Fortunately, the Reddit-related site Erqqvg has created a nifty little real-time visual Reddit updater that goes by the name of Vizeddit. It’s a fresh take on the original site, and although it’s not something that is designed to be used it all the time, it’s a nice find. Is it cool? Absolutely. Is it functional? Actually… yes.

Sleek And Sexy Design

From the get-go, Vizeddit presents the top 25 links of Reddit on its front page. Each link is represented by a multicolored column, so it’s simple and easy enough to distinguish between each piece of content. However, the question that needs to be asked is, “What does it do?” 

You’ll notice that for each column, plus-signs and minus-signs will come streaming down, falling on top of the colored bars. If a green plus-sign hits a bar, it rises. If a red minus-sign hits it, then (quite naturally) it shrinks. Easy enough to understand, right? Each plus and minus sign represents the upvotes or downvotes that the link receives, and ultimately, the website serves as a means of understanding what’s hot and what’s not on Reddit. Basically, consider it Reddit 2.0.

The site utilizes Reddit’s API to consistently update these colored bars to go up or down based on the content. Along with this information, randomly selected comments will drop down (Tetris-style) so that you can take a gander at what’s happening in the motherland. Also, after clicking on the bars themselves, you will be given the option to actually go to the links and see the voting ratios.

Functionality

Trust me, I wouldn’t share Vizreddit with you if it was just a pretty face. The site has a variety of functional uses that you can take advantage of everyday, and although some could possibly need a little imagination, it’s still a way to make use of it. Here are a couple of examples concerning the functionality of Vizreddit.

For instance, since Reddit is a major content aggregator, you can actually use Vizreddit to find out what exactly the hottest topics are currently in the world. Much like Twitter hashtags, this simply can call your attention to what’s fresh. For instance, post #3 on Reddit may be a cute picture of a cat, but post #21 may show off a recent uprising in a foreign country. Although post #3 remains in a higher slot, using Vizreddit, you could actually see the more rapid pace of voting occurring and realize that something may be up with post #21.

Besides that, this is is just a simpler way of viewing Reddit in real time. Instead of looking at the dull text design of the site itself (that I hope never changes), you can dive into a cooler way to read up on things. Honestly, it’s just like viewing the original Reddit. The only catch is that you can’t scroll through all the links – only the top 25 are available.

Conclusion

I believe Vizreddit is an excellent tool to supplement your Reddit experience. That is, of course, if you use Reddit as your primary funnel for information. However, you shouldn’t use it as a standalone site (that’s not what it is), and beyond that, it does have a little bit of a novelty feel. However, it still works.

What other Reddit-related sites do you like to use? How has Vizreddit helped you?

It sees Google Elections as an “election hub where citizens can study, watch, discuss, learn about, participate in and perhaps even make an impact on the digital campaign trail as it blazes forward to Tuesday, November 6, 2012.”

The news aggregate provides links to news about each individual presidential candidate, as well as related issues such as the economy, immigration, jobs and unemployment, and national security.

Resources can be filtered for news and videos, as well as a Trends Dashboard which depicts which candidates people are searching for, watching, and reading about online.

The election coverage also includes sidebar links to a 2012 Political Calendar that tracks the whereabouts of all the presidential candidates and other key events. Perhaps an even more interesting resource is the On the Ground links to video news coverage, analysis, and interviews of candidates at the various campaign stumps across the country. This is similar to Google’s YouTube Politics, which presents the Top 5 political videos from week to week.

For related online news coverage of the campaign season, the Washington Post released @mentionmachine which monitors Twitter for political candidates mentions and trends.

Source: Google Blog

Today, I’d like to give just a general overview of how Reddit works. I’m not making excuses for the bad parts of Reddit – of course not – but I do want to keep you informed. The more you know, right?  Oh and don’t forget to read Dave’s informative manual on Reddit too.

What’s Bad About Reddit?

