Ning Tools to Organize & Share Content

RSS Ning Application
The RSS application allows you to mash and display up to five RSS feeds on your My Page profile area. The application is an excellent to aggregate news and research. Two RSS feeds to consider including for research purposes are Google Alerts and Delicious. Google Alerts, a tool that updates an RSS feed with the newest Google search results for the criteria you select. Delicious creates an RSS feed for every keyword, or tag, used to describe a Web site. Essentially, Delicious feeds can be considered a filtered or refined search based on articles and Web sites that other Delicious users have found relevant.

Tagging in Ning
Whenever a piece of content (photo, video, page, note, etc.) is added to Ning, the author can add tags. A tag is “a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information” (“Tag,” 2009). Tags help content to be located more easily through searches.

Tag (metadata). (2009). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 30, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(metadata)

Text Boxes on My Page
The Text Box tool in the My Page area for each user will allow them to embed tag clouds from Delicious social bookmarking (http://delicious.com) and many other types of content including YouTube videos, images, Word documents, and more.

Box.net Ning Application
The Box.net application allows you to upload and share all types of files in Ning. If you do not already have a Box.net account, the Ning application prompts you to register.

Google Services Ning Application
By adding the Google Services application to your My Page profile, you can integrate the benefits of myriad Google tools into your Ning network, including Search, Maps, Blogger, Gmail, and Chat.