Recently, FriendDeck developer Paul Kinlan released an Adobe AIR application of his FriendFeed tracking tool. Although still rough around the edges, this app has potential to become a viable alternative interface to FriendFeed for the service's heaviest users.

One of the best features of the new AIR application is how it syncs with the online version of FriendDeck. That means whatever changes you make within FriendDeck on the web show up in the desktop application and vice versa.(Side note: how we wish TweetDeck did this!)

But let's be clear. The Adobe AIR version of FriendDeck still needs a lot of work. The slider bars are hard to see, the columns can't be moved around, "un-like" didn't work in the first version we tested, pictures don't show along with posts, and performing searches requires the use of specific query syntax, like "friends:username." That last bit practically requires you to use a cheat sheet when building your columns. (For search query syntax, see the list provided here.)

Yet despite these problems - all of which are being addressed according to the developer - I still can't get enough of FriendDeck. Why? It's simple: FriendDeck gives me an eagle-eye view of the topics I care about on FriendFeed. Using the app, I can see a lot more information with a glance than when I use the FriendFeed web site itself.

Use FriendDeck to Follow Your Lists, Rooms, and Searches 

There are a couple of ways you can use FriendDeck. For me, a compulsion to organize things into groups has led to the creation of over 30 lists for tracking specific topical areas outside of my "home" feed. I don't check each list daily, but it's nice to have them there. I doubt that anyone else has embarked on such madness, but even if you have only a few lists, like "Favorites" or "Personal", you can add them to the FriendDeck application by typing in "list:list_name" (where, obviously, "list_name" is the name of your list).

Similarly, if you're less inclined to use lists and more inclined to track items by keyword, you can instead just type in the word or words you want to track in the search box. For rooms, you would just type "room:room_name."

Use FriendDeck as a More Advanced Feed Reader

Another great way to use FriendDeck has to do with one of the biggest secrets surrounding FriendFeed itself: you don't have to participate to use the service. Although community members will tell you this goes against what FriendFeed is all about, it's true. If you're the kind of person who could care less about "liking" items or leaving comments on the latest internet meme, you can alternately use FriendFeed as an aggregator on topics you want to track, no participation required. Instead, FriendFeed can simply become the framework you use to build the feed reader of the future: an aggregator which lets you follow much more than RSS feeds alone.

For example, take any subject about which you're passionate. You could build a private FriendFeed room that you fill with blogs, news sites, Twitter searches, Google searches, well-known Twitter users who post on this subject, and more. Within one interface, you can track it all. This is a million times better than just following blogs in an RSS reader or just tracking Twitter posts using Twitter's search engine because you're not limited to RSS alone.

You can share these rooms with others either by making them public or by inviting select users - like your colleagues - to join. Alternately, you can keep them completely private and only for your personal use.

You can then add these personalized rooms into FriendDeck by typing in "room:room_name" and soon you'll have one single application that tracks everything you care about on the internet - from blogs posts to tweets and so much more. And it's all in one window.

Too Complicated?

In explaining how FriendDeck works, it occurs to us that it may sound a bit complicated for the average user. That may be true, but then again, FriendFeed itself is an application that requires a lot of explanation, too. It's also quite possible that FriendFeed and FriendDeck will never cross over into "regular user" territory. That's OK, though. For anyone who has learned how to use FriendFeed - really use FriendFeed - applications like FriendDeck will hold appeal, despite their complications.

It's still far too early to call FriendDeck a complete success or failure, but it's not too early to use it. If you're geeky enough to learn its quirks, you may find the FriendFeed desktop application you've been waiting for. If not, then feel free to return to your browser.

Besides being able to quickly send a link to Twitter, one feature we really like is feedly's integration with Open Calais, Thomson Reuter's semantic web service. Feedly's Calais command overlays semantic metadata on the current page and then links to a page on feedly with related stories from your RSS subscriptions, Delicious, YouTube, and Twitter.

Commands

Feedly's developer Edwin Khodabkchian notes that he will add more commands soon. Here are all the feedly commands that are currently availably in Ubiquity:

With the new SmartSpace service from GoDaddy, anyone can create a personal web site which aggregates your activity from across the social web, combine that with other sources of news and information, and then create a personalized start page containing everything of interest to them. The service can also be used as a blogging platform with social elements like chat already built in. The idea is that you can use the SmartSpace platform to create the kind of site that's right for you, whether that's a social network of sorts, a traditional web site with social elements, a place to host your podcasts, or whatever else you want.

