How to Use Problems, Using Blogs and Wikipedia

To get ideas, how a problem could get solved or even to get  guidelines, how  to solve it,  blogs can be  an excellent information source.

Many engaged people are active on blogs and more than happy, to  help others with their know how, to solve  problems.

The main problem is, to find the right blogs, which is not always so easy, because there exist millions of them.

But for  that purpose search engines were developed,  which  search only in blogs;  but they search only in  the title of blogs  or at the title of posts in a blog.

Let us assume, that we want to solve a technical problem:

• the blog search engine Technorati is an excellent search engine.
• at first we open it at:  technorati  and we see, that there are about 37 000 blogs. It is of course almost impossible, to go through the total list and we must start, to use search terms.  The search field  is on the right side of the technorati logo at the top of  the website.
• now let's go  on with "proa", which we already used with  "YouTube".  No research result is shown, but a remark, that we shall refine our search.  It is almost unbelievable, that nobody should have mentioned  "proa" in so many blogs. Therefore lets start now with "sailing boat".  Only  3  posts are shown, what is quite peculiar. What is wrong ?  If we look at the search field, we see, that there are 2  search functions:   One for blogs and one for posts.  We had kept posts activated and now we will activate "Blogs" and repeat the search with "Sailing boat".  A list with many blogs about sailing boats is shown.

• we now repeat the search with "proa"   and indeed, we find 2 blogs:

        proa17ufrgs.blogspot.com
        proaufrgsb.blogspot.com

If we activate the shown web sites, then we see, that they are in Spanish and have nothing to do  with sailing boats.

Therefore we have to go back to use "sailing boats"   A list with 84 blogs are shown, which we can go through. But no blog shows up, which fits well.  So this search was not successful. We now could try other  search engines for blogs or we look at wikipedia, to find some good links there:

• http://www.wikipedia.org/
• We give in "proa" and find directly a special site  about it.

From that experience, we can learn, that it can be better, to start at first directly with wikipedia,  check the given links and if that is not enough, then use search engines or look at YouTube.

But we can use blogs, even if they are not specialised onto our topic:  We  can  ask the experts on the blogs for their support. Because it is very probable, that they know something also beyond   the special topic of the blog.

How to Use YouTube for Problem Solving

On YouTube  are many informative videos, which  show,  how problems can be solved.

Of  course,   a bit time is needed, to find the really good ones, for which we can apply a step by step procedure, like for instance:

• At first we have to open the website:  http://www.youtube.com

• then we give some search words into the search field at the top of the screen, right of   the YouTube logo

• lets  take a look at  sailing boats:   We give  in  "sailing boat"  and a list with many video titles is shown, which we  scroll down, to find out, what interests  us

• I find  a  "proa"  interesting and give  this term  into the search field, to get an overview, how many videos deal with proas.  Again, many videos are shown, but also videos, which have nothing to do with the sailing boat proa, but with some sport teams.

• Thereore I now give "sailing boat proa"  into the search field,  to find only the videos, in which I am intested

• again, many videos are shown, one of them is an outrigger canoe and because  I have a canoe, I want to get more information about it and  give in now  "sailing boat outrigger canoe" and I find the video " sailing canoe" interesting and open it,  but because this video shows a trimaran sailing canoe, I now give in "canoe proa"   and find  "Guam Chamorro Traditional Canoes ", which shoes the rebuild of a traditional proa and  we can see very well, how the sailing mast is fastend in an oblique angle and not as in modern types vertically, which is not as good, because the wind  forces  destabilize the boat much more.

We see, that this video was uploaded in 2009.   7800 people have seen it,  but only23 gave positive comments. I think, that this is a shame.  If we see an informative video, even if it is  not  perfectly done, then we should leave a positive comment.

Some other excellent videos, also about proas:

• Outrigger Marshall Island's-National Cup Race

• KiteMaran BaliWind   ( modern proa )

• and an interesting model boat:   Hydroptère RC à Casteljaloux 47

By the way; it is a good idea, to build at first a functional model, to study some of its features, before building a full scale boat. and here a real sailing boat, using this design:  Hobie TriFoiler Promotional Video
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If anybody is interested, to build a sailing boat himself, he will find many execellent information on YouTube, which will help him, to develop his own innovative ideas.

Of course, using the same search procedure, we will find many informations about almost any topic.