As a daily web surfer since 1998, I have encountered almost innumerable webpages, many of which I wish to record or revisit. Without a robust and scalable solution, I would not be able to easily store and retrieve online resources essential to my career and personal life. For the past four years, I have used Delicious for my web bookmarks.
I use Delicious almost exclusively for my bookmarks as it offers me superior classification flexibility compared to tree-based bookmarking systems and it offers memory aids unequaled by search engines. I previously blogged about my Delicious usage. But in short, I tend to create 75 bookmarks a month on Delicious and visit their website about 2-3 times a week. Less frequently, I also use it to aid my sharing of webpages, to connect with similar bookmarkers, and to find new information.
But it is not just the utility or social networking that has garnered such devotion in me. I was wondering why I really love Delicious, so I tried to think more consciously and reflectively of my usage for a few days.
I noticed that I bookmarked not only for future retrieval but also as a form of nostalgic memory aid. I bookmark to recall life events such as family vacations, conferences attended and experiences, such as humourous findings and my bizarre interests. My bookmarks are my version of photo album and diary.
My Delicious bookmarking also fosters a sense of control. Not only are there seemingly infinite numbers of webpages to manage, but I also have many topics my career requires me to master. Faithfully bookmarking allows me to feel that these resources and the information contained therein is within my domain, readily within my grasp.
Delicious' interface is certainly simple and their browser plug-in makes using it even simpler. But it is Delicious' functionality that hooks me by being so well-suited to allowing me to obsessively grow (over 3400 bookmarks) and control this element of my life.
Showing posts with label bookmarks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bookmarks. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Quality Ingredients Make Bookmarks Del.icio.us
It has been one year today since I started using del.icio.us. Despite extolling its virtues ever since to everyone I know, I've stirred up little interest (foolish mortals not grasping the potential of social bookmarking & folksonomies!).
Until, coincidentally, yesterday when a friend, Glenna, (even the name is a coincidence) asked me about del.icio.us (little did she know what she was begetting).
Del.icio.us is my favourite web application and I keep finding more reasons to love it - and you will too if you read on and sample it.
Del.icio.us is a free web-based bookmarking service founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003, but was bought out by Yahoo.
Rotten old style bookmarks
While I have always loved bookmarking, it has a lot of limitations when done via one’s browser. I use the web a lot at home and at work and there was no practical way to share bookmarks, nor access them on the road. Another problem is that avid surfers and information hoarders, such as myself, quickly outgrew efforts at even the best attempts at classifications schemes via folders, subfolders and subsubfolders. Also, bookmarks could only appear in one folder (unless you bookmarked the same page twice) so you had to remember your filing convention.
It's del.icio.us!
The main difference with del.icio.us is that you tag a webpage with terms that you specify. Tags are keywords related to the webpage. Getting used to tags is not hard. You only need one tag per bookmark but can have as many as you want. Not sure how to tag a page - del.icio.us gives you suggestions on what others have tagged it. That's all you need to do.
Top things you can do with del.icio.us:
Cool stuff for the bookmarker
1. Import your existing browser bookmarks
2. Buttons can be added to your browser, so it's quick to use
3. Add comments or summaries to each bookmark
4. View bookmarks in your browser via downloadable del.ico.us toolbar
5. Back-up or export your bookmarks
6. Bundle tags to organize bookmarks into meaningful groups
7. Hide your dirty little secrets via “do not share” option
8. Search your and/or others' bookmarks
9. Create separate accounts for different things (eg. work vs personal)
10. Share an account with your work team or association for easy info sharing
11. Each tag you use has a unique url, so you can link directly to it (say I want to share my findings about Internet culture, here's the link)
Cool stuff for the social networker
12. Share directly with friends using del.icio.us via one click
13. Build a network of friends and bookmarkers you admire and monitor what they're up to
14. See who else bookmarked the same obscure site, look them up, and bond
15. Add del.icio.us' Facebook application to share with your Facebook friends
Cool stuff for the website manager
16. Add a del.icio.us button or link to your page/blog to encourage people to bookmark you
17. Learn who’s bookmarking your site and what pages specifically – also see the tags your users find applicable to you, which can be a real eye opener
Cools stuff for the Internet publisher or blogger
18. Syndicate your bookmarks - your bookmarks & your tags have individual feeds built in (using RSS) so people can subscribe to the feed in their readers
19. Automate the publishing of your tag(s) using the feeds (as I'm doing with the Net News on the right)
20. Publish your work account's bookmarks on your intranet
21. Copyright your bookmarks (you own them, not Yahoo) using Creative Commons
Cool stuff for searchers & researchers
22. Find people interested in the same topic as you and check out their bookmarks
23. Add value to the web, as tags help indicate what a webpage is really about, eventually technologies will be able to use these tags to help improve search engines (ie. semantic web)
24. Create custom tags to help research and micro-organizing (in gearing up for my graduate research, I started tags for Internet_theory, Internet_history, Internet_politics, Internet_journalism, etc.)
