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Thursday, January 18, 2007

Slog by Topic

posted by on January 18 at 17:50 PM

You can now sort Slog posts by topic. Click on the “Categories” link at the top of Slog and you’ll find a list of posts sorted by type. Coming soon: RSS feeds by category.
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RSS icon Comments

1

Nice idea

Posted by Megan | January 18, 2007 6:05 PM
2

sweet. can't wait for the rss. are comments going to be coming to rss anytime soon?

Posted by charles | January 18, 2007 7:25 PM
3

What is rss? How exactly does it work? I looked it up on Wikipedia and I still didn't get it.

Posted by failing computer nerd | January 18, 2007 7:31 PM
4

#3 - First, get an RSS reader (google.com/reader or one of the standalone programs) and then subscribe to some RSS feeds, such as:

http://www.thestranger.com/blog/atom.xml

The RSS reader periodically checks the feeds you are subscribed to and shows you the latest stories. Basically, it gives you a quick way of checking all your favorite sites.

In most browsers, you will see an orange icon to the right of the site's URL. You can often just click on that to add the RSS feed to your reader.

Posted by K | January 18, 2007 8:20 PM
5

RSS is basically a "feed" that you "subscribe" to with an rss reader. the reader checks the rss feed every so often and when content on page who's feed you are subscribed to is updated, your rss reader will alert you. basically it's a way to keep up with new content on a site without actually wasting your time opening your browser and physically surfing over there to see what is new.

here are a few rss clients

some browsers such as firefox and internet explorer 7 also have support for RSS. I believe firefox calls them "live bookmarks". the new version of outlook in ms office 2k7 also has an integrated rss reader. as do some portals like my.yahoo.com

Posted by charles | January 18, 2007 8:21 PM
6

Seeing the number of articles in each of your categories is an interesting statistical breakdown of what gets the most attention on Slog. "Arts" is far and away in the lead, and "Savage Love" has only 3 entries. Who'd thought?

Posted by david | January 18, 2007 11:49 PM
7

I'd kind of like to see the categories expand though. The fact that there are so many posts in arts for example is screaming to be further broken down. There is no way I'm going to wade through 1k+ posts to try to find that original zadie smith post frizelle made a month or so ago.

Why not make a "on writing", "vidaduct", "you will know we are christians by...", or "absurd ECB feminism" tag? Do you have the capability to assign a post to one or more categories?

There are a few recurring themes in slog but you wouldn't be able to follow that thread by those really general categories. categories shouldn't read like the sections of a newspaper but like a topical map to what you write about.

Posted by charles | January 19, 2007 8:04 AM
8

or if you REALLY wanted to get 2.0, you'd let US tag them for you ;)

Posted by charles | January 19, 2007 8:06 AM
9

Anyone else having trouble with this feature? I use Firefox browser and every time I try going through the categories the browser locks up. I have to 'force quit.'

Posted by CameronRex | January 19, 2007 10:55 AM

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