Newsified is a simple, but brilliant, idea. Take your favorite social news sites, the ones you normally read on the web or through RSS, and lay them out like ... a newspaper. It's an old-school approach that actually proves really useful when it comes to deep sites like Metafilter and Digg. You only see a small percentage of the popular content on the front pages of these sites, but Newsified gives a broader view at a glance.

Newsified pages exist for 6 sites so far: Digg, Reddit, Metafilter, Mixx, Delicious and YouTube. It takes the most popular front-page content from those sites and puts it in a prominent position at the top of the page. Then, as you read down, you'll see the deeper content that you might have missed, laid out in convenient capsule form for your consumption. It's a quick, fun way to read news. In fact, I like the concept so much that I'm giving it a try as my homepage this week.

The big story this week was undoubtedly the launch of Firefox 3. And we covered the heck out of it. But while Mozilla's little browser was busy grabbing headlines, there was plenty of other news. Here are a few of our favorite (mostly) non-Firefox related stories:

• What to expect from Mozilla's mobile Firefox web browser
  OK, we promise, this is the last Firefox-related link of the roundup. But we got a chance to talk with Mozilla VP for Mobile Jay Sullivan this week and he gave us the a rundown of what we can expect from the upcoming mobile version of Firefox. For example, Mozilla is targeting Linux and Windows Mobile phones at first, but could develop a Symbian version soon as well.
• HELP! Windows cannot open this file
  Ever download a file from the internet only to discover that you have no idea what program you need to use to open it? We've got you covered with a roundup of software you can install on a Windows system to ensure that you can open pretty much any file you're likely to find.
• OpenSUSE 11.0 proves chameleons can take on herons any day
  Ubuntu gets a lot of attention for being a user-friendly Linux distribution for newbies, but the latest version of OpenSUSE is poised to give Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron a run for its money. It's fast, supports GNOME or KDE4, as well as the light weight Xfce interface, and comes with all the applications you'd expect from a modern Linux distro, including the latest stable version of OpenOffice.org.
• Giveaway: OpenSUSE 11 box set with all the trimmings
  Oh yeah, and we've got a special boxed edition of OpenSUSE 11 to give away. Follow the link for all the details and contest rules. The contest runs through Tuesday June 26th.
• Digg this Kevin Rose - Reddit goes completely open source
  Always wanted to develop your own Digg-killer? Now you can, using the source code for one of the most popular social news/bookmarking sites around. Reddit opened up its source code this week which lets anyone develop their own Reddit clones or applications designed to interface with the original web service.
• Qtrax launches free, legal, and limited P2P music app
  Remember when you could easily find and download any song on the internet just by firing up Napster or your favorite P2P music client? Yeah, we know there are still programs and P2P networks out there holding the free music torch. But you always run the risk of getting a nasty letter from the RIAA when you use those clients. That's not the case when you use Qtrax, a new P2P client that launched this week. What sets Qtrax apart from the competition is that the service only features 100% legal and free music. The service is supported by advertising and would be totally awesome if it weren't for two restrictions. First the software uses Windows Media DRM. Second, the music selection is still pretty pitiful.
• Skype 4.0 beta puts video front and center, takes over your screen
  Skype has released a new beta of its popular VoIP client for Windows. And for the first time, video seems like a primary feature and not an afterthought. The video window is larger and more prominent. But overall the client takes up far more screen real estate and starts in full screen mode by default. While you can certainly resize the window, it doesn't fit in the sidebar as easily as earlier versions, which makes it a bit more awkward to use if you're just looking to use the text chat or audio call features.

Digg has legions of followers. They're quite fanatical. The similar service Reddit doesn't have that type of following.

But how many of the Digg fantatics know how Digg works anyways? There's some type of "algorithm" that controls what hits the homepage. Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson have hinted to that it involves who is digging what, the rate at which the stories are dugg, and we think that it involves something with the space time continium. That and what side of the bed MC Hammer wakes up on.

But nobody really knows but Digg.

Today, the #1 competitor to Digg, Condé Nast's Reddit, says "Screw you guys, we're going transparent". That's not an actual quote, but the company's actions say that in a nutshell.

Condé Nast is opening up Reddit's codebase to developers, your moms and dads, your pet fish, and whoever else has a computing device hooked up to the interwebs.

