I found out about two powerful tools for spreading and evaluating word-of-mouth information via blogs today. Here they are in no particular order.

1) Word of Blog
Basically, a free service where you can pimp your pet cause or your own blog. You can also display these “ads” on your blog. From their site:

Word of Blog helps you spread the word about things you like, events you care about and worthy causes you want to support. To display an ad in your blog or on your website, simply copy the HTML code of any of the ads below. If you want to post an ad for your organization, please go the “Submit Ad” section.

2) Talk Digger
A service that allows you to search all of the big blog search engines (Technorati, Blogpulse, Icerocket) as well as MSN and Google with one click. Great for seeing the differences between the engines, but also useful for catching all of the linkers to a given resource.

Blog away!