", "once a week", or "as it happens."

Other great tools for bloggers

• Craigslist or E-Bay

• Use Google advanced search or site search

• It's craigslist.org -- not .com

Example: cockatiel

You TubeExample: cockatiel

Copy the embed code

Paste it into the “html” view.

You can adjust height and width within the code.

flickrSearch this large community of photographers.

Note that there are groups devoted to specific topics

You can also tag and find photos by place.

Respect copyright

• You do not have the right to use all photos on Flickr.

• To find photos you CAN use, go to advanced search and choose to limit search to Creative commons.

• There are many sources of free images. (See list on my blog.)

Many resources

But it takes time to explore and find the right photo to illustrate your blog.