This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
While I am deeply involved in this project myself, I thought it would be best to ask Jessica Hekman, who really understands the site inside and out, to describe what it is and how it works:
ScienceSeeker.org first appeared on the science blogging aggregation scene in January 2011 at ScienceOnline2011, to an enthusiastic reception. It was the brainchild of Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker, and Dave Munger, who hoped to provide an interface to the world of science blogging that would include independent bloggers who were not associated with a network. The site was intended to provide one central place to list (almost) every science blog active on the web. Mark Hahnel, Chris Maden, and myself provided technical expertise. The guts of the site were developed over a marathon winter holiday break in 2010.
ScienceSeeker.org allows bloggers or blog readers to submit the names and URLs of science blogs to the site for inclusion in the list. Anyone can submit a blog; the author of the blog can then “claim” the blog (assert ownership of it). Each blog has up to two topics (for example, Academic Life or Psychology).
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The site provides a single feed for every blog listed on it. Readers may easily follow the headlines of new posts, indexed every 15 minutes, on the site’s main page, or can subscribe to an Atom syndication of the feed. Alternatively, readers may view single topic feeds, for example, all the new posts on blogs that have Academic Life listed as a main topic.
Shortly after the release of the site, a Twitter feed was added. Recent tweets from members are listed along the right side of the main page.
In the last month, editing functionality was added to the site, so bloggers can now change the topic, URL, or title of their blog as it is listed on the site. Future plans include subject tagging of specific posts, language filtering, and user rating and recommendation of blogs and posts.
ScienceSeeker.org is entirely volunteer based. We are always looking for new developers to help out! If you are interested in helping, drop us a line.
Previously in this series:
What is: Science Online London
What is: Science Online New York City