SmartSpace is designed to be easy to use, even for non-technical users. With a click of a button, you can grab content from sites like flickr, YouTube, Google News, Facebook, MySpace, or any other web site that offers an RSS feed.

You can even customize this content to your own personal preferences. For example, if you only want to see Flickr photos of lolcats, you can just type in "lolcat" in the tag field provided. Alternatively, you could select the RSS feed of a particular person's photos.

In addition to this dynamic content form across the social web, GoDaddy also makes available various pre-selected news feeds which you can add if desired. This content is categorized by subject, and is similar to the types of selections that many of today's personalized homepages offer.

Chat & Email

The Chat application lets you have online text conversations right on the site. With the included administrative controls, you can launch a room, invite users, ban users, and participate in both public and private chat sessions. Again, there's nothing technical involved in adding this to your page - the app is already set up and ready to use. All you have to do is make a few choices about how it's displayed and whether it's loaded by default when you log in.

Also, because SocialSpace users have purchased a domain name via GoDaddy, there's an option to set up email addresses using that name. The interface for doing so is much easier to manage than GoDaddy's usual UI for creating email addresses (an ugly and geeky interface). Here, you're basically able to push a button and set up multiple email addresses associated with your domain. The inboxes for these can then be added as widgets to your homepage.

Photo Albums

If you don't keep your images online with a web service like Flickr, you also have the option to make your SmartSpace an online photo album using the SmartSpace photo application. With this, you can upload photos from your computer and then share those photos both publicly and privately in albums that are added to your page.

Web Site and Blogs

For text-based content, you can choose to either add a web site or blog to your homepage. With these options, you can select from a number of pre-built templates to configure the site. Although not as robust a platform as WordPress, the blog will probably work fine for casual users who want to take advantage of the other elements of the SmartSpace service.

Just Another Personalized Homepage Or A New Type Of Social Network?

SocialSpace could be linked to some patent filings the company filed earlier this year which describe a web portal that functions as a social network aggregator. According to those filings, the aggregation could be done using login systems like OpenID. Although there's no mention of OpenID integration in the SmartSpace support documents yet, we hope that integration is something they plan to add in the future.

Still, even without OpenID, what GoDaddy has launched today is a viable competitor to the other personalized homepages out there like iGoogle, My Yahoo, Netvibes, etc. But GoDaddy's SocialSpace goes beyond what those sites offer in a number of ways. Although widgetized content like photos and RSS feeds can be added to nearly any start page today, GoDaddy actually lets you own a domain name, set up a blog or website and then easily, instantly turn it into a personalized social network that aggregates content from the social web and includes chat functionality for instant interactions with your friends.

Will SocialSpace kill MySpace and Facebook? That's highly doubtful, but it could be a nice aggregator for those looking to establish a web presence with minimal work. And because it's from GoDaddy, a household name thanks to their high profile TV commercials and ad campaigns, this move also represents what may be the final leap where "social media" fully crosses over to the mainstream use and acceptance.

More Info

Prices for SmartSpace start at $4.99/month for 2 months. From there, the prices are as follows: 12 mo: $4.74/month, 24 mo: $4.49/month, or 36 mo: $4.24/month. You can watch a short introductory video here. ]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/godaddy_unveils_mainstream_social_web_aggregator.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/godaddy_unveils_mainstream_social_web_aggregator.php Products Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:45:00 -0800 Sarah Perez WonderHowTo aggregates and curates a large database of instructional videos from all over the Internet. It employs a number of editors who search the web for good how-to videos and then categorize them into 36 vertical categories. Thanks to this editorial process, the quality of these how-to videos featured on WonderHowTo is surprisingly high and topics range from Spanish pronunciation to surviving nuclear blasts. One of the most interesting features of WonderHowTo is its recently launched 'Related How-To Videos' sidebar for Firefox.

Related How-To Videos in Your Sidebar

The sidebar will display how-to videos on WonderHowTo that relate to whatever you are currently looking at in the main browser window. While you are looking at buying a video console on Amazon, for example, the sidebar will offer you videos on how to set it up or how to configure parental controls. In our tests, the suggested videos generally turned out to be highly relevant, but, as is to be expected, sometimes the videos had very little relation to what were looking at.

One nice feature of the sidebar is that it also displays the ratings that users on the main site have given a video. You can also switch the view in the sidebar from the related videos to the most recent and most popular videos on the site, though unless you just want to entertain yourself by learning a random skill, this is not necessarily that useful.

