Although Google does a fine job of locating WordPress content (especially if you alt tag everything and categorize properly) there are other ways to find what’s up on blogs:
Track What Bloggers are Saying – Bill’s Buzz Marketing Blog – ECNext

Blogpulse is an AC Nielsen service with a simple interface and some trending reports.IceRocket searches not only blogs by MySpace as well, another CGM channel that deserves monitoring. IceRocket also offers a trending tool.

Technorati often uncovers blogs not picked up by the other engines, but usually returns the fewest results for searches I conduct.

And of course, there’s the small start up known as a Google. Goog’s Blog Search returns the greatest number of results for the searches I’ve conducted and has that oh so friendly and simple Google UI.

This is by no means a comprehensive list- and there are other sites, like Digg, that help you find out what people are talking about, interested in, or posting about.

Most people don’t start at one of these sites for search, they start at a major search engine like Google, but, times change, and it never hurts to be aware of what’s out there.

Remember, Search Engines don’t all index the same thing- or give the same results, so it never hurts to have many of them available for different searches.

Those of you who have resisted all advice to switch to Firefox, and insisted on staying with a Microsoft product (which typically means security issues and either feature gloat- or in IE’s example- features missing)- your day has come:
IEBlog : Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP Available Now
Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP Available Now

Today we released Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP. I encourage everyone to download the final version from http://www.microsoft.com/ie.

We listened carefully to feedback from many sources (including this blog) and worked hard to deliver a safer browser that makes everyday tasks easier. When I first posted publicly about IE7, I wrote that we would go further to defend users from phishing and malicious software. The Phishing Filter and the architectural work in IE7 around networking and ActiveX opt-in will help keep users more secure. IE7 also delivers a much easier browsing experience with features like tabbed browsing (especially with QuickTabs), shrink-to-fit printing, an easily customizable search box, and a new design that leaves more screen real estate for the web site you’re viewing. IE7’s CSS improvements are incredibly important for developers as many of you have made quite clear. I also think IE7’s RSS experience and platform are important, powerful, and innovative.

In addition to our release of IE7, Yahoo! has a customized version of the browser available today and over the next few days partners such as Weather.com and USA TODAY will offer their own customized versions. These versions will tailor the user experience with specific toolbars, additional search engines, favorites, and RSS feeds.

I want to thank everyone who provided feedback as we developed and fine-tuned Internet Explorer 7. Over the 20 months since Bill Gates first announced our commitment to deliver IE7, we released five betas and a release candidate to millions of users worldwide. With each release, your feedback helped us make IE7 better. Your contributions, ideas, and direct comments were crucial in helping us prioritize and focus our work. I can’t imagine delivering this product without the tremendous cooperation we enjoyed from so many of you as well as developers and partners.

That said, we’re not done. Even as we put the finishing touches on Windows Vista and release all the remaining language versions of IE7, we have already started work on the next versions of Internet Explorer. We’ll post more here soon about our plans for the product and our plans for listening to you.

Thanks,

Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager

I find it interesting that there are “Branded versions” of the browser available- instead of allowing the user to customize the experience for themselves- through skins, themes, plug-ins and extensions- you can get a “custom version” from Yahoo or USA Today. Interesting new twist that will need further investigation.

In the mean time- please start downloading away- so you can learn the joys of tabbed browsing and RSS.