For those of my friends and associates who have been asking me questions about how to get started on Memestreams (and for anyone else who finds this of use), here's the four-step QuickStart:

 (1) Create a Memestreams account
 (2) Create a "Recommend" button on your browser Links bar
 (3) Recommend something
 (4) Check how it looks by going to your own Memestreams page

Here's more info on each of the above:

 (1) Create a Memestreams account by clicking on "Create an Account" on the lefthand toolbar (or go here: http://www.memestreams.net/registration/ )

 (2) This is the trickiest part: Add a "Recommend" button to your browser. Depending on which web browser you use, you can probably do this by dragging the "Recommend" link from the following page to your Links bar. Go to this page, find the "Recommend" hyperlink, click, hold, and drag up to your Links bar to have it automatically make the button for you:
 http://www.memestreams.net/introduction.thml

If you don't see a Links bar or have a nonstandard browser, read the instructions on the above page, or ask for help. Email/IM me and I'll walk you through it.

 (3) Recommend a link as follows:

    (a) Go to a URL that you find of interest (a news story or favorite website)
    (b) (optional) Highlight a couple sentences on the page, as some type of reference quote
    (c) Click on the new "Recommend" button you have (if you're blocking popups, you may need to hold down the CTRL key too).
    (d) A popup box will appear with info already filled in such as your quoted text, the page's URL, title, a category dropdown menu, and a text box. You can add in any additional comments that you want to, and click on "Submit"

 (4) That's it! If you want to check how your link showed up, go to your Memestreams page at http://www.memestreams.net/users/YOURACCOUNTNAME to see what it looks like. If you don't like how it looks, you can always click on "Edit" at the bottom of the link, to change it.

After you've recommended a few links, you can start playing with more advanced features such as tweaking categories, reviewing/replying to threads, recommending other people's links, and diddling the "Reputation Agent" to get it to recommend other links to you that you may find interesting. To start though, the above 4 steps should get you up and running!

Let me know if you have any questions,

Elonka :)

Memestreams QuickStart