Contrary to popular belief, Reddit is not a site devoted to child porn and degradation of women. That would be 4Chan, and if this was the case, I wouldn’t be using it. I’m not at all a proponent for things such as these, but I’ll admit that there are a lot of ugly things on Reddit that are pretty close to the items mentioned, such as:

GoneWild: A subreddit where users post fairly-sexualized nude pictures of themselves, desensitizing the human race to the beauty of sex and giving those who post misdirected praise.

Obnoxious Religious Debate: Militant believers and militant nonbelievers tend to duke it out on the main page of Reddit – something that should be relatively unbiased, methinks.

Exploitation of Teens: There are a few subreddits that depict teenagers in a rather sexualized way – not pornographically, but close. There is the possibility that the pictures found on these subreddits are routed through Facebook, but I will explain how these sections of Reddit are completely within themselves later on in this post.

These are just a few of the bad things about Reddit, and there are quite a few others. I’m not kidding. However, you have to understand how Reddit works before you form an opinion of it.

How Does Reddit Work?

Let’s imagine a place where the entire world is connected through computers. People are able to create pages that can be read on a screen, and other people can read them and even write on them to the people that have created them. These pages eventually become large communities of people reading and writing, and they range from discussion about cats to ramblings about faith all the way to videos of pornography. However, each person chooses to go to the page that interests them the most, so the people that go to the page about cats do not go to the page with pornography.

You may say, “Josh, we already have that – it’s the Internet!”

I say, “No, sir. It’s not the Internet that I’m describing. I’m describing Reddit.”

What amazes me is that the people who bash Reddit are actually users of the Internet – a place that is full of discussion about cats, ramblings about faith, and even videos of pornography. With that being said, Reddit is divided into communities – called subreddits – just like the Internet, so at the core, Reddit is like a miniature version of the Internet itself!

Basically, here’s what I say to a person that bashes Reddit – you wouldn’t automatically say someone looks at jailbait just because they get on the Internet, right?

Should Reddit Censor Itself?

In my opinion, Reddit should censor itself to some degree. It’s technically a private website created by individuals looking for profit, so it’s fine with me if they choose to censor items. However, the question always arises, “What kind of stuff should they censor?”

Well, for me, that’s anything to do with jailbait, and yes, there are Reddit communities devoted to this (by all technical means, they are not pornographic, but they are still disgusting). So most importantly, young children and even young teenagers do not deserve to be viewed in a sexual manner whatsoever. Furthermore, it puts a bad mark on the other users of Reddit, for other people do not understand that the site is divided up into communities, and typically, those communities do not ever see each other except for when an individual chooses to go to them.

When it comes to trivial things such as porn and religion (bet you never thought you’d see those two in the same sentence), I don’t think they should be censored. However, as someone who is adamantly against pornography in general (but prefers to use discussion rather than force to get his point across), I’d rather not see it at all.

Fortunately, there are methods to censor Reddit on your own, such as the Reddit Enhancement Suite. I use it to block anything NSFW, and I also block out keywords that float around the site. Pretty useful tool, and I recommend it to anyone.

Conclusion

Maybe I didn’t make a good case for Reddit, and that’s kind of hard to do when writing just a blog post. In that case, I’ll just leave this other blog post here.

What other support can you give for Reddit? What are the things about Reddit that you don’t like?  What can it do to improve?

Just as newspapers have sectioned categories, Reddit contains subreddits. Each subreddit is narrowly targeted toward a specific idea or interest, and by adding a particular subreddit to your frontpage you are opting in to receiving the latest and most popular content from that section. If you’re interested in topics like Apple, DIY, or food then Reddit has a home for you. But what about the deeper and more obscure topics?

Maybe you want to see what people are cooking for dinner tonight? Or perhaps you want to find new and inspiring mashup tunes to listen to?  These subreddits may be buried deep within the community, but I’m going to show you how to find them.

Using Reddit Itself

Coincidentally enough, you’re able to find great subreddits using the simple features provided by the website. It’s nice to be able to down two birds with one stone – improving Reddit while enjoying it.

Official Subreddits Page

This page may be the very best resource, and it is so often overlooked.

