Better Know a GeoCommons Feature – Atom Feeds

One of the great parts of working GeoCommons is seeing all the interesting datasets people upload. We have everything from Afghanistan Polling Stations to Collegiate Quidditch Teams in Texas. Daily I look through for interesting information to post on either our Facebook Group or on the GeoCommons Twitter account.

One feature that makes it easier for me to track what new maps and datasets are uploaded is the Atom Feeds feature. When you perform a search there is a link on the right hand side to link to the Atom feed. Since I want to see every dataset and every map that is made I search on ‘%’. You might have a specific interest though such as “water” or a country such as “Haiti“. Once you performed a search you like copy the Atom Feed link. You can now past this into your favorite RSS reader.

You can for example add this to Google Reader.

You can also add the link directly to your browser for example in Firefox as a Live Bookmark.

Atom feeds makes it easy to monitor new data you are interested in as it is upload into GeoCommons.