Chances are you’ve been to some social bookmarking site in the previous two or three years. The idea seemed to come out of nowhere and change the way many of us interact with the web. Before sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit or DZone I honestly can’t remember how I found half the stuff out there. Forums played a greater role, as did Slashdot, but there’s more to these than link aggregators and trackers of what’s hot.
For years now Del.icio.us has been my top bookmarking source for all personal links. This especially helps because I use 3 computers (laptop, desktop and work) on any given day, and in all cases I’ll have access to what I’m interested in. Most the time I don’t return to things right away, but as a quick way to save things for reading later on, i can work as getting things done kind of list. Plan to read a page later? Tag it with todo: read, and remove the tag when it’s off your list. for things like event planning where you might be accumulating a few links on a similar subject. There are other services already using tags for specific purposes out there as well. If you tag a link as wishlist, it’ll show up on your Delishlist — a delicious wishlist lite. There’s a lot of uses for niche organization out there. Anyone have any similar uses?
One of my top uses has been for organizing sites and services I use for setting up a computer. The prime example is for Firefox extensions you want to install on each computer you use. To setup a new PC i just jump to Firefox Extensions and go down the list. The same could be done for common apps as well
Links here can be made public or private too. One use for this I’ve found is to store all the common links I keep on my bookmarks folder. I can just drag these up to a new browser or PC. You can also create local links, such as “//server/progams/firefox.exe”, then quickly get all the programs you want installed. Can’t say I’ve used the local links feature, but I can see some uses for it — especially if you have multiple computers.
I’m lucky enough to have a tech savvy girlfriend who also uses Del.icio.us, so we take advantage of the “for:username” tag. Adding this as a tag will add that link to that users “Links for you Menu”. Honestly I wish more people used this, as it would make sharing links a lot easier. Being able to share a link for a specific person easily is one of my favorite features by far.
I have to admit though, I still haven’t fully embraced the new del.icio.us extension. It offers quite a lot though. It comes with a way to browse your bookmarks and drill down by tag in a sidebar. You also have the ability to use the delicious bookmarks bar. Imagine your bookmarks bar, but instead of folders there would be tags, with everything tagged in there. It makes it possible to have access to a huge amount of centrally stored links presented. I prefer to minimize my links though, so this method isn’t for me, instead opting for managing everything through the website. The old del.icio.us extension is simply a link to bookmark the current page and a link to your delicious bookmarks. Very straightforward. If you’re wanting to take another step towards organizing these, there are also a number of Greasemonkey Scripts you can take advantage of. The height of organization though is organizing your tags into bundles, groupings of tags. The nicety of bundles is that once common tags are setup, you don’t have to worry about getting into the fine details of organizing bookmarks as long as you stay to your conventions.
Having all your links in one place gives you a great feeling. I would absolutely love it if more people used it just for the ability to share links and have them shared with me more easily. If you’re using Del.icio.us, feel free to add me.