The page aggregates all of the current subreddits that you have active on your frontpage and combines them with the most popular subreddits overall to offer you relevant suggestions. There should be hundreds of suggested pages shown as well as a complete list of your currently frontpage’d subreddits in the menu to the far right (or only 50 if you have more and are not a Reddit Gold member).

/r/subredditoftheday & /r/newreddits

Just as the names entail, you can follow these two to get a consistent flow of new and interesting subreddits pushed directly to your frontpage. As an added bonus, you can find lots of additional subreddits just by participating in the community and checking out comments that are posted. It’s almost like Inception at this point – finding subreddits within comments inside of a subreddit while on Reddit.

Third-Party Services

If Reddit itself doesn’t offer enough for you, there are a whole slew of third-party sites that parse and index subreddits to search through. Here are my two personal favorites.

Metareddit

Metareddit is generally considered to be the best and most user-friendly way of hunting for your new favorite subreddit. If there was a way to authenticate this as the official third-party subreddit service, I’d do it.

Metareddit offers lots of functionality, some of which is completely unrelated to subreddit-searching. It’s a true way to archive and categorize subreddits, not just find them. You can search through subreddits by keyword, tags, or logo. At the time of this post, more then 90,000 subreddits are indexed in the Metareddit database, so that’s pretty impressive.

They also offer a monitor feature, which is basically the equivalent of a service such as Google Alerts. You can search for a keyword trigger in Reddit posts and comments and it’ll return the freshest results to you. This is a pretty unique way to find new subreddits, also. Stalk is just as good, with a little side of creepy. If you’re obsessive over a particular Redditor’s posts or interests, you can use the feature to find exactly what subreddits they are frequenting.

Subreddits

This site is incredibly easy to navigate and utilize. Right on the frontpage, you’re presented with the most popular subreddits and respective categories.

Across the top menu, you’ll also notice links for you to navigate the top 3,000 subreddits and sort them from a tag cloud.

If you weren’t able to find exactly what you were looking for in this post, I’m willing to bet that you can find it in The Reddit Manual.  Or if you know of another good resource we haven’t mentioned here, be sure to let us in on the secret in the comments.

That is where Occupationalist comes in. It is a news aggregation website that only follows what is happening in the Occupy Wall Street movement. It keeps tracks of reporting from various RSS feeds and Twitter, so you will never miss a beat. They also feature a Foursquare check in map, meetup board and a wall of handwritten notes from protesters and supporters.

It’s a great idea for supporters of the movement to come together and meet up, or simply find out what they need to know. If you are a member of the “99%” and are an avid supporter of the movement, or just someone looking to keep track of the latest news, you may want to check Occupationalist out.

Source: Mashable

Bundlr is a great new curation tool which offers exactly this. Piece together your collection from around the web and then save privately or share as you wish. Bundlr makes the whole process really easy and the results are fantastic.

Get A Bundlr Account

First off, sign up to Bundlr with your Twitter or Facebook login to get started. This will pre-populate your account details for you and make sign-up nice and quick.

Start A Bundle

Start your new bundles here and get creating! Bundlr suggests that to get started you might like to try covering an event, news stories, researching something new or just bundling together your favourite things. Teachers could easily make use of Bundlr in order to collect reading material for a class or for students to present their research to the class. You can create bundles for whatever subject interests you, so allow yourself to be interesting.

Some of the featured bundles might also give you ideas: Genocide, 3D Printing and Fantastic Buildings Of The UAE.

Filling Up Your Bundle

You can use a browser extension or a bookmarklet to easily collect video, photos, Tweets, websites and more for your Bundles. Notes can be added to your clips if you want to draw attention to something specific.

Once you get going, you can invite other Bundlr users to collaborate on the Bundle, making group projects and teamwork simple and manageable.

Sharing Your Bundlr Work

Bundlr has made it really easy to get your Bundlr message out to the world. It’s easy to share your Bundles with the world via social media or by embedding the Bundle in a webpage. Being able to embed the Bundles could be really useful for clubs and associations to create a shareable, collaborative list of links to resources which are readily available from the club website.

For the RSS lovers, anyone can follow your personal Bundlr RSS feed or the RSS feed of any Bundle you create. So this gives options to your friends and fans of one of your many passions and the possibility of entering your Bundlr Bundles into your personal lifestream.

