Digg Tech News: delicious meets slashdot

I ran into Digg for the first time today. I'm already an Engadget junkie but I don't track delicious or slashdot all the time like a lot of folks (which is probably what took me so long to find out about it).

Digg 2.0 launched July 10th. It started in December of 2004. It seems to be functional and useable. Registered users submit stories like slashdot but the stories go into a big pot. Users can comment and vote for these stories and after 15 or so votes in a certain amount of time, the story get promoted to the top of the Digg home page. At some point when additional votes slow down enough, the story drops off the page. Something like that.

You can subscribe to your friends' votes and comments.

I like the friends stuff, the democratic flavor and the simplicity. I'm guessing it will either improve a lot if there's improving to do (which there always is) or similar sites will pop up and do it - this thing - better.

I'm not real crazy about their categories. You can submit stories only under these categories: apple, deals, design, gaming, hardware, links, linux/unix, mods, movies, music, programming, robots, science, security, software, technology.

No handheld, no smartphones. Tell me why robots would be a category? No tagging here. That stops me a bit in terms of submitting my own stories. But I'll probably do it soon anyway to see if this is a way I can get wider readership. Tech bloggers are likely to do the same.

Right now I'm listening to the first of the 8 podcasts they've got under the name diggnation. It's on iTunes. They've got video and audio versions of most episodes. I tried to download it unsuccessfully. But the audio version is pretty entertaining and funny. I'm not 100% sold based on episode 1 but I'm subscribed and am hoping the content will get better. Engadget seems far superior because Ryan Block and Peter Rojas are in the know big time. Diggnation feels a little like having entertainers presenting the news.

Get a little more information on Wikipedia.

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