Okay – I was chatting to my friend PaulZag online last night and he asked whether I use the social bookmarking system del.icio.us. I had actually looked at it briefly, but with so much else on my plate at the moment, my response was:
I looked at del.icio.us … yet another web system of questionable value was my analysis unless you can convince me it’s worth the effort ?
PaulZag promised he’d post some links to some screencasts showing how del.icio.us works – apparently it is something not many people just “get” first up – you really have to see it in action to appreciate the value. Look at the links to some screencasts PaulZag posted on his blog : forget favorites, beyond bookmarks, try del.icio.us – actually very interesting and help to put some context around the process.
It actually makes a lot more sense now – I admit I had only looked at the del.icio.us site very briefly, and hadn’t had a chance to fully digest the power of the system. Given my current inclination to start providing more context to the information I work with, the del.icio.us system should actually add some value here. The sheer volume of information I deal with on a daily basis becomes unmanagable without good tools. Tagging – adding context, can help manage the information much more effectively. del.icio.us simply does the same job of managing a context meta system – but for bookmarks … for links to web information.
My current website management tool is my Firefox browser bookmarks toolbar. I have a nested structure of favourites folders that I use to categorise the links I want to refer to again in the future, and it goes some way to providing an easy-to-navigate system for locating information again.
Where this system of mine breaks down (and it does), is when I am in “full research mode” … this is where I’m trying to come up to speed on a topic very quickly, and I typically surf several hundred web pages reading, cross referencing, and learning. What typically happens is that I end up with a folder on that topic I’m researching that is full of dozens and dozens of links – that really don’t help you to find a specific bit of information that quickly. Once again, information overload floods a single-level categorisation system – and this is something that tagging those pages with more context would help with.
I think I’ll give it a go.
I have the same problem with bookmarks when I’m trying to research something fast – lots and lots of bookmarks with no context beyond the folder name.
My bookmarks now only contain links for sites I visit somewhat regularly.
Thanks for the writeup and I look forward to reading your blinklist comparison.
Thanks Mike – I’ll have a look into it and a play.
I’ve just spent some time this morning playing with del.icio.us – moving some of my bookmarks in and tagging them. I note that you have an import mechanism to blinklist – smart move!
I might try blinklist and compare the two services for myself.
Hope it goes well for you – there can never be too much innovation !
Since you plan on giving social bookmarking a go, I thought you might like to try out http://www.blinklist.com, a new personal and social bookmarking engine that we just developed. We tried to add some significant improvements over del.icio.us to make it work better for hundreds and hundreds of links but I will let he customer be the judge. If you don’t feel like checking it out, I understand. However, I hope that we are more than yet another web system of questionable value. If you check it out, I would love to hear from you. Mike