Arriving Somewhere

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking manager that is available on the web. I use it in the place of the bookmarks or favorites folder you find in browsers. Since I work and play at many different computers with several different browsers, Del.icio.us allows me to keep my bookmarks all in one place as they are accessible by the web. That is my main reason for using it.

When you post a bookmark to Del.icio.us you can give it a description and assign tags to it. These tags aren’t quite the same as categories since they are not hierarchical, rather you can assign multiple tags to an entry and use the tags to browse your collection. While the tags are handy, I use the search function more than anything. You have to be logged in to search, but it makes for a great way to locate your entries as your collection grows.

What make Del.icio.us unique is the “social” part of it’s bookmarking. It keeps track of the tags users have assigned, and allows one to browse and search the links that all users have collected. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds for just about anything on the site, including tags, people’s link collections or combinations of both.

If you’d like to see my Del.icio.us account, go here:
http://del.icio.us/jonsmith
You’ll probably notice how messy it appears at first. That’s because links are listed in reverse chronological order of when they were posted. The key is in the tags. However, I do have eclectic interests, and my account reflects that. Try looking at a particular tag, say http://del.icio.us/jonsmith/opensource.

The reason I bring all of this up is that I recently noticed the ability to group tags into headings which make for easier browsing. Especially if you, like me, have a ton of tags.