I started ResearchBuzz in 1998 after finishing the 2nd edition of Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research. As time went by I started feeling the lack of organization. I was linking to and looking at lots and lots of resources, but I was posting them in aggregate newsletters which made specific resources tough to find.

I spent some time thinking about what I could do and how I could integrate it into a workflow (remember, I do ResearchBuzz alone; there is no staff. If I want to do something else I have to make sure I can fit it in to my available time) and eventually I decided on another WordPress blog with individual items listed and thoroughly tagged. In 2015 that became ResearchBuzz Firehose, which marks its tenth anniversary on June 23.

The Firehose also includes two special collections which I’ll mention separately, but the core collection consists of indexed articles/resources in the following categories:

• Around the Search & Social Media World
• Events
• New Resources
• Other Things I Think Are Cool
• Research & Opinion
• Security & Legal Issues
• Tweaks & Updates
• Uncategorized (because I messed up and didn’t categorize a resource)
• Useful Stuff

Those categories contain a total of 71,352 items at this writing. In addition, the Firehose also contains two special collections:

Covid-19 News: Articles, links, and resources about all aspects of the lockdown era. Started on March 14, 2020 (“Georgia Department of Public Health: Kemp, DPH Roll Out Status Report Website for COVID-19 in Georgia“) and continues today though updates are sporadic. Contains 13,954 items at this writing.

Ukraine News: Articles, links, and resources around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the following topics: cultural heritage (loss, threat to, conservation), information warfare (propaganda, disinformation, information warfare) and some technology (mostly drones, though there’s some content related to mine sweeping and GPS innovation.) Starts February 16, 2022 (“TIME: Why a Russian Invasion of Ukraine Would Be a Big Test for Google Maps“) and continues today though updates are sporadic. Contains about 1,250 items at this writing.

All items are extensively tagged to make them easier to find. In fact, I designed the Firehose for people who want to monitor for very specific things, whether it’s via category, keyword, or tag. There’s an article explaining how to use the Firehose for your information trapping needs at https://researchbuzz.me/2015/06/23/introducing-the-researchbuzz-firehose-how-to-use-it/ .

At some point I want to create an honest-to-goodness taxonomy, but the thought it daunting and it’s much more fun to work on building up the collection. Feel free to drop by and rummage around.