How-To Videos are Easy to Love for Advertisers

Video how-to sites have steadily grown in popularity, with the likes of ExpertVillage, 5min.com, and Howcast all vying for potential viewers. The growth of this market has also given rise to a number of aggregators, including WonderHowTo itself and its direct competitor, FindHow.

Because users on these sites are clearly already highly engaged with a certain topic, advertisers are very interested in reaching these folks, which makes it relatively easy and profitable to monetize this kind of content. Somebody trying to learn how to find cheap flights on the Internet is, for example, quite likely to react to a JetBlue ad that pops up in the video player on Howcast.

As the competition among how-to video sites growths, all the different players are looking for different ways to differentiate themselves through better video players, widgets, or simply by having better content. For WonderHowTo, the sidebar is a great feature that will surely drive a lot of new users to the site.

Bring Your Own OPML

One of our main issues we had with the earlier incarnation of Regator was that you couldn't import your own OPML files, which seemed to restrict it quite a bit as an RSS reader for more advanced users. While Regator now allows you to upload your own OPML files, your imported feeds will only be visible to you because of Regator's approach of personally vetting all feeds shown on the site. At the same time, Regator will look at every imported feed and consider them for inclusion in the general index, which turns uploading your OPML file into a recommendation mechanism.

New Features

Also new in this release is the ability to share post via Twitter, Facebook, and email. Besides this, Regator spent a lot of time polishing and tweaking the service, as well as adding a few minor features. For the near future, Regator is also expecting to give its users a unique page for shared posts akin to Google's Shared Items pages.

What About Advanced Users?

In our earlier review, we said that Regator was a great resource for mainstream users and maybe even a good introduction to RSS in general. With the ability to upload custom OPML files and the soon to be released Shared Items pages, Regator is now closer to being worth a second look for more advanced users as well. What does hold it back for power users, though, is still the fact that it only displays summaries of articles and doesn't display any images in those summaries. There are good reasons for that, including the fact that the folks at Regator want to give traffic back to those who write the content, but it does make the site just a bit less useful in comparison to a regular RSS reader.

On Moopz, the social media flow is categorized into three main areas: recently active conversations, popular conversations, and quiet conversations. Upon login (you authenticate with your FriendFeed remote key), you'll see the recently active conversations listed on the homepage. On the right side of the homepage in the sidebar, the currently popular conversations are listed at the top and the quiet conversations are listed at the bottom. In the middle of the sidebar is a tag cloud. Each item that comes across FriendFeed is semantically tagged based on its content and those tags are displayed in proportion to the number of stories they represent. (The biggest tag so far? "FriendFeed" of course).

How Moopz Reduces FriendFeed's Noise

However, what's truly innovative and unique about Moopz is the way in consolidates the distributed activity across all of FriendFeed. One of my personal biggest pet peeves about FriendFeed is that the biggest conversations seem to only take place in the top users' streams. Those conversations might take place about an article a lesser-known blogger wrote, but because these FriendFeed super-users have more fans, the conversation will surround their sharing of the article via Google Reader instead of the blog post shared by the small-time blogger.

And if you are the blogger and aren't savvy enough (or just too busy) to track the numerous shares of the article, then you miss out on hearing the conversation taking place. Some people have unfortunately framed this problem as a desire to "own" the conversation, but that couldn't be more wrong. It's a desire to be a part of the conversation no matter where it's happening. There was a time when that conversation happened almost entirely on the blog itself. That's no longer the case.

In any event, by consolidating the stream of noise, Moopz also democratizes FriendFeed conversations. On FriendFeed, popular items are shared by multiple people and conversations then arise around those items. Moopz aggregates those conversations and "likes" into a single combined thread. This also helps eliminate the problem of duplicates on FriendFeed - all the multiple sharings are consolidated be them bookmarks, Google Reader shares, tweets, etc.

A FriendFeed-Flavored Techmeme

This actually makes Moopz the "fair" version of Techmeme. While Techmeme is an amazing service that lets you keep up with the hottest news, its headlines are often from the A-List. On Moopz though, any item from any site can become a popular item - all that matters is that it has the most FriendFeed activity. Also, when you're viewing the page for a popular article, the first few sentences of the article are extracted, which encourages people to actually click through and read the article instead of blindly liking or commenting.

