Original Signal started out as a one page aggregator for Web 2.0 blogs less than a month ago and has now expanded to having pages for Buzz, Jobs, Digg, Gadgets and Tech. If you are looking to have the internet world at your fingertip that clicks on your mouse then Original Signal is just the site for you.  I personally love it and even more so now with the added pages.

For those unfamiliar with what an aggregator is put simply it is a service that compiles information published by different sources and organizes it together under a common interface.  Original Signal compiles information from the RSS feeds of many of today’s popular blogs and sites for each category. If you are interested in the world of Web 2.0, Original Signal has the most popular and infuential blogs from TechCrunch to the Programmable Web as well as the feed from the Museum of Modern Betas.  These are sites where I gleen a great deal of my links published on my blog. 

A nice feature of Orginal Signal is when you roll over a title it displays a pop up with what the article is about.  There is no need to click on the link and have to open it either in a frame like other aggregators do or in a new window which is now outdated.  If you do click on the title it opens the article on its website in a new window so you don’t lose your place on Original Signal.  Once you have read an article the title turns a lighter shade of gray.  I find this helpful for when I check back at a later time I know what are new articles and which ones I have read.

You are able to change the order of the sites so that the ones you find more interesting are at the top of the page and readily accessible.  If you want to view articles by date rather than site then you can click on an icon and voila, it’s done.  Then, when you roll over a title it shows the name of the site along with the first few lines of the article. You can subscribe to the Original Signal’s feed if you are using a feed reader or put Original Signal on your website.

My only criticism of Original Signal is that the icons used for options don’t display what they are when you roll over them.  At this point it just says icon and it would be an easy change to say what the icon does, especially for those who are not all that tech savvy.  Other than that, this is a perfect site, not only in the information it delivers but also in it’s design.   Each page is nicely color coded and the text of an article is easy to read even though it is a colored font.

And, that is my confession for today.

Ellen

tags: Original Signal, tech, web 2.0, gadgets, digg, buzz