Inquiry Topic

I've decided upon my topic to complete my first Coursequest. I've always been interested in wind power. Particularly folks who have their own electricity genereating windmills. I once attended a wedding reception where the owner of the property where the party was being held owned and successfully operated such a windmill. After talking with him I was convinced these windmills are are an inexpensive way to power your home and make a little money.

I started my search for materials online in two places, Google and Bloglines. I figured the almighty Google would have several items on the topic of "electric generating windmills" and sure enough they did. From the list of hits I explored the top link. Google certainly does some things right as the site I perused was full of tons of information. www.newfarm.org is a wonder site with information pertaining, like the name, to farmers. I was attracted immediately because of the nature of the information listed on the opening page. The mention of its sponsorship through the Rodale Institute made their claims somewhat valid and easily checked for accuracy and bias. I spent about 10 minutes reading and evaluating the claims and information on the site.

I also did a scan of hits from Bloglines.com. I figured this method would be a good grass roots way to look at what people in the world are writing about this topic, particularly in the unpublished, unincorporated world many like to call the blog-o-sphere. I was disappointed with the bloglines results because like early versions of internet search tools my "keywords" were often too exclusive while at the same time too inclusive. Results listed were any article with any of the three words I entered. As I quickly scanned several of the articles / stories from fellow bloggers and articles from national newspapers it was quickly apparant the bloglines point of view wasn't getting me very far. I believe a better use of keywords and an advanced search will garner me more specific and valuable information.

I'm hoping to begin formulating my questions I hope to answer for this project. My next posting will probably breakdown an approach.