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Social Bookmarking


Social bookmarking is a recent trend (fad?) for people to en masse add links to interesting sites and articles.  The two (2) that I use on a regular basis are:

  1. •Slashdot

  2. •Digg


Slashdot is an excellent site for technology and science.  However, you will find some interesting links to social commentary; however, normally this is will be limited to where technology intersects with society. 


Slashdot’s community is what can be quite appealing; albeit, there is a bit of a learning curve to knowing how to cull scatological comments from the more interesting ones.  But you will find a lot of commentary from very well-informed, well-articulated persons.  In this regards, Slashdot’s commentary that is attached to every link is oft times equal to or more valuable than the link itself.


Slashdot’s community is so massive that many a site is wary of being listed on here due to the adverse impact it can have on server performance — namely having tens of thousands of hits in a matter of a few minutes.  This is known as the Slashdot Effect.  If you Google this you will discover university research on it, too.


Digg is considered the rightful heir to Slashdot.  I tend to disagree.  However, in terms of Digg’s ability to direct users to a site it has arguably eclipsed Slashdot in the last year.  Digg’s commentary is quite juvenile in comparison to Slashdot — I believe this is a function of Digg’s user demographics.  However, what Digg is most useful for is the ability for users to “digg” a link.  There is some community controversy how rankings are calculated, but by digging a link it tends to push the link to the top of this list for the given category.


And there are quite a few other sites I like to keep abreast of.  But I do not normally visit these sites (directly) anymore just to see what is new.  Instead, I rely on RSS feeds to give me only the top handful of links from any category on these sites. 


If you think your morning viewing of 5 news sites puts you at the top of you game on information hunting then you are in for an awakening.  I regularly sample 50 sites on a daily basis, 3-5 times a day!  And I am positive my game is still quite amateur compared to others.  


How do I manage this much information?  I certainly do not bother visiting these 50 sites every day.  Instead, I can see at a glance if there are any interesting articles on all 50 sites at a time by managing all the RSS feeds on my Google Personalized Homepage.


RSS Feeds


Before we get into the how, let us explore briefly the what.


RSS, or Rich Site Summary, are a means of web site owners providing a computer readable list of changes to their site.  This was developed as a means of letting people more easily get to the most recent changes on a site, along with making the process of informing your users a bit more automated then the good ol’ days of doing this manually.


So how do RSS feeds help you?  Well, they don’t.  Not directly.  But when we couple them with a RSS Feed reader (ooh! ahh!) then we start getting somewhere.


If you own Mac OS X 10.4 then Safari (Apple’s web browser) has RSS feed reader built-in.  Version 7.0 of Internet Explorer for Windows Vista will have this feature added, too.  There are numerous applications for free or for a small fee that will help you manage the feeds.  But I have my favorite.  It is free and I can access it anywhere I have Internet.


Google Personalized Homepage


However, the simplest way to get access to RSS feeds is to use Google.  In particular, use Google’s personalized home.  You will need to register an account for free.  Once you have done this you can starting creating your own home filled RSS feeds.

The above images are snapshots of my own Google Personalized Homepage.  You will notice that there is a tabbed navigation bar running under the Google search bar.  These tabs are my way of organizing my RSS feeds into categories.  I have Home (ホーム), News (ニューズ), Technology (技術), Apple (アップル), and Science (科学). I just happen to keep them in Japanese.


One of the great advantages of Google is your ability to access it from anywhere you have Internet access.   Additionally, all my changes are saved on Google’s servers.  In this way changes I make to my Google homepage and be ensured that when I log onto another machine I will see the changes.


How do you add RSS feeds to your Google homepage?  The first is to use the provided RSS feeds ... which there are a lot!  Everything from NY Times to BBC to Reuters to NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day to Dilbert ... and thousands more.  So much so that this is the suggested method, in my opinion, when starting out.  Unfortunately, there are so many that I tend to find it difficult to wade through them all.


The second route, and the one I used quite often, is to add a URL to a RSS feed directly.  If you go to here you will see a blue button labeled RSS.  This is the RSS feed for my own blogs — the one you are presently reading!  Actually, every major section other than Welcome and About Me have their own RSS feeds.  Regardless.  Say you find an RSS feed you want to add to your Google homepage.


Practice Makes Perfect


Getting a RSS Feed URL


Let us try it out.  Let us add Randy’s Journal to your Google Homepage.  Why Randy?  Well, he writes some interesting articles on my favorite company — Boeing! 


  1. 1.Open Randy’s page into another window.

  2. 2.Scroll down the page till you find Newfeeds box on the right-hand side

  3. 3.There are three (3) RSS feeds.  Yikes!  I would stick to RSS 2.0 unless told otherwise.

  4. 4.Right-click on RSS 2.0 and copy the URL to your clipboard.


Add RSS Feed to Google Personalized Homepage


  1. 1.Go to your Google Personalized Homepage

  2. 2.If you have created tabs then click on the tab you want the RSS feed to appear under (do not worry too much about this; you can always change it later)

  3. 3.In the upper-left corner click on the link with the text Add more to this page >>

  4. 4.Next to the Search Homepage Content button clink on the link with text Add by URL

  5. 5.Paste the URL you copied from my own site’s blog into the text field under Add by URL

  6. 6.Click the button labeled Add


Done!


If you decide you do not want the RSS feed under that tab then click on the RSS feed header and drag-and-drop the RSS feed on to another tab.  It is just that easy to use.


Additionally, you can edit where a RSS feed appears on a page.  There are three (3) columns (left, center, and right).  Simply click on the RSS feed header and drag-and-drop.


Finally, you can personalize the RSS feed to be in a closed position (just header) or show 1-9 entries of the RSS feed.  I prefer somewhere between 3-5 entries per RSS feed.  I find that given my daily checks of the RSS feeds that most sites do not add more than 5 entries in a day.  New sites such as BBC and others do, but then again there is so much content for me to watch over that if I miss an article on one site I tend to catch it on another feed.


Tricks & Suggestions


Most major sites have RSS feeds nowadays.  And quite a few small ones included them, too.  One thing to look for are RSS feeds categorized by topic.  CNN, BBC, and most major news sites will do this for you.  This allows you to only see those articles related to a specific topic such as Middle East or Apple Computers.  Using RSS feeds in this manner will ensure you have the right degree of visibility of only those things you are interested in.


Cavaet Emptor


The one thing that I always caution against is having a too highly refined portfolio of RSS feeds.  There is something to be said for keeping yourself open to news and information.  Focusing solely on topics that only interest you is a good way to make you a very boring and uneducated person.  It is a big world out there!