SOMEWHAT FRANK

IceRocket Blog Search Update

It sounds like Mark Cuban and IceRocket are changing the name of the IceRocket's blog search at the URL blogs.icerocket.com to Blogscour.com sometime in the near future since you will notice it already redirects to IceRocket. Mark recently mentioned the change in this blog post. He then goes on to explain the reasoning for this change in his very next post here which goes on to ponder if a blog search should be a tool created with bloggers in mind or if a blog search as a tool that should be created for normal web search users. It sounds like IceRocket's is aiming at providing business people and bloggers alike with up to date information on business, industries and other types of information that are dear to them. I agree with this strategy in that many of the features can be offered to please the masses since I think eventually normal website users will catch on and use the blog search engines regardless of who the features are build for. I just wonder how IceRocket will transition the tagging that they currently use to Blogscour.  For additional information on Mark Cuban and IceRocket/Blogscour check out this post by Paul Chaney.

Find Unique Images With Devilfinder

If you are looking for an image and have already tried IceRocket, Google, and Yahoo and have not yet found the image you are looking for try using Devilfinder image search. Phil Bradley suggested using it in this post and he is right, they do have unique images not found on these other image search engines.

IceRocket and Pluck Shadows Tagging

IceRocket and Pluck are both making huge strides into the blog search and tagging arena by offering tagging methods for your blog posts. Check out this link on IceRocket for instructions on how you can begin tagging. Thanks to Steve Rubel with additional support from IceRocket CEO, Blake Rhodes, for bringing IceRocket tagging to light.

Additionally, Pluck has released the Pluck Shadows Beta. It is a new blog search by Pluck which allows you to tag pages that are already published via the Shadows web site or a browser toolbar you can install to tag pages. It took me a second to figure out how this all works since it is not using the conventional tagging method of actually placing tags into the code of your posts. However, this unique tagging method is easy to use and should have appeal to both the technical and non-technical blogger. TechCrunch does a wonderful profile on Shadows here.

The creation of these new products brings even more players into the ballgame when asking the question Who Will Be #1 In Blog Search? I wonder if Technorati is getting nervous yet?