25. Subscribe to tags of your choosing and see updates in one spot
26. Check out the homepage for what's hot and recent in the community
Other cool stuff
27. Create a tag for yourself and keep track of all the online stuff related to you (or me)
28. Get gifts you want by bookmarking your favourite stuff with the tag “wishlist” and when someone wants to know what to get you send them this link (this was del.icio.us' own tip, but its the best!)
Not so tasty
One of the biggest problems with del.icio.us is that tags have to be one word. A further limitation is that all spelling variations of the tag are counted as unique tags (so you’ll see social_bookmarking, socialbookmarking, social_bookmarks and they are all treated as separate). While it’s great to be able to use the same tags as the larger community, your tags need to be readable to you, so find a convention you find useful and stick to it (for instance, I like to capitalize proper nouns and I like multiple words separated with underscores rather than compounded). It also doesn’t handle synonyms well (eg. I want to bookmark sites to order cookies to eat and sites discussing website cookies).
There are also a lot of competitors, but none as popular. I've tried StumbleUpon but haven't got into it. Yahoo MyWeb (why they launched a competitor to their own company is beyond me) has a cool feature that let’s you store a copy of the webpage despite what seems like copyright violation.
Here’s a helpful page to begin: http://del.icio.us/help/saving
Once you're on del.icio.us, be sure to add me to your network.
Until, coincidentally, yesterday when a friend, Glenna, (even the name is a coincidence) asked me about del.icio.us (little did she know what she was begetting).
Del.icio.us is my favourite web application and I keep finding more reasons to love it - and you will too if you read on and sample it.
Del.icio.us is a free web-based bookmarking service founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003, but was bought out by Yahoo.
Rotten old style bookmarks
While I have always loved bookmarking, it has a lot of limitations when done via one’s browser. I use the web a lot at home and at work and there was no practical way to share bookmarks, nor access them on the road. Another problem is that avid surfers and information hoarders, such as myself, quickly outgrew efforts at even the best attempts at classifications schemes via folders, subfolders and subsubfolders. Also, bookmarks could only appear in one folder (unless you bookmarked the same page twice) so you had to remember your filing convention.
It's del.icio.us!
The main difference with del.icio.us is that you tag a webpage with terms that you specify. Tags are keywords related to the webpage. Getting used to tags is not hard. You only need one tag per bookmark but can have as many as you want. Not sure how to tag a page - del.icio.us gives you suggestions on what others have tagged it. That's all you need to do.
Top things you can do with del.icio.us:
Cool stuff for the bookmarker
1. Import your existing browser bookmarks
2. Buttons can be added to your browser, so it's quick to use
3. Add comments or summaries to each bookmark
4. View bookmarks in your browser via downloadable del.ico.us toolbar
5. Back-up or export your bookmarks
6. Bundle tags to organize bookmarks into meaningful groups
7. Hide your dirty little secrets via “do not share” option
8. Search your and/or others' bookmarks
9. Create separate accounts for different things (eg. work vs personal)
10. Share an account with your work team or association for easy info sharing
11. Each tag you use has a unique url, so you can link directly to it (say I want to share my findings about Internet culture, here's the link)
Cool stuff for the social networker
12. Share directly with friends using del.icio.us via one click
13. Build a network of friends and bookmarkers you admire and monitor what they're up to
14. See who else bookmarked the same obscure site, look them up, and bond
15. Add del.icio.us' Facebook application to share with your Facebook friends
Cool stuff for the website manager
16. Add a del.icio.us button or link to your page/blog to encourage people to bookmark you
17. Learn who’s bookmarking your site and what pages specifically – also see the tags your users find applicable to you, which can be a real eye opener
Cools stuff for the Internet publisher or blogger
18. Syndicate your bookmarks - your bookmarks & your tags have individual feeds built in (using RSS) so people can subscribe to the feed in their readers
19. Automate the publishing of your tag(s) using the feeds (as I'm doing with the Net News on the right)
20. Publish your work account's bookmarks on your intranet
21. Copyright your bookmarks (you own them, not Yahoo) using Creative Commons
Cool stuff for searchers & researchers
22. Find people interested in the same topic as you and check out their bookmarks
23. Add value to the web, as tags help indicate what a webpage is really about, eventually technologies will be able to use these tags to help improve search engines (ie. semantic web)
24. Create custom tags to help research and micro-organizing (in gearing up for my graduate research, I started tags for Internet_theory, Internet_history, Internet_politics, Internet_journalism, etc.)
