Blogging Soul Mate

What better way to find cool new bloggers or fascinating websites, but to join a social bookmarking site and follower users that share similar interests?  It saves so many hours in my day that I spend searching Google on various topics.  This way I can look through people’s tags and find sites on any topic I want and I didn’t have to do any of the work.  A whole new world has been opened, now that I am a Delicious user. 

I have been on a quest to find my blogging soul-mate, which I have to say has been an ordeal.  I guess I have a wide variety of interests, because I can’t find anyone that tags like me.  Maybe I am just being too picky!  After lowering my tagging standards and focusing strictly on searching for people who are transportation enthusiasts, I found Infrastructure Usa.  Even though, this user only has 47 bookmarked sites, it was the way in which they tagged their sites.  Infrastructure Usa’s number 1 tagging category is transportation, which perfectly aligns with my interests.  25 different sites are listed under transportation and another 16 under transit.  Hence a large percentage of their bookmarking revolves around transportation, meaning that this user has already tagged great sites in their library for me to use in future posts or in my research paper.  Infrastructure Usa only tags a few new sites each month, which is beneficial because it is impossible to search through people’s tags when they are tagging every single site that they come across.  This user is meticulous and only tags the websites that they feel will be most influential to them, so I don’t have to spend tons of time sifting through users cluttered internet worlds.  The one criticism that I do have about Infrastructure Usa is that it would be helpful if they wrote a small comment about each site, so that I can decide ahead of time if the article or blog is worth reading instead of having to click on each site and skim the introduction.  But their detailed categories do help the situation and help me to find exactly what I am looking for amongst their sites.  For 47 bookmarked sites, Infrastructure Usa has 124 tags and 20 different tagging categories, which shows how thorough this person is in selecting websites. 

Infrastructure Usa has tagged all sort of sites related to urban sprawl, current transportation politics, and the wave of the future in regards to new bullet trains across the United States.  The downside is that Infrastructure Usa does not just focus on transportation in Los Angeles, but in cities all across the United States, which expands past my blog.  But for all of my transportation enthusiasts, Infrastructure Usa opened the doors to some really cool sites.  The Infrastructurist-American under Construction (inspiration for Infrastructure Usa’s name?) is a blog that talks about everything that is transportation related in the entire world, including electric cars, the bullet trains in the world, thanksgiving traffic, banning cell phone use in cars, etc.  Literally, this blog seems to cover every topic related to transportation and then some.  I am sure that whatever transit topic or current project that you are interested in, there is probably a post written about it on Infrastructurist.  I will keep this site in mind when I am stuck about what to write about on my blog or looking for transit resources or current events in the transportation realm. 

Since Infrastructure Usa is all about transportation and making cities more sustainable, they tagged Streetfilms, which documents livable streets worldwide and posts their videos on this website for everyone to see.  Streetfilms is connected to the Streetsblog website and has proven to be one of the most popular transportation blogs.  But if you haven’t heard about Streetfilms yet then you must check it out right now and watch car-free clips (if you hate cars), health and safety clips (if you are worried about air pollution’s effect on our health, like me) or bicycle clips (if you want to experience places made just for bikes to roam free).  Regardless of your interest, there is a clip for everyone that is entertaining, informative and acts as a great procrastination resource. 

Infrastructure Usa might not be my blogging soulmate, but they will definitely be my blogging friend as I have found some great websites and blogs from their library, which I suggest everyone check out and see what sites you might discover as you sift through the tags.