CommonBits: Ten Ways to use CommonTimes

1. Keep up with the latest news throughout the day.

Bookmark CommonTimes or drag the link to your browser bar to visit our front page regularly throughout the day for the latest news stories suggested by our community of readers.

2. Share what you’re reading on the Web with other CommonTimes readers.

As you browse the Web, click the Add to CommonTimes link (which you should drag to your browser bar for easy access) to post stories to our site. If you often read stories via Bloglines, you can add stories directly to CommonTimes from your Bloglines account. Read more about that here.

3. Create a channel with your favorite news clippings and share it with your friends.

As you add stories to CommonTimes, they are added to your channel – which acts as a folder of news clippings. You can share your channel with your friends, the address is always http://www.commontimes.org/channel/<membername>. You can also share an RSS version of your channel with friends or from your blog. The address is http://www.commontimes.org/rss/channel/<membername>.

4. Follow our most popular stories

Follow the most popular stories on CommonTimes here or add the feed to your RSS reader. This will help you discover stories that you might not have found without the help of the community.

5. Follow news from a specific section or topic with our RSS feeds.

Each of our sections and topics have an RSS feed which you can monitor from your RSS reader of choice. If you are new to using RSS feeds, we have a helpful how to guide. The RSS feeds for our sections and topics are as follows: http://www.commontimes.org/rss/tag/<section or topic>

6. Share news stories with your colleagues, friends or affinity organizations

Create or join one of our communities and you'll be able to see what stories people within your group are widely reading. For example, if you're a Northwest Environmentalist, this community page will show you stories that environmentalists in the Pacific Northwest feel are most important. You can create a community based on any affiliation or group. Communities are a great way for colleagues in a specific field to follow the news together, helping each other find stories that are most relevant to them. Visit here for more information.

7. Remix the News to you're own liking

If you're a software developer with a knowledge of XML, you can use our REST APIs to rework the data from our site into other applications. If you are a designer with XSL experience, you can build your own design for the front page news section - or for your own channel of news clips. Read more here.

8. Share interesting stories with friends via email.

If you see a story on our site that interests you, click the email or tell a friend link to send a copy of the link to your friends.

9. Share your thoughts with other users on the news of the day.

When you browse our site by section or topic, you can post comments on any story that will be visible to other readers. Just click post a comment from any story headline.

10. Put headlines from your channel or our sections and topics on your Web site or blog.

Services such as Feed to Javascript will generate HTML for you to add to your Web site to automatically display the latest headlines from your channel, our sections or any topic that you choose. Just provide the RSS feed of your channel, section or topic to their site to generate the appropriate HTML.

And now there are two additional ways to use CommonTimes:

11. Share your expertise of specific topics with other readers.

If you have a special interest or knowledge in specific subjects such as real estate or stem cell research, you can become a wonderful resource for our community by regularly posting stories in areas of your expertise with topic tags that reflect the subject matter e.g. real-estate or stem-cell-research. You can share the stories you submit with friends or colleagues either by sharing your channel address or the topic address. You can also share the RSS feeds of your channel or your topic. The address for these pages and feeds are described above in #3 and #5.

12. Share knowledge of your geographical region with other readers.

If you regularly post stories about your own city, state or country, you can create a valuable resource for other community members. Just provide the city, state or country name as topics when posting your stories e.g. Seattle or Nebraska or Canada. You can share the stories that you submit with the address of the topic: http://www.commontimes.org/tag/<area>. And you can also share the RSS feeds.

We also have a few other very exciting ideas which we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

You can follow news about CommonMedia and all of our sites with this RSS feed of our blog.

Please share your thoughts, comments and feedback below. If there is anything we left out or did not explain well, please let us know. You can also email us.