25. Subscribe to tags of your choosing and see updates in one spot
26. Check out the homepage for what's hot and recent in the community
Other cool stuff
27. Create a tag for yourself and keep track of all the online stuff related to you (or me)
28. Get gifts you want by bookmarking your favourite stuff with the tag “wishlist” and when someone wants to know what to get you send them this link (this was del.icio.us' own tip, but its the best!)
Not so tasty
One of the biggest problems with del.icio.us is that tags have to be one word. A further limitation is that all spelling variations of the tag are counted as unique tags (so you’ll see social_bookmarking, socialbookmarking, social_bookmarks and they are all treated as separate). While it’s great to be able to use the same tags as the larger community, your tags need to be readable to you, so find a convention you find useful and stick to it (for instance, I like to capitalize proper nouns and I like multiple words separated with underscores rather than compounded). It also doesn’t handle synonyms well (eg. I want to bookmark sites to order cookies to eat and sites discussing website cookies).
There are also a lot of competitors, but none as popular. I've tried StumbleUpon but haven't got into it. Yahoo MyWeb (why they launched a competitor to their own company is beyond me) has a cool feature that let’s you store a copy of the webpage despite what seems like copyright violation.
Here’s a helpful page to begin: http://del.icio.us/help/saving
Once you're on del.icio.us, be sure to add me to your network.
Friday, March 16, 2007
1.2 readers for every blog
Last week, I read in an article, Web 2.0 - Using Blogs by Brad Einarsen that every North American blog has an average of 1.2 readers (based on study by Forrester). I’m hoping that figure does not include the blog author!
Thanks to my wife and Eden, my loyal blog readers, my blog is at least ahead of the pack.
The research shows that most blog readers are also people that write blogs. Blogs don’t get a lot of reach beyond this group.
Plus the number of blogs out there is overwhelming and disheartening. I keep finding at least one or two a day – many of which are definitely worth reading regularly and some are good, but considering my information overload, I don’t have time for.
This all lead me to feel quite discouraged about blogging, but then a faithful Webslinger reader, my wife, mentioned that there is a lot of value in blogging just to keep a record of what I’m doing and learning online. Isn’t this how blogs started – as a web diary, a.k.a web log? I think I will keep blogging as it is a useful record of my online experience and findings and if anything else comes of it (including a reader or two – or rather .2) then all the better.
However, I don’t plan to blog as frequently. Some blog entries are really just drawing attention to useful articles I read. And there isn’t a lot of value in just posting an intro to these without offering my take on it or some sort of context or analysis.
I read a lot of articles about the Internet every day and have been faithfully bookmarking ones with lasting value to my del.icio.us. I was thinking it would be great if I could share my picks and upon looking into it I found that del.icio.us makes syndicating and sharing bookmarks and tags really easy.
As such I have launched my breaking news feature, which you’ll see on the right.
Web news - picks by Glen
There are a lot of articles published about the Internet, many of which are nothing more than screen-filler. I collect the articles that discuss best-practices, trends, latest research, the evolving role of the Internet within our society and culture and of course cool and shiny new developments.
You can view the web news here or subscribe to the feed yourself.
So Webslinger may be evolving despite the discouraging statistics. And if you are a loyal reader (I can hear crickets chirping) let me know...
Thanks to my wife and Eden, my loyal blog readers, my blog is at least ahead of the pack.
The research shows that most blog readers are also people that write blogs. Blogs don’t get a lot of reach beyond this group.
Plus the number of blogs out there is overwhelming and disheartening. I keep finding at least one or two a day – many of which are definitely worth reading regularly and some are good, but considering my information overload, I don’t have time for.
This all lead me to feel quite discouraged about blogging, but then a faithful Webslinger reader, my wife, mentioned that there is a lot of value in blogging just to keep a record of what I’m doing and learning online. Isn’t this how blogs started – as a web diary, a.k.a web log? I think I will keep blogging as it is a useful record of my online experience and findings and if anything else comes of it (including a reader or two – or rather .2) then all the better.
However, I don’t plan to blog as frequently. Some blog entries are really just drawing attention to useful articles I read. And there isn’t a lot of value in just posting an intro to these without offering my take on it or some sort of context or analysis.
I read a lot of articles about the Internet every day and have been faithfully bookmarking ones with lasting value to my del.icio.us. I was thinking it would be great if I could share my picks and upon looking into it I found that del.icio.us makes syndicating and sharing bookmarks and tags really easy.
As such I have launched my breaking news feature, which you’ll see on the right.
Web news - picks by Glen
There are a lot of articles published about the Internet, many of which are nothing more than screen-filler. I collect the articles that discuss best-practices, trends, latest research, the evolving role of the Internet within our society and culture and of course cool and shiny new developments.
You can view the web news here or subscribe to the feed yourself.
So Webslinger may be evolving despite the discouraging statistics. And if you are a loyal reader (I can hear crickets chirping) let me know...
Sunday, January 14, 2007
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