Academik

So you wanna be a digital worker? Here’s what you need to know:

Finding Information

Search Engines – Know your search engines and what they’re good for. Google, Yahoo, Live(MSN), Answers.com, A9, Technorati, and delicious all search in different ways and in some cases search a very specific catalogue of information. Try doing the same search on each of them and you’ll notice that the responses you get aren’t all the same. Know what their strengths and weaknesses are, how to use the advanced search like searching in a specific language, removing or requiring keywords, and searching over a period of time. A9 is meant for the text of books, Technorati for blogs, and delicious for user ranked results.

Blogs – Blogs are your your doorway into the minds of experts and amateurs alike. You should know how to find them, and have at least a few blogs a day that you read related to your sector. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a technology that allows you to be notified anytime there’s a new entry from your blogroll. Use RSS aggregators (nothing to do with alligators) to easily read all of your blogs from one place, less clicking around makes more effective use of your time. I really like NetVibes (which does a whole lot more than RSS including my podcast!) as an all in one website, or Sage as a Mozilla Firefox extension. If you’re still using Internet Explorer all the time, you consider your free time worthless and your friends are probably just not that into you anymore.

Tagging – The World Wide Web according to you. With certain tools like del.icio.us and diigo you can apply certain keywords, or tags, to pages that you visit. That way next time you want to find the page, you can search by the tags that you labeled it with. If you find several pages that would work well for a certain client, you could tag them with the client’s name. Have pages you want to share with certain friends, tag pages with their names. Both sites keep track of all your searches, and they also let you share your pages with friends. I recommend using diigo because you can highlight and comment certain parts of web pages… you’ll see later.

Prioritizing Information

Remember that there’s a lot of crap on the net in the form of pornography, rants, and people who think they are worth looking at. They’re not, and you’re probably wishing that you hadn’t clicked on that pornography link right now aren’t you. It’s easy to get distracted is my point. Like a newspaper editor, you’ve got to keep in mind several principles to make sure that you get the information that’s best suited to your audience whether that’s your boss, your client, or your spouse. Always keep these in mind when searching for info: timeliness, impact, proximity, trends, and audience.

Keeping Track of it All

So now that you have this huge wealth of information at your fingertips, how are you going to get it all together to make your point? Well if you’re using diigo, you can highlight and comment on web pages, a technique called social annotation. Even your highlights can have notes attached to them. You can also forward your annotations onto other people via e-mail. Your other option is a tool called Wizlite, but this name reminds of a rhyme about staying away from electric fences – besides wouldn’t you rather one tool to do it all? Your other other option is to copy and paste into Word. Sissy.

That’s a good primer on what tools you should have and use on a frequent basis. If you’ve got questions or want to suggest something else feel free to e-mail me at ME at ACADEMIK.ORG