Social news service Reddit is about to get a whole lot more social, if that's possible. Like other popular social news/link web sites including Digg and StumbleUpon, Reddit features a long list of user-submitted links to articles, images, videos, and pretty much anything anybody ever thought was useful. Users can vote stories up or down and the top stories are featured on the front page.

It's pretty tough to get a story on the front page of Reddit, but the service offers a number of subcategories, which it calls subreddits. So while the link you submitted with a picture of an entire Star Wars battle scene constructed of Legos might not make the front page of Reddit Proper, you might be able to hit the front page of legos.reddit.com. You know, if that particular subreddit existed.

And pretty soon it might. Reddit has announced the launch of a build your own subreddit feature. Users will be able to create public, restricted, or private reddits that can be shared with the whole world or just a small group of friends. The service is in private beta right now, but should be made publicly available within a week or so. In the meantime, you can apply for the private beta by sending an email to feedback at reddit.com with the subject "omg me please." Seriously, that's how you apply.

[via TechCrunch]

If you're starting your own blog, there's no question that WordPress is one of the most customizable, powerful blogging platforms around. But Google's blogger is attractive because it doesn't require a hosting solution, and it's ridiculously easy to use.

On the other hand, there are hundreds of plugins for WordPress that just don't work with Blogger. That's starting to change, and it's not necessarily because Google is rolling out support for new features. No, it's because developers are moving away from hosted scripts and offering up javascript based applications.

ShareThis is a popular WordPress plugin that puts a little "share this" icon near every post on your blog. Click it and you get the option to email the post to your friends or submit it to several popular social bookmarking sites..

Up until recently, you could only install ShareThis on WordPress blogs. But now the company has released ShareThis 2.0, which is a javascript version that works with Blogger as well. Well, almost works. Right now there's an error that prevents ShareThis from showing up on more than one post per page. But the team is working to fix that problem.

ShareThis 2.0 loads slower than ShareThis 1.0, but because of the redesign, you can track how people are using your ShareThis icons. If you'd rather install the old version of the plugin, it's still available.

[via Digital Inspiration]

Digg has a problem. What was once a haven of obscure, insightful, and breaking news has become a cesspool of dated headlines, generic brand commentary, and fan-boy-blog spam. What happened? Why do the vast majority of front page links come from "popular" websites who feature a prominent "digg it" button on every article? Is there some conspiracy afloat? Is digg rewarding websites that send them a lot of traffic?

Can we demand a recount?

Sadly no. Digg's problem isn't one of cronyism or corruption, it is far worse. Digg has always been a poorly planned community. There, we said it.

To make matters worse, digg's phenomenal growth illustrates its own failure. If it were a nation, we would call it a failing state with a bumming population. A population easily and unwittingly manipulated by the craftiness of other large and powerful websites.

Need proof?

Of the 15 front page articles this morning:

• 7 were from popular blogs that featured the familiar "digg it" badge
• 5 were from popular sites that featured a prominent submit to digg button
• 2 were from popular mainstream news sites
• 1 was from a small town newspaper.
  

The problem really starts on the upcoming page. Here digg's increasing popularity attracts far more submissions than the diggers on the upcoming page can handle. A random check reveals 34 new links in the last two minutes. In another two minutes those links will be buried on the 4th or 5th page having never received a digg. A visit to page 40 in the upcoming queue reveals only one link that has garnered more than 3 diggs, and that link is from a popular website with the (you guessed it) digg it button at the top of the page.

How could this happen? Have diggers simply stopped caring about their own community?

Mixx is emerging from private beta today, which means you can check out the latest Digg wannabe without an invitation.

We first looked at Mixx a few weeks ago, and it shows some promise. Mixx works the same way as Digg, Reddit, or pretty much any other social news/voting site you may have seen. Users submit links to articles they think are interesting. Then other users vote articles up or down until the most popular items are on the front page, making it a useful source of news you're interested in.

While Digg has been branching out into diverse subject matter lately, the site is dominated by technology news. Mixx is hoping to attract users interested in technology, news, politics, and other areas. You can click on various tabs to see news related to each topic.

But what really sets Mixx apart is its personalized homepage. You build a profile that includes your interests and you can see the top news in each category all in one place. While Digg is all about the wisdom of crowds, Mixx is about personalization -- and the wisdom of crowds.

[via WebWare]

Ever wonder what you're missing if you read Digg every morning but skip the New York Times? Or vice versa? The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released a study comparing stories on user-driven news sites like Digg, Reddit, and Del.icio.us with mainstream news. Here's what they found:

• Most of the top stories on Digg, Reddit, and Del.icio.us were not top stories in the mainstream media.
  