Exploring Bundles

You can easily find users and topics that interest you by searching for them on Bundlr. Maybe you’ll find someone who is already working on something you were planning on working on – it might be possible to collaborate on a project instead.

More Social Curation

It’s true that Bundlr is not the only social curation tool out there. Some great alternatives include Erly, virtual corkboards, photo collaboration tools, remixing tools, starting a Tumblr or using any decent social bookmarking tool such as Delicious.

What do you think Bundlr would be best used for? What Bundles will you make?

With that in mind, I typically try to be kind, and furthermore, I try to remember this wise adage that a good friend once told me – “Don’t feed the trolls.” Basically, it’s always a good option to take the high road. However, it’s fine to occasionally vent off-site, right?

So, here’s taking a look at three types of Reddit commenters that drive me up the wall.

Irrelevant Commenters

I don’t understand it, but every once in a while, a commenter will pop up out of the blue with something that only halfway relates to the Reddit post. I’m not quite sure, but this is a character that I dub the “Irrelevant Commenter”.

The Irrelevant Commenter shows up in the strangest of places, and sometimes, he’ll even venture away from Reddit onto other sites, leaving his comments that have virtually nothing to do with the link. Strangely enough, when someone responds to his totally irrelevant comment, he seems to disappear without even an explanation of his actions. But no matter where he is, he always leaves a comment that barely has anything to do with the subject that is being discussed.

You may actually link to this article that you are reading right now on Reddit, and you may even earn sweet karma for it! However, if the Irrelevant Commenter shows up, he will leave something like, “I just love MakeUseOf – particularly that American writer J. Lockhart. He looks so good in that tie!”

As you can tell, the comment is somewhat connected to the link. Unfortunately though, it provides zilch when it comes to constructively contributing to the conversation. Despite my distaste for the Irrelevant Commenter, I find him just a little more forgivable than the other two.

Grammar Nazis

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m a writer, and yes, I know quite a bit about grammar, proper spelling, and the various other twists and turns that the English language likes to take. I’m certainly not perfect with every single thing that I put on the page (to my editors, I apologize), but I’d like to think that I have passed the stage of being a novice when it comes to writing.

However, with that in mind, even I don’t have a problem with the occasional grammatical error on a Reddit post. The purpose of the site is to share information and ideas with other people – not be online masterpieces of literature. Despite my fear of the English language’s eventual demise, I can usually let it slide when it comes to Reddit (and yes, even Facebook).

Unfortunately though, for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. The action in this case is my flippant attitude towards grammar on Reddit, and the reaction is the guy that likes to pick through even the most important of posts and point out the minor grammar errors that have absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. That being said, Grammar Nazis are simply not my favorite Redditors. We’ve got better things to worry about, my friends.

Repost Hall Monitors

The Internet is full of recycled information, so what ends up on your monitor is typically going to end up on another person’s months from now. Heck, it’s even more likely that whatever is currently on your monitor was on someone else’s before even that. People come and go on Reddit, and it’s a given that users are going to repost stuff that they have just discovered.

There are quite a few folks who tend to complain whenever there’s a repost on Reddit, and for some reason, I don’t have an earthly clue as to why. Part of my curiosity stems from this question – are they on Reddit that much so that they know each and every time a link is reposted? C’mon.

Sure, you can check to see if a link has already been submitted using the site’s search function before posting. However, when the last time that same link was posted months ago, it might be okay to bring it back. Beyond that, even the creators of Reddit ask the users not complain about the reposts through the Reddiquette – the law of the land for all things Reddit.

The irony of the matter is that those who are complaining are the ones that are actually in violation of the website’s usage policies. Some of them complain that the “original posters aren’t getting the karma that they deserve”. I say that the Repost Hall Monitors are probably worrying more about the karma than the original poster.

(By the way, you may have noticed that the Reddiquette also says not to complain about complaints about reposts. Good thing we’re not on Reddit, right?)

