mumdinger: Moms Choose The News

Check out mumdinger.

I have to laugh because my son absolutely hates that we’ve launched a ‘digg clone’ – but he doesn’t get the point of creating a resource for a niche.  I’m not trying to be like Digg.  I’m just providing a way to let Moms Choose The News.

This came about yesterday when I was reading the first week feedback survey results over at Mom’s Morning Show.  A listener said that she’d like to hear us cover interesting news.

I’d like to cover interesting news, but how do I find the interesting news that would be of distinct interest to moms?

Hey…. that give me an idea!

And mumdinger was born.

We’re using Pligg, which is open source and very smooth and easy to use.  I couldn’t believe how easy it was for me to install and tweak for use.  To be honest, I haven’t scraped the surface of what it is capable of – but I was able to get it up and running without a hitch and that says a lot.

So, what is mumdinger?

It’s a Web 2.0 application that lets moms submit news stories, blog posts, podcasts, videos and shopping finds.

To use it, you register, submit items and vote on other items.

New stories go into the ‘upcoming news’ area to be viewed and voted on by other users.

If a story gets at least five votes, it moves to the main page.  Stories with more votes rank higher on the main page.

If you don’t like what someone else has posted, you can ‘bury’ it which is like giving it a virtual thumbs down.  So you can bury things that look like spam.

You can also comment on items that are posted, adding your two cents.

I have configured it to be link friendly so items posted do get a real link back rather than a crummy redirect link.

All in all, it’s fun and a great way to share items of interest.

And, best of all, Tishia and I will be choosing top rated stories to talk about on Mom’s Morning Show.