A Story on Moopz

Moopz is definitely a great new way to interact with FriendFeed - it doesn't have to take the place of using FriendFeed itself, but we think several of you will agree: this is FriendFeed done right. 

Disclosure: Mark Carey does ongoing consulting work for ReadWriteWeb. However note that Moopz is an independent product and RWW has no affiliation with it.

While Techmeme has it all covered when it comes finance and technology trends, product reviews are a rare treat. Here's where Tech NewsJunk steps in. The purpose of the aggregation site is to allow you to find out about products before they hit the big leagues. According to Winer's official post about the site's launch,

"A couple of notes. I'm not just interested in new products, I'm also interested in how the products evolve. So if Flickr were to (for example) add a bunch of new features tomorrow, we would defintely link to that.

I also want to hear about products from the people who design and implement them. Their point of view is very important to not only understanding their work, but to understanding the market."

Various Fixes For Your Addiction

As a frequent user of tools like FriendFeed and Twitter, it's no surprise that Winer has implemented numerous ways to keep up with Tech NewsJunk. You can:

• subscribe via RSS
• follow along on FriendFeed
• follow along on Twitter
• read mobile updates (iPhone or Blackberry
• refresh the site's page manually

Winer also has future plans to include the latest micro-blogging service darling identi.ca and roll out email updates.

Best Product Coverage

Thus far, Tech NewsJunk has decent product coverage from a host of great sites. The featured content ranges from internet apps to mobile technology. Winer also notes that ReadWriteWeb is one of the best sites to find product coverage and even extends some advice to us (we're listening Dave). As of this post, ReadWriteWeb is listed three times in the counts section, with two of our articles coming in at #2 and #3 respectively. All in all, Tech NewsJunk is a must have in anyone's feed reader.

A couple of things set Regator apart from other RSS aggregators like Bloglines, Newsgator, or Google Reader. First of all, Regator only offers a set of roughly 3000 blogs to subscribe to, as well as 'channels,' like Technology, Politics, Sports, etc.

You can't import your own OPML files or subscribe to blogs from outside of Regator. While this is clearly meant to keep things simple for Regator's user base, it does limit its usefulness for more advanced users. You can, however, nominate your favorite blogs to be added to Regator's catalog.

Another difference between Regator and other RSS aggregators is that while Regator opens in a River of News style view, the default view is organized by popularity, not chronology. Users can vote up or down on every post and those votes determine the position of the posts on the site. Regator does have the option to switch to a chronological view.

While Regator does not feature any social networking or sharing functions yet, users can comment on blog posts, though those comments stay within the Regator silo.

Only Summaries

One thing that might make bloggers happy, but makes Regator just a little bit less useful is the fact that it only displays summaries and not the full text of all blog posts. It also doesn't display any pictures from those blog posts, even if they are part of the summary. Regator says they are doing this to give back to the bloggers featured on the site. Given the many discussions around full feeds and community sites lately, they are definitely doing the right thing, especially because Regator has comments on its site.

Audio and Video

Besides blog posts, Regator also functions as a podcast and video player. Posts with embedded media like mp3 files or YouTube videos will display those in either a pop-up player for videos or a little audio player at the bottom of the screen (see screenshot). Especially the audio player is a nifty solution, as you can keep browsing the site while the player stays out of the way at the bottom of the page.

Verdict

Overall, Regator seems like a very well thought out product. Finding blogs and channels to read is easy and the "What's Hot" bar on the right side gives you a quick overview of what the most hotly debated topics in the blogosphere are right now. The green theme, which can't be changed, might not be everybody's cup of tea, but the layout of the site works very well.

Invites

Regator has given us 100 invites - you can claim yours by heading to Regator's homepage and using 'readwriteweb' as your invite code.

Smashing Feeds happens to be just like any other news aggregator. It uses the Google AJAX feed API for feed creation and management to aggregate news from a ton of various sources. It doesn't require users to signup, but it's not customizable and the UI isn't something we're goo-goo gah-gah over. The aggregated news coverage sites are separated into categories such as Technology, Business, Productivity, Web 2.0, and more. None of these sections are new, but their "Tweet" section is a definite eye catcher.

Twitter and FriendFeed News

The 'Tweet' section of Smashing Feeds has a host of Twitter and FriendFeed related news. This section sports links aggregated from FriendFeed with usernames included in the headlines, links to what seems to be random tweets from Twitter, the latest links to make it on TwitLinks, Intwition, Tweetmeme River, TwitBuzz, Twemes, and the Techmeme Firehose Twitter stream. Basically, you can get the hottest and most popular Twitter links from various services all on one page.