Conclusion

These are just a few of my pet peeves about Reddit users, and I’m definitely not trying to get all “holier than thou” on you with the three mentioned. However, some people tend to take the site just a little too seriously. That’s all it is, though – a website.

What are some of your pet peeves about Reddit? What other sites have users that drive you nuts?

Fear not, because I am going to lay some Sub-Reddit knowledge on you and show the places on Reddit where the best entertainment lies. With these Reddits in my mind you will never go astray in your glorious Reddit travels. Of course, I want you to use these Sub-Reddits as a guide, and when you are ready, venture into the scary world of Reddit without me.

Reddit.com/r/funny

This the first Sub-Reddit where I start my day. There is no better way to get in a good mood then to see what kind of funny stuff the Reddit community has dug up on the Internet. You will see everything from funny jokes, to funny pictures and even some funny videos now and again. If you are looking to make your co-workers think you are crazy by laughing like a madman in your cubicle, then this is the Sub-Reddit for you.

Reddit.com/r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu

F7U12 is where the Reddit community comes to get their rage on. The only thing members are allowed to post here are rage comics. These are poorly drawn comics that tell a story about something that was particularly rage inducing. These tend to be hilarious, and often times can be just as funny as the stuff you will meet on r/funny. Not a day goes by that I don’t spend getting my rage on r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu.

Reddit.com/r/technology

I think it safe to assume that if you are here reading MakeUseOf that you are probably a tech junkie like us. If that is the case, then you need to be checking in on r/technology. It is chock full of tech news and opinions from the Reddit community. While you are looking around r/technology make sure to look at the sidebar of the Reddit for a whole bunch of more specific tech-related Sub-Reddits for your reading and learning enjoyment.

Reddit.com/r/history

For all the history buffs this is your one stop shop for knowledge. This Sub-Reddit is absolutely filled to the brim with content. Users post all kinds of fascinating articles and opinions on all things history. Just like with r/technology, make sure to check out the sidebar, because it is filled with all kinds of interesting time and place specific history Sub-Reddits like r/worldhistory, r/ushistory and r/arthistory, just to name a few of the gems.

Reddit.com/r/gamernews

Don’t be fooled into r/gaming‘s shenanigans, r/gamernews is where you come to get real relevant happenings in the gaming world. Sadly, r/gaming has degenerated into mostly just gamers posting nostalgic pictures and things of that nature, so r/gamernews stepped up and brought a hard moderated Sub-Reddit filled with only the most pertinent news from the video game world.

Reddit.com/IAmA

Here is where people come to tell their stories. A user would come and post that they are something, and ask other users to ask them anything. This usually leads to some pretty interesting questions and answers and is a great way to kill a few hours learning about something you never even knew you wanted to learn about.

Occasionally, you will even see celebrities come to Reddit and do an IAmA if the demand is high enough. Check out r/IAMAFamouseArchive to see all the celebrities who have participated in an IAmA session.

Conclusion

These Sub-Reddits should help get you pointed in the right direction, and hopefully make Reddit a less scary place for you. Remember, when you find a Sub-Reddit you enjoy, always check the sidebar, because there is usually links to some related Reddits that you may find amusing and enjoyable.

Check out these other great Reddit articles from MakeUseOf :

Five  Cool Things You Should Know About Reddit
Use Reddit Like A Boss With This Combo Package
3 Ways Reddit Can Help Those In Need

What are your favorite Sub-Reddits? Have you ever stumbled into some Sub-Reddit and wished you had never been there? Let us know in the comments!

Punchfork aggregates recipes from several of the best recipe sites and ranks each recipe according to how many times it’s been shared on social networks. This is an ideal way of ensuring you see just the best recipes on offer.

Social Aggregator Of Recipes

Sometimes a little social aggregation can really help to filter things. Not everyone has the time to sort the wheat from the chaff themselves. Especially when it comes to recipes – we just want to find something that looks good and give it a try.

Punchfork polls social networks like Twitter and Facebook to find the recipes which are being linked to by the most people. So, you’re only looking at the recipes other people have deemed worthy of sharing with their friends.

