Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Twitter and the Google Cache - Two Handy Breaking News Tools

By now you've heard that there was a shooting at the US Holocaust Museum just a couple miles from where we live.

With an event like this, I find that Twitter is one of the best places to pick up information about the event. Here's a live feed of the latest chatter:

Though, like any raw news source, you have to be prepared for conflicting data. Like @ddelony who claims the shooter was a right-wing nut job, while @JediMaster_OPS claims the shooter was a left-wing nut job. Another example: @DiggFeeder says that 3 people were shot, while the majority of the tweets say that 2 people were shot.

Still, the ability to catch real time chatter, even from those who claim to be there is quite unique. And while some of the opinions are junk (which is natural knee jerk reaction), there are certainly useful insights here too.

What also comes out, are links to relevant content on the web. For example, http://www.holywesternempire.org/bio.html is apparently the shooter's website. But, you won't be able to visit it because the site's been bombarded with people curious about this wacko. The solution? Google's Cache.

You can get Google to cough up its copy of documents stored on a website by running the following search:

site:holywesternempire.org

You can then click on the word cached and see the specific pages of interest.

Folks on Twitter know this trick, and someone's already published a link to the Shooter's work.

My prayers and thoughts go out to all those involved in this difficult situation. I hope the guard has a speedy recovery, and the shooter gets the justice he has earned.

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