My New Favorite Way to Keep Up With Photoshop and Photography and Stuff
I’ve talked about Alltop.com before (which is basically a site that does a very clever job of gathering blogs about specific topics and it puts them all on one handy page, but that’s just part of the story). They call it, an “online magazine rack” that they update every hour.
Anyway, just recently, they introduced a feature called “MyAlltop” where you can set up your own Alltop page, with your own favorite blogs on it. So, I put one together with blogs about Photoshop, Photography, the Mac, and other stuff I check each day, and of all the things like this I’ve tried (various RSS readers, blog aggregators, Google-this, Yahoo-that, etc.), this is the quickest to use and easiest to set up.
One of my favorite features of Alltop is that you can move your cursor over a headline and it shows you the first paragraph or so from that post, so you can quickly decide if you want to click the link and read more.
It’s free to sign up, and once signed up, you just search by topic (Photoshop for instance), and it shows you a list of the Photoshop blogs they follow. To add one of those, you just check the box, and keep on choosing blogs until you’ve got your own custom page set up. You can also reorder the blogs in the order you want them to appear by just dragging and dropping. Anyway, it’s free, and quick, and definitely worth a try. Here’s the link to set-up your own page.
Let me know what you think after you’ve tried it for a few days. (If you want, you can check out my own page by going to my.alltop.com/scottkelby)



















Alltop is very cool indeed. I found it via Jason’s over at canonblogger.com and it really is a very good tool for agregating the important news items that you want.
Soooweeeet !!!
Thanks for the link Scott – I’m signing up now.
Nice, but unless I’m missing something, how is this any different from what iGoogle does?
Dave
I did sign up and there are some differences that are nice… Thanks for the tip.
Scott,
I’ve been using Alltop for about 3 months now. It took a few weeks to get used to it, but I have gradually been using it more and more.
I totally agree with you about it being the quickest way to read your favourite blogs.
Known about Alltop for quite a while. The Home Know-it-All has been listed on it under DIY. It is a great way to get good exposure.
It’s fast and links to a lot of sites. On the downside, it doesn’t remove links that you have already viewed. Google reader removes RSS feeds after you have viewed them, making it easy to scan for new items.
Dan,
Any story that you’ve already read will be in gray. New stories are in bold, black. This way it’s easier for you to track what’s new and unread.
Guy
Hey Scott…thanks for the heads up on this. I hope you don’t mind but rather than go through the exercise of creating a page that would most likely contain most of the same links as yours, I just bookmarked your page.
This seems like a great first stop of the day site.
Ha, great minds and all. I was thinking the same thing!
It would be nice if there were a “see what ’so-and-so’ reads” function like some other sites.
That’s very cool! I can use it!
Google Reader 1 – Alltop 0
Google Reader all the way
friendlier interface, can show pics from the blog if you want…
I agree – Google Reader provides greater customization of feeds to choose from, better organization and superior sharing functionality with custom user based URL’s generated on the fly.
Thanks for another great tip. I’ll be checking your page out and looking in to making my own as well. Even with my RSS feeds keeping up with all my net reading is getting out of control.
Neat idea but they need some refining. For example, I couldn’t even find a link for Scott’s blog. McNally was there, Moose wasn’t. One nice feature, you can add a link to your page that you see on someone else’s page, kind of like following on Twitter.
Anyway, got a page set up and will keep looking for the others.
My personal dashboard is Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com). I’ve tried ‘em all, and this is by far the best solution for my needs. Highly recommended.
Thats pretty cool. Thanks for the heads up Scott!
1. Switch to Firefox
2. Install the Wizz RSS extension
3. Rejoice
Seriously, after using Wizz RSS, I can’t go back to a page-based aggregator. I used to be an iGoogle fanatic, but after using Wizz RSS, iGoogle seems so klunky. Wizz RSS opens as an adjustable sidebar that lets you design a heirarchy for your RSS feeds and gives you a full preview in the bottom panel of the sidebar (you can see screenshots here). You can import/export feed lists and it even has functionality to automatically find the URL for any RSS feeds on the page you’re currently visiting (you can subsequently drag and drop that URL into your feed list).
Nothing against other aggregators, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. But if your goal is quick, at-a-glance access to gobs of feeds, I can’t think of a better solution than Wizz RSS on Firefox.
igoogle. Hmm. these are the same guys who make a living selling my personal preferences and web browsing? no thanks.
I just discovered Alltop/photography a few weeks ago and could not believe how relevant all the links were. My favs were there, plus I found some news sites. “My.alltop” could challenge Google Reader (most convenient) and Netvibes (best looking) users, just due to the speed.
amazing what is hidden on the web that is so useful. time saver a well as a bookmark reduction tool. Thanks this is a good one.
It actually is a really useful way to get a new website launched as well. They allow you to submit it similar to a search engine for posting to their lists via the categories, etc.
This sounds like a really interesting, and time saving tool. I’m going to go check it out more…
Thanks
This is one of Guy Kawasaki’s big projects, its very useful for someone who wants to follow Kelby, thank you very much Guy Kawasaki and his team..
Thank you. I’m honored.
Interesting post, but you should use EvenT Box! Its a desktop application that collates all of your RSS feeds, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and many other sorts of info into a single interface that lets you know when stuff arrives etc. No need to open up Safari to look for stuff. This is the link to their site http://thecosmicmachine.com/ it costs $15 but well worth it, oh and its Mac only…
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