Not Much To Offer

Bouncing from site to site that aggregates the hottest or most popular links on Twitter can be a chore. Users usually end up just picking on site and sticking with it. The 'Tweet' section of Smashing Feeds solves this problem. However, the randomness of some of the aggregated sites are weird. Why are random twitter messages and FriendFeed messages being aggregated as news? I'd suggest they stick to the sites that do most of the aggregation for them and aggregate those sites for the 'Tweet' section. Beyond that, Smashing Feed isn't offering anything better than the competition.

With so many different platforms to aggregate, noise levels are surging. An underlying issue in the level of noise is that some of these services were not made to interact with one another. Users of social aggregation tools should understand that what you may consider noise is actually a side-effect of using a social aggregation platform. Users should also note when you may be confusing aggregation with importation.

Though importation may be a necessary step within aggregation, there is a difference between the two. Importation is usually more selective and limited to the inclusion of select items of other services. This may include common specifics such as names, ages, and locations. However, with aggregation a service attempts to conglomerate key features and entire contents of other services. This makes aggregation seemingly more flexible due to it's ability to encompass a wider scope of content.

Using Platforms for Different Purposes

The services that are aggregated are usually used for entirely different purposes. For example, some platforms are used to keep in touch with others such as family, friends, or business contacts. On the other hand, you have services that are used only for the purpose of finding more content and conversations pertaining to certain contents.

When you pull in an account from a platform that is completely unrelated to to the usage of another, you will inevitably create a small amount of noise. However, with social aggregation platforms it's hardly ever just one account. This can increase the noise level to an irritating high for other members of these services, including those within your personal network.

Services Cater To Various Audiences

Aggregated services are not only used for entirely different purposes, but also cater to different audiences. Consequently, who you may be catering to is dependent upon why you may be using the service. While some articles or content submitted to services may overlap, this is only because there are overlapping interests for the different audiences on these platforms.

How does this affect noise levels? If you're using a service to promote content, you may be considered noisy to those that are looking for conversations. If you're using a platform to keep in touch, then those looking for content and in depth conversation surrounding particular content would need a way to block out idle chatter.

Filters Are The Future Of Social Media

Filters are rapidly becoming a pertinent issue for developers of social media services. As a result, social aggregation platforms are in the perfect position to lead the pack. While this is no easy task and one that cannot be solved in its entirety, it would help resolve another issue social media users are facing: courtesy.

Instead of being able to freely add whatever service you wish, some users like myself are taking into account what others may consider noise on certain services as a courtesy to members. In essence, you are becoming our own filter. You may refrain from important other services for fear of being labeled as "noisy". With better filtering options, users can use these services to their fullest extent without becoming a nuisance to others or missing the benefits of aggregating all of their accounts.

You may have heard about BlogRize's launch earlier this month, when they kicked off their private beta with pre-built communities for a handful of top sites, including ReadWriteWeb.

The way BlogRize works is by allowing members to join the community of their favorite blog or blogs. Within that community, the popular news stories are the ones recommended by the other readers of that blog. These stories will be a mix of not only that particular blog's articles, but any articles the community thinks are interesting. 

Our BlogRize Community

By focusing only on the news that a reader of ReadWriteWeb finds interesting, for example, you wouldn't have to sift through loads of posts you don't care about to find the best news. Instead, the content you find is relevant to your interests.

Determining Relevance

BlogRize is different than aggregators like RSSMeme and ReadBurner, as those sites only focus on one thing to build a popular page - number of shares. But to become "popular" on BlogRize, an article is rated using a more sophisticated algorithm.

Without giving too much away about that process, we can say that the algorithm uses more than one factor. Instead, it looks at factors which include the article's popularity, relevance to readers, and attention data, among other things. What this means is that an article from another technology-focused blog would have a good shot at becoming popular on ReadWriteWeb, but it would take a lot more for an article from, say, TreeHugger.com, to achieve that same level of popularity.

BlogRize's Voting Process

The first thing you'll notice about BlogRize is that the voting system for articles is a bit different than what you'll see on other social news sites like Digg or Mixx. Instead of just voting for a story, the news item is classified as "interesting," "funny," "insightful," "lame," "disagree," or "facts wrong." This system was created by BlogRize's creator, Jesse Spaulding, as somewhat of an experiment to see if he could get people to vote in a way that has more meaning and offers an opinion.