• There's little follow-up on user-driven sites. A story pops up once, and then disappears.
• User news sites draw from different sources than mainstream media, with many stories linking to blogs and popular websites.
• Different user news sites are strong in different areas. Reddit is the most likely to include political stories, Digg is good for tech news, while Del.icio.us is kind of all over the place.
• Mainstream news sites were more likely to cover international news than the user-driven sites.

The study covered one week in June, but the results seem pretty realistic to us. The one thing we'd point out though is that user-driven "news" sites are often devoid of actual independent reporting. You can learn a lot by reading the comments on Digg or Slashdot. But most of the articles are actually links to original reporting done by mainstream media or articles written and published on other blogs or news sites.

Social news sites aren't replacing traditional media. They're replacing the editor's judgment of what news should go on the paper's front page. While a wider range of topics might make the front page of Reddit than The New York Times, if you want consistent quality and editorially sound articles written by people who make a living reporting the facts, you might not want to rely on Digg readers to deliver all your news.

[via Search Engine Land]

Digg plans to launch an image section next month. It will let users submit and vote on interesting and funny pictures without the need to write (PIC) in the headline. Presumably, the site will also include image thumbnails much the same way it does for its video section.

But if you just can't wait another month, one Digg fan has gone and created digpicz. Just like Reddit Media does with Reddit, digpicz scans Digg for image posts and creates a Digg-style page with top stories and thumbnails. And it does this all without any support from Digg's developers.

In fact, we wouldn't be surprised to see both Reddit Media and digpicz get takedown notices one of these days. But perhaps it behooves Reddit and Digg to let the sites live until each social news site launches its own image section. At that point, there won't be much reason for anyone to visit the unofficial sites.

[via Digg]

People like pictures. Nothing new there. But people are also the backbone of social news sites like Digg and Reddit. And it's becoming increasingly clear that neither site is very visual. The front pages of both sites are filled with text links -- even if those links point to pictures.

Users have resorted to writing (PIC) next to headlines to let you know what lies beneath the link. Yesterday we told you about a developer that got tired of waiting for Reddit to launch an image section. He launched his own site that grabs headlines from Reddit and places thumbnails next to them.

It looks like Digg has taken the cue and plans to roll out an image section in October. First Digg will add an "All" section next to the News, Videos, and Podcasts sections. That addition is due out "soon," which will pave the way for the image section.

[via Russell Heimlich]

Some of the most popular links on Digg, Reddit, and other social news sites are funny or interesting pictures. But you have to read through a lot of text to find them. Niether Digg nor Reddit have tools to display photo or video thumbnails. They're sort of the Craigslists of social media.

Reddit Media is an interesting take on what Reddit would look like with image thumbnails. The site is unaffiliated with Reddit (and thus it could be just a matter of time before Conde Nast shuts it down). But it has a look and interface that's quite similar to Reddit. The only difference is that Reddit Media scans Reddit for posts with images and puts a thumnbnail next to the headline.

Perhaps if the site gains enough traction, Reddit will decide to copy it and not just shut it down.

Click To Play

Fichey is a new web discovery service. But unlike digg, reddit, Fichey doesn't let you submit and share web sites with other users. Rather, it lets you find popular stories from digg, reddit, StumbleUpon and other sites.

What Fichey provides is a simple Flash-based tool for flipping through web pages. You won't actually be taken to those pages, you remain on Fichey's site the whole time while screenshots of the day's top stories are loaded. Because of this, the pages don't load like normal web pages. Rather when you click a button to see the next page, an image is loaded into the Flash interface using transition effects.

While the service isn't really that useful for anyone who wants to, you know, actually visit the web sites you're reading about, the presentation is quite remarkable. To be honest, the screencast above doesn't really do the site justice, because it was recorded at a low framerate, so we suggest you just go check Fichey out for yourselves for a moment. And then move along.

[via TechCrunch]

Gen Y, a term sometimes used for those 20-35 years old, are old enough to be (some of) our kids but more importantly make up our next generation of clients. This generation, defined more by popular culture than by age, is an Internet-hungry and online-casual bunch. Currently, there are about 76 million of them in the U.S., not a bad market slice.

