HW4 social bookmarking is delicious

Ok, social bookmarking. Peter played with Diigo so I went with Delicious. I didn’t mind this. I quite like the idea of having all my links available where ever I am. Having had to reformat my laptop more than once (stupid vista) I have long kept my bookmarks listed in an email. Tedious yes, but using Firefox I can open all links and then mass save the open taps to my bookmarks. Ok, so sorting them alphabetically might take a little longer, but I can appreciate that not everyone needs to go that far in their organisation.

So, a little bit about Delicious. They belong to yahoo. They allow you to save and sort bookmarks that are of interest to you, and give you the option to share these sites with others. There’s nothing worse than finding a really interesting site, and then not being able to remember how you got there, or being able to find it again. With its use of tags you can bookmark anything of interest, and find it again no matter how long it has been or which computer you are on. In a world full of net cafes and backpackers this is a blessing. It is not without its danger. With tags you can find related sites that others have linked to. As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I love a good tangent. If you’ve ever talked to me for a reasonable amount of time you will know that in any one conversation we can go from one extreme to another. I may know how all the topics are linked, but it may make no sense to who I’m talking to. Even typing I have been known to go off on tangents. This is a perfect example.

With that in mind I can easily see how you could become lost following the links supplied by other people’s tags. Nice if you have all the time in the world. Not so good if you have places to be, assignments to do, a pie in the oven ... you get the idea.

It is easy to use once you install the software. I run Firefox and it installed quickly. The support page advises that the software will also run with Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. Bookmarking is essentially the same. There are the options of adding tags when bookmarking sites in Firefox, so the option to do so with Delicious is not unusual. From a social point of view you can now share your bookmarks with your friends, and even total strangers.

I couldn’t figure out how to get all my Firefox bookmarks directly into Delicious, so had to add them one at a time. I stopped at 47. There was probably an easier way, but I couldn’t find it. As an option to add new links as I go along I can definitely see myself continuing to using this. I’ll probably still bookmark things using Firefox as well. Old habits die hard.