The system could use a little work, since terms like "interesting" and "insightful" are somewhat similar in meaning and because stories can, obviously, be both. Also, voting for things as "lame" seems a bit juvenile. However, for now, the system remains, although Jesse hints that he may be working on a slight modification of this interface in the future.

BlogRize Voting Buttons

Join Our Exclusive BlogRize Community!

Although BlogRize is still a private beta, they're now opening their doors to fans of ReadWriteWeb, and are offering us 1000 invites to distribute to our readers. To get access, just click this URL: http://www.blogrize.com/join/readwriteweb.com?code=readwriteweb. You can then began sharing and voting for the stories that interest you in a community filled with other blog readers like yourself.

The first thing you may notice when visiting the new ReadBurner web site is its new interface, designed by Gary Bacon of PixelTalent. Although they kept the same color scheme of blue and orange, the new site is brighter, and, as they said on their blog (where you can also view before and afters), it's "shinier", too.

Categories & Stats

The old site had categories at the top that included "Popular," "Upcoming," "Most Recent," "Popular this Week," and "Popular All time,", but the new site is aiming to be less cluttered. This version of ReadBurner is sticking to just "Popular," "Upcoming," and "Most Recent."

Beneath these main categories, stories are also analyzed and sorted into sub-categories, each with their own RSS feed. Currently, these sub-categories include "Web," "Desktop," "Mobile," and "Apple," as well as "All," which will revert you to seeing all the shared items in whichever main category you are viewing.

ReadBurner

For viewing items that have been popular over the past week, there is a box on the right called "Popular This Week." Above the box, you'll notice a link to the "Stats" page, which is sort of like a cross between AllTop and the Techmeme Leaderboard, but focused on sharing data. Also on this page are the top 50 sources for shares.

This Week's Popular Items

Changes to the Shared Items

A feature called "Related Items" groups similar stories together, displaying the related content both on the main page as well as on the individual story's page itself, something which can be accessed by clicking on the button displaying the number of shares for that story.

What's even more exciting is that ReadBurner is working on a way to allow comments on the feeds without removing that conversation from the blogosphere, a hot button issue as of late. To do so, ReadBurner is working with Disqus, a new blog commenting system that many people are using on their blogs today. While the feature is not fully live yet, they are hoping to post ReadBurner comments on the originating source (the blog), in addition to their site. They believe this feature will be functional within a few weeks, but that will depend on Disqus. Although non-Disqus enabled blogs won't benefit, it's a good first step to limiting the conversation fragmentation issues while also adding a feature many have wanted.

The Disqus integration will also be tweaked in the future so that all related stories will share one set of comments - an interesting plan which will make blog reading and commenting a more conversational and intertwined experience.

Google Reader Integration

To make ReadBurner even more useful, they've integrated Google Reader within the web site. By clicking on the Google Reader tab, your Google Reader will appear right in the ReadBurner interface, something which makes feed reading and sharing even more enjoyable than before.

Other New Features

Another useful feature is ReadBurner's descriptive URLs. This allows you to view all the shared items by a particular author or a favorite sources from one easy-to-remember URL. For example, all stories from Read Write Web can be viewed at readburner.com/source/readwriteweb. To view stories by a particular author, the format is readburner.com/author/author. For example, all stories by Marshall are available at readburner.com/author/Marshall+Kirkpatrick.

Future Plans

Besides getting the Disqus integration perfected, the ReadBurner team will also be working on continually improving their algorithm as well as offering new ways for developers to utilize their data.

For users, the focus will be on data portability - that is, letting users take their ReadBurner data with them to other services (perhaps FriendFeed, we hope?) Additionally, users will be able to share more information about themselves, something that points to, perhaps, the creation of user profiles on the site.

Where Does This Leave RSSMeme?

ReadBurner's launch and extensive features list definitely brings some new competition to the other Google Reader Shared Items aggregator, RSSMeme. However, that site, which served us well in ReadBurner's absence, does offer one big feature that ReadBurner currently lacks: search. The search box on RSSMeme lets you search both stories and users, and seems a critical omission from the new ReadBurner.

RSSMeme also allows you to click "Read More of this Story," which expands the selection to show you more of the blog post while staying on the RSSMeme web site. A similar feature on ReadBurner actually takes you to the blog's web site instead. While this may not be a favorite feature for ReadBurner users, the bloggers who rely on pageviews will be sure to appreciate it.