They communicated first via Instant Message and made the sport popular. After webcams were affordable, dating sites emerged. By the time YouTube opened up the face-to-face world, research as we knew it had changed permanently. Then social sites like MySpace, and Facebook blew onto the virtual landscape. Television is becoming secondary to seeing what you want when you want it (this is the ongoing theme) and BitTorrent (among others) is the way to find preferred media, not TV Guide.

If your business is looking for its next generation of customers, what kind of online presence do you need to attract and keep the techno-oriented Y'ers who spend big bucks online? Although neither exhaustive nor scientific (my sample was everyone I know under 35), here is a list of popular places where young folks come together online. If you market, you should consider these sites.

Download Squad and its cousins – people want to know what's out there as soon as it's launched. DLS not only tells you what's there but also make it easy to find plus they let you know if it's worthwhile. With so much information out there, DLS and its cousin sites offer today's specials so you don't have to bother with the entire menu.

Gmail, Google News Reader, Google Docs – free online services by King Google are the prime haunt of many 20-35 year olds. Make sure you know how they work so when you build apps on your site you try to mimic the look and feel. When they want world news, they often use the links at the top of the pages.

The News Empire – the business-oriented target group seems to enjoy CNN's plethora of sites including cnn.com for news, cnnsi.com for sports, and the new CNN video area. They find news at their local paper's site as well as at the major news sites including The NY Times, WaPo, Google and Yahoo!.

Things Technical – if the users are geeky (a term I use with respect), they're likely to grab the most current news available from sites like Slashdot, Digg, Techmeme, Engadget and Reddit. Never heard of them? Each is a field-leader and they all use a blog-like or RSS-like updating system. Ease of use and consistent uptime can be more important than design. (A site is successful when its name becomes a verb, like, "Google that..." or "My review was slashdotted...")

Sharing Socially – social networking sites are more than just a "what's new" news item. Facebook and MySpace connect this international generation like virtual glue. Many users consider these sites to be their homepages and include links to other sites they want to visit (like Twitter, Google Reader, Pownce, their favorite blogs) right from those pages.

Photo Share – Got a shelf full of quaint photo albums? Today's shelves are online on a Flickr, Picasa or other photo site's servers. With the rapid availability of fast bandwidth, pictures go online instantaneously and can circle the globe in less than a morning. Others can comment and you can share all the photos you upload from your digital camera or more likely from your phone. In the olden days, we taught people how to attach a photo to an email. Today, we read the Flickr feed to see a picture that might interest us.

It's All in the RSS – most everyone who leans toward the technical has an RSS reader, whether it's Google or FeedDemon or others. The younger online group gets the feed for whatever interests them and checks that feed several times a day. It's neater and cleaner than browsing all over the Web and they get what they want when they want it (the ongoing theme) and have time to read it. If you don't yet have an RSS feed, what are you waiting for?

Share, Share, Share – the definition of social sites is sharing. We share not only photos and text but also we expect sharing in return. It's almost as if the Web has come full circle. From the olden days of the early 1990s to the mid-first decade of this millennium, the Web has evolved from open and free (when I started) to pay-as-you-go (when they expected you to pay to get news) and has grown into freely shared spaces that are your own. The mantra of sites is "Twitter/Pownce - Digg - Flickr" for the younger and clued-in audience.

Whether you consider this generation of Internet users to be egocentric and instantaneous gratifiers or open-minded and savvy, the proof of the online pudding is in the feed. Click a few links and see how they are coming to the knowledge that will make them – or keep them – from becoming your future customers.

If your fav site was omitted, please add it in the comments. You'd be surprised how many great sites we find out simply by asking others who are slightly more geeky than we are.

Say you run across a really cool webpage that you want to share with all your friends and a few thousand other people? You might submit it to Digg, Reddit, and maybe even another service or two before you run out of steam and enthusiasm.

Social Poster makes it easy to submit links to 34 different sites with just a few clicks. You can grab Firefox toolbar button by going to Social Poster's main site. Now visit any web page, highlight some text and click the SocialPoster.com button.

You'll see a new page with the URL, title, and text you've selected. Social Poster even generates tags based on the content of the page. You can edit any field before posting. On the left side of the page are 34 social bookmarking sites, including Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, and a few dozen others. Click the Post button next to each site and Social Poster will fill out most of the information for you.

You'll still need to have an account with each service you submit stories to. But Social Poster can save tech evangelists (or web site promoters) a lot of time and energy.