AllTop.com - it's like RSS without the mess

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Web services

AllTop.com - it's like RSS without the mess

by Christina Warren Feb 14th 2008

We're big fans of RSS readers -- of either the stand alone or web based variety -- but it if you want to scan a lot of headlines from a lot of different sites, a feed reader is not always the fastest (or most convenient, if you are on a public computer) way to access that information.

This is where Alltop.com comes in. Alltop.com is a new site that displays RSS headlines from a variety of different sites, sorted by category, all on one page. Hover your mouse pointer over a headline to read a description/excerpt. It's very, very slick.

One of the things we like the most about the site is the layout. For each site in a given category, the five most recent headlines are listed. The page is split into three columns, so you can instantly look at lots of different headlines, but at the same time, not feel overwhelmed by text.

An example of from Alltop's Mac page. Hovering over a
headline displays the first part of the post

Right now Alltop has twelve different topic categories, in areas like autos, Macs, celebrities, politics and in a nice little twist, egos -- which features the blogs of the egomaniacal blogging elite, delicious! Each category contains what we could consider most, if not all, of the most popular and frequently read sites in those categories. For instance, in the celebrities section, all the big gossip blogs from TMZ and Perez Hilton are covered, as well more news oriented sites like Variety and the USA Today Life section.

If you just want a way to quickly access the headlines for a certain topic, without having to open up the RSS reader (or even Google Reader), Alltop.com is worth a look.

Tags: alltop, news

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Zia said 10:26AM on 2-15-2008

Nah...I will give it a miss....Netvibes is still a cut above the rest!

Victor Agreda, Jr. said 11:21AM on 2-15-2008

Zia, Netvibes is indeed cool, but it sorta throws everything at you at once. I like to compartmentalize my information, and Alltop, with category-specific groupings, seems a little more manageable. This requires very little overhead (no configuration hassles, etc.) and keeps you focused.

Christina Warren said 1:15PM on 2-15-2008

Zia,
I like Netvibes too - if you want a custom home page portal, it's great -- but one thing I really like about AllTop is that you don't have to sign up or login to use it, you just go to the site and have access to the headlines/sites in a particular category.

Karen Bryan said 5:14AM on 4-13-2008

I'm glad to read some positive comments about Alltop. I'm amazed by all the negativity about Alltop. Although I run a travel website and write 2 travel blogs I'm not a techie person.

I think Alltop is a great resource, you can check out the titles of all the leading blogs in topics which area of interest to you, quickly and easily. Not everyone understands RSS and/or want to subscribe to blogs. Alltop offers a good alfternative.

I have to admit to some bias as both my travel blogs are listed in Travel Alltop.

Here's my post, "Does Alltop sound the death knell for blog subscription or an edn to being b(l)ogged down" (you can see why I've used tinyurl:

http://tinyurl.com/54sezr

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