10. Add some subscriptions

Now that you have a feed reader set up, it's time to add some subscriptions. This task will guide you through the process of adding a subscription to digg, a technology news site whose content is contributed by users and decided by vote.

Digg

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, digg surfaces the most popular news as voted on by its users. You won't find editors at digg - digg provides a place where people can collectively determine the value of content.

Digg can be geek and American centric. However, some Australian stories have made the front page of digg, including the Chaser antics and the OPEC forum.

Your task

• Subscribe to digg.com through your feed reader.
• Create a post in your blog about your views on digg.com.
  Do you think this would be a good way to read the news in the future?
• Add a few more subscriptions to your reader. Options are endless...pick your favourite sites, receive updates of items added to our own library catalogue, or receive alerts of updates to your favourite journals or searches from database providers such as Ebsco.

How to add a subscription in your feed reader

• Go to the site you wish to subscribe to and look for the feed link somewhere on the site. It is usually a button that look similar to this:

Sometimes it is called an "RSS feed" or "XML feed". More information is available at Google Reader's site.

• Click on the feed button or link.
• This will usually open a new browser window containing code which represents the rss feed for that site. Copy the url you see in the address bar.
• Paste this url into your feed reader.

Remember: tutorials for your feed reader of choice were provided in the previous exercise!

Setting up an RSS feed to Digg in Google Reader

Go to http://www.digg.com/

In the top right you will see the little orange RSS symbol...click on this

You will be taken to their rss feed page. Copy the url that appears in the address bar

Log into Google Reader

Click on 'Add Subscription' in the left hand menu

Paste in the url you just copied and click 'Add'

Digg should appear in your list of feeds

Note: If you have elected to use a different feed reader, the process will still be very similar. Check the tutorial information for your particular reader provided in Thing 9 to be sure.

Resources

• Digg goes deeper with social networking
• How Digg works
• Beginner's guide to Digg
• The day Digg users revolted
• How do I find a site's feed?
• How to subscribe to RSS feeds
• 100 Cool Things you can do with RSS

Alternate tools

Alternatives to Digg:

• Newsvine
• Reddit