Blogging and Reverse Research

By Alix E. Peshette

Cross-posted from Ed Tech Gold Rush
One of the benefits of my position as a technology training specialist for a school district is that I get to indulge my passion for research. When I say research, I’m not talking about facts and figures, case studies and long-term research projects. I love to research the how-to’s, what’s new and wow-what-a-great-ideas. It’s akin to digging for gold - hence the name of my blog.

An unexpected source of cool stuff comes from reading the stats on who reads my blog. Please understand this isn’t an just ego-trip thing – heck, the numbers are low but do exist. I enjoy exploring the recent visitors map and seeing the locations of the people who have stumbled upon or bookmarked this blog. Think of it as armchair tourism.

In looking at these locations, I have the opportunity to see the referring link that got these travelers to my remote speck of a blog. Often this techno-breadcrumb trail leads back to a web search – and I get to see and follow the results they got. In a blinding flash of the obvious – these people are interested in the same things that interest me!

A visitor in Belgium was looking for free video editing software and led me to Vivia.

• Vivia is a video editing program for Linux and Windows that offers very user-friendly editing of DV video material.
• Vivia is Free Software with a GPL license.
• Efficient and easy editing of clips and transitions
• "Multi-cam" edit mode: support for natural editing of scenes that were recorded by multiple cameras simultaneously, as is typical in music videos and interviews
• Support for multiple "scenes" in a single movie project

Exploration of the search made by someone in Gauteng, Pretoria, South Africa took me to one of my favorite blogs Confessions of a Freeware Junkie and a recent post titled “Free alternatives to un-licensed software in the corporate environm... Why shift from unlicensed software to Open Source and Freeware? What are the pros and cons? What is the reality of tech support when FOSS is rolled out in large organizations? All good questions!

Someone in Karnataka, Bangalore, India was searching for PowerPoint ideas and led me to this newly released freeware FlashSpring Pro. "FlashSpring Pro makes you able to produce high quality Flash content fantastically easy in PowerPoint environment. Using FlashSpring functions embedded into MS PowerPoint toolbar you get fast conversion of your presentations to Macromedia Flash format. FlashSpring Pro keeps interactivity and animation effects of your original presentations."

Blogging as research– wow – what a concept!