Like ReadBurner, RSSMeme also gathers similar stories which can be accessed by a link from the main item. As far as whose algorithm for related items is better, only time will tell, but this could be a real source of competition between the two very similar sites. Another point of contention will certainly involve the speed of each site's algorithm in calculating the number of shares from Google Reader.

RSSMeme offers commenting via Disqus and, for its users, although it does not push comments back to the blogs like ReadBurner plans to do. RSSMeme also has a blog widget which shows the number of shares for each post, a small feature that many bloggers currently enjoy using.

Get Involved

If your Google Reader Shared Items feed was previously registered with the old ReadBurner, you don't need to add it again. They've also included the feeds of the people that requested to be added from the "Coming Soon" page that they had up for a while.

However, if you aren't sure, or if you never added your feed to begin with, you can easily do so from the "Add Feed" page.

We're very excited for ReadBurner's launch. It looks like they've done a good job overhauling the prior site while also offering many features that will offer RSSMeme some good competition. We're looking forward to what they will have in store for us in the future, too.

That may be true, but some people would like to see a little more attention given to those other two-thirds.

But where else can you get the current tech news besides Techmeme? Quite a few places, actually:

Hacker News: When Mike Arrington mentioned that the little-known site, Hacker News, was his first morning read, the site received an influx of traffic. Part Digg, part forum, the site hasn't been compromised despite all the attention. It's still a great way to find, read, vote for, and discussion interesting stories.

Elite Tech News Reddit: Back in January, blogger MG Siegler was testing out Reddit's "Create Your Own Reddit" beta feature. He created the "Elite Tech News Reddit," which now functions as sort of an "elite" Digg. Currently, he and other bloggers like Steven Hodson, Frederic Lardinois, Louis Gray, Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins, Jason Kaneshiro, and Tony Hung use the site to vote up and down the latest tech stories they find interesting. While big blogs still appear on the site, it's more of a Techmeme-turned-Mahalo look at the news.

RSSMeme: Lest we forget, there's always RSSMeme, the site that highlights the top shared items in your Google RSS Reader. Although, due to the fact that the site is dependent on people reading and sharing stories, this isn't the best site for finding "breaking" news, but it does show what's popular. You can even customize it to show you a certain number of shares from a certain timeframe, too. Just remember, your vote only counts if you register your Google Reader shared feed.

FriendFeed: Love it or hate it, but FriendFeed is the current social media darling. If you're using the service, you can use this Greasemonkey script to filter FriendFeed by service. Assuming you're following some active users, you could filter to just show Google Reader items, for example. This gives you a nice, personalized selection of the news. An honorable mention goes to the FriendFeed Top 100 - which showed the hottest links for March, 2008, but a service that provided this info on a more regular basis would be better.

Techsted: A recent email alerted me to newcomer, Techsted. I can't say I love it, but I like their idea  of categorizing stories as Dealings, Launches, etc. There just needs to be more categories and it should be better organized. Still, the site has a neat "Designer's Stuff" section which could appeal to that niche as well as a "B-List," where you can find the hottest stories from the non-Techmeme set.

Tailrank: Good ol' Tailrank. At one time, a Techmeme competitor, Tailrank hasn't gotten much attention since last year, when a brief outage made news because no one seemed to notice. Tailrank still links to the blogosphere, but the news there seems stale. So it's another place to see what's going on, but don't expect it to break news.

TechWatching: Yet another Techmeme clone, this one a weekend project at best. The site's redeeming feature is search, which lets you search for terms appearing in the most read blogs for the past 3 months, month, 24 hours, etc. The site's creator notes that he's kind of busy right now, volunteering in Bangladesh, so if anything goes "awry" so be it. OK then.

Social News: Of course, you can get your tech news from social news sites like Digg and Mixx, but Mixx seems to have a slight edge in getting breaking news stories to the homepage faster, since Digg's complicated algorithm often means stories have to acquire hundreds of diggs to make front page. However, in sheer numbers, Digg still rules the social news arena.

Conclusion

After reviewing the alternatives, it seems to me that Techmeme's popularity is due to the simple fact that it does it best. For breaking tech news, there isn't really a better option...at least not yet.

Where do you go to get your tech news? Let us know in the comments.