The Best Recipes In The World

Punchfork have chosen the recipe databases and food blogs well so that only the best recipes are in the pool of recipes on offer. These are then further filtered by the social ranking process to ensure you’re presented with the best recipes on offer. You’re basically browsing the best recipes in the world!

Save Your Recipes

Before you get into browsing the site, create an account with Punchfork so you can save your favourite recipes for later.

Browsing New Recipes

At the top of the page, Punchfork offers the best ways to browse the recipes. Limit your browsing to just food blogs or use recipes from all of the available food sites.

View trending recipes to check out new favourites, browse the newest recipes to find the ones which were most recently published online, or see the top rated section for the recipes most-loved over time. There’s plenty to check out!

Search By Ingredient

Just like any great recipe website, Punchfork will let you search the recipes for ingredients you happen to have on hand or wish to use. The search function will limit itself to whichever sections you are currently browsing. So, if you’re checking out new recipes only it will return results from the new recipe section.

A quick search for new Kahlua recipes from food blogs found a number of great recipes I now need to try, including Mexican fudge sauce, easy tirimisu trifles, Kahlua brownies with browned butter and much more. There’s no denying the danger of this site!

More Great Ways To Find New Recipes

At MakeUseOf we’re always finding new ways to find the best recipes. Some other great tools you might like are:

• Browse Gorgeous Recipes StumbleUpon-Style With Gojee
• 5 Fascinating Recipe Sites To Brush Up Your Culinary Skills
• 5+ Awesome Food Blogs That Will Tantalize Your Senses & Might Even Inspire You To Cook
• 7 Good Online Cooking Guides For The Beginner Cook

What other features do you look for in a recipe website? What would make Punchfork your ideal go-to recipe site? Let us know!

News360 calls itself a ‘next generation news aggregation and personalization service’. It is basically tailored for the mobile web.  In fact, it has apps which cover the iPhone, iPad, Win Phone 7, Playbook, Android, and the web. I will be focusing on the web version. Maybe, you readers can chip in with your comments for any of the aforementioned mobile platforms.

Maybe like me you too wonder how do all these news aggregators survive and flourish in the crowd of news apps. It all boils down to the aggregation mechanism and how does it rank news where every second one is ‘breaking news’.

Of course, looks matter too. That’s where we start.

The Look Speaks…

No pretty newscaster, but a visually appealing design is what strikes you about News360. It however does not take anything away from the function as a scroll down tells you all that’s happening around the world. You don’t have to squint to read the massive flood of headlines from the original news sources.

The lineup of Top News is where your eyes fall first. Next, you can take a glance on the left and filter through the news by clicking on the categories. If you like to get different views on a news item, you can click on the source (like, Associated Press) and get a tabbed display with all major networks covering the news.

The image slideshow on top enhances your reading experience. A Read Original link takes you to the source page.

The Brains Behind The Looks…

Without going into the gobbledegook of semantic analysis and natural language processing, let’s just say News360 tailors the news for you. The news gathering engine goes real-time through 700,000+ different companies, people, brands and locations (as mentioned on the technology page) and sieves the news into clusters.

If you connect your social profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, and even Evernote), then News360 analyses them, and personalizes the news according to your tastes. You can skip that and do a manual customization yourself.

Go On A News Binge…

The main goal of News360 is to give you different angles to news from different sources. You can avoid the slants and read news in depth without a major news mouth influencing you. That helps add a touch of credibility to our lopsided times.

News360 can be setup as your personal news feed by adding new categories. The new categories get loaded in your My Interests panel.

You can select from the pre-defined categories. You can also use the search bar to pick up any available sources on a specific topic. For instance, you can search for your city and pick out sources which address city specific issues. News360 searches by keyword or picks up the news feed depending on your interest.

News360 lets you sync your personal news preferences across all your devices. It also makes it easy to share interesting news topics with friends.

News360 is your own personal news portal. It does not offer the selectivity of a feed reader, but it does a capable job of grabbing relevant news for you in real time from multiple sources and also personalizing it for you using your social profiles. Do you think that News360 (beta) is a smart app that throws a lifebuoy when you are drowning in news? Let us know.