Aggregation Without Aggravation
Written on August 22, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
That’s the slogan used by a new website called Alltop. What they mean by that is that their users can create a page full of RSS feeds, in effect creating a one-page magazine table of contents on just about any topic you can name, easily and quickly. I think it took me longer to make up and type a site password than it did to figure out how to use the site to make my own page, which I call DigiKat, about all things digital.
The way it works, first you create a free account by entering an account name (in my case, “DigiKat”), password and email address, then confirm the address by clicking a link in the email the site sends you. Once that’s done, you go to a list where you can select up to 100 “feeds” — lists of blog or news site articles — to add to your MyAlltop page by simply putting a checkmark beside the ones you want. When you’re done, click the “Save” button, and go see the results. If that’s not easy enough, watch the video tutorials to get a step-by-step walk-through of the process.
Unlike many of the other currently popular create-it-yourself sites out there, there is no way to add personal information or design touches, at least not right now, and any revenues generated by the embedded ads accrue to the Alltop folks, not you. But it’s rather neat to have a page with your own selection of news and info, and to be able to share it with everyone, and their monitization scheme may ensure that the pages will be around for awhile, so it’s all good.
As well as the RSS feed aggregation page, Alltop offers some other “goodies”. An example is the Alltop badge in the right sidebar here, below my Twitter feed badges. The topic I chose for this badge, “Journalism”, isn’t included in my own MyAlltop page, but of course it’s a subject I’m interested in. Maybe I’ll make another MyAlltop page on that subject. Think of a whole page full of paragraph-sized link lists similar to this badge, and you’ll begin to see what Alltop is all about.
If you decide to try it out, post a comment here with your MyAlltop page name!
August 23rd, 2009 at 9:32 am
Thanks for building a MyAlltop page. Really appreciate it. Hope that it serves you well.
Guy
August 23rd, 2009 at 7:15 pm
It already is, thanks! I’ve been enjoying the ease of browsing a lot of topical blogs. Great Web app.
June 13th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
[...] some of the articles in that site. (Alltop is a personalizable, public news aggragator, which I wrote about here some time ago.) Obviously I’m keeping that one, especially since I found an article on a [...]