Update: Marshall's story on Popurls makes me think that should be on this list, too! ]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/breaking_the_techmeme_habit.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/breaking_the_techmeme_habit.php Products Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:46:00 -0800 Sarah Perez Have you heard about Toluu yet? This new RSS-based service, currently in private beta, lets you share your OPML with others in order to discover new feeds, see what your friends are reading, and even discover new people who share your same interests. If that sounds familiar, it's probably because Toluu is very much like the reincarnation of the once-popular site, ShareYourOPML (now defunct), which used to do the same thing. But Toluu not only revives that site's spirit, it does so it a much better fashion than ShareYourOPML ever did.

So why does this feed sharing service have so many other bloggers talking? And why should you bother with yet another RSS service? Here are 10 good reasons why you should give Toluu a look:

1. You can sign up with OpenID: Toluu starts out on the right foot by letting you sign up for the service with your OpenID. You can also choose to save yourself some typing by letting them import your profile using the hCard microformat on your profile at flickr, twitter, Technorati, Last.FM, or Upcoming. Not into OpenID yet? A regular sign-up form is still provided.
2. It's Easy: There's not a whole lot to it. Sign up, login, and upload your OPML. You don't have to find your friends or fill out a big user profile.
3. You don't have to do anything: Besides uploading your OPML, there isn't anything else you have to do to benefit from the service. Although you can go through your feeds and mark your favorites, those of us with hundreds of feeds won't take the time and we don't have to. Toluu can make recommendations based on your feed list alone.
4. Collaborative filtering helps Toluu learn: As activity on Toluu increases, what you and your friends read and tag as favorites will help you discover new feeds that you may enjoy reading. The recommendation engine is right on target. It shows your matches, what percentage compatibility you have with them, what feeds you have in common, and which ones you like. This is much better than anything ShareYourOPML ever offered.
5. You won't be recommended "one-hit wonder" blogs: Remember that one guy who wrote that one post that one time? The one that hit Techmeme and then you never heard of him since? That feed wouldn't be recommended to you, unless you showed interest in actively reading the rest of his feed on a regular basis.
6. The Toluu bookmarklet helps you add new feeds with ease: Because re-importing your OPML after ever new feed added would be a pain, Toluu offers a bookmarklet that lets you add a feed to both Toluu and your preferred feed reader which will first add the feed to Toluu before continuing on to add it to your RSS reader.
7. It's not trying to replace your RSS Reader: If you wanted to, you could use it as an RSS reader, but that's not what it's designed to do. So it's not a matter of you having to switch readers to enjoy using this service.
8. The Feeds! No matter how many feeds you currently subscribe to, you're bound to find more that you didn't know existed. Plus, you can spy on the shared feeds of anyone, provided you know their username, which is a great way to find out what people read.
9. The Activity Stream: The Toluu activity page gives you a quick glance at what your friends have been reading and doing on the Toluu service.
10. The Potential: Granted, this, like most services today rely on having a decent userbase to find success. However, based on ShareYourOPML's former popularity, Toluu has a great shot at filling the void that was left behind when that site disappeared.

A Toluu Profile Page

All that being said, the site still needs a bit of work before it can really take off, but since it's still in private beta, they have the time to work out the kinks and maybe even add a couple more features, too.

For example, a search feature to find other Toluu users would be a big help, especially as they grow. Also, the notification preferences are all switched on by default, which means you'll get emails whenever someone adds you as a contact, adds or removes a feed, or recommends a feed, and you're automatically subscribed to the newsletter. That's a bit much.

If you're interested in joining Toluu, you can request a beta invite or you can comment here. I have seven to give away, so first come, first serve.

UPDATE! There are 100 invites available now. Comment here for yours!

As a Hype Machine user, you have a "Dashboard," where you can keep tabs on your favorite songs, friends, blogs, and more. Last month, Hype Machine integrated with Last.FM, so tracks you played on Hype Machine would scrobble to your Last.FM profile. But now, they will scrobble to your Hype Machine profile, too.

The scrobbled tracks show up under your brand-new "Listening History" drop-down section. You can also spy on your Friends' History and Obsessions, and they can spy on yours.  And if you want to spy on what people in other countries are listening to, you can hit up the Spy page, which now includes filters for states/provinces and countries, whereas before, it only focused on the U.S.

New Dashboard

If you haven't checked out Hype Machine lately (or ever), now is a good time to try. The new scrobbling features, spy filters, and not to mention the Last.FM sync make Hype Machine a nice add to your social music playlist.]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hype_machine_adds_new_features.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hype_machine_adds_new_features.php Products Fri, 28 Mar 2008 08:47:57 -0800 Sarah Perez