Digg review

There’s an old adage that says the further you open the window, the more crap flies in. That pearl of wisdom is especially true of the internet, which is literally packed with billions of pieces of content, most of which are totally pointless.

That’s why Digg was created; if you haven’t heard of it before, it’s a site where people can recommend items on the web – “digg” them, if you will – and then share that with other users.

The concept is that any link which is deemed worthy of praise will be “dugg” by other users and therefore will gain more recognition while those which aren’t worth bothering with can be given the thumbs-down by readers and be bumped down the rankings.

This gloriously righteous brand of net-based democracy is now available via a dedicated iPhone application which allows you to sample the best the web has to offer via the recommendations of other surfers.

The app is divided into three main sections: Top, Recent and Upcoming. The first choice shows the most popular – or most “dugg” – stories while Recent displays more up-to-date links.

Upcoming is for brand-new stories which have just been submitted; these are given a certain amount of time to gain traction and if they fail to receive the appropriate number of diggs then they get bumped from the list.

These three sections can be applied to either Digg in its entirety or to various sub-sections, such as Technology, Gaming, Sports or Lifestyle.

Tapping a link will take you to the page in question, which is displayed with Digg’s own browser. From here you can decide on whether or not you wish to give the story the all-important thumbs-up or thumbs-down, or you can choose to save it as one of your personal favourite links.

As well as seeing what the Digg rank of the story is you can view the comments which other users have left, which usually range from “This is awesome” to “This sucks”. Hardly what you’d deem enlightening but there can be some rare moments of wisdom in there, too.

In order to cast your vote or leave a comment you first have to sign-in to Digg itself. If you don’t already have an account you can register one via the app itself. There’s even a dedicated page which allows you to input your Facebook and Twitter account details so you can quickly and easily post links to those services. You can also share them via email.

As you might expect from an app produced by Digg itself, this piece of software is slick and good-looking. The menu system is clean and initiative and the developers have done a good job of ensuring that it retains the same visual themes of the full-blown Digg site.

If you’re sick of having so much content thrown at you on a daily basis and only want to sample the cream of the internet crop, then Digg is near-essential.

Being able to separate the good from the bad on your PC was impressive enough but this portable version – complete with seamless integration with Facebook and Twitter – is just the icing on the cake.

It could be argued that Digg for iPhone doesn’t offer anything that can’t already be obtained by visiting the site in your phone’s browser, but this offers a more streamlined approach and is a much better option.

Digg info

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Platform: Apple iPhone

Cost: Free

Version: 1.0

Developer: Digg

Website/Demo: Digg website

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