Jul
13
Del.icio.us – Store and Share Your Bookmarks from Your Browser
Filed Under Firefox, add-ons, bookmarks, del.icio.us, episode, how-to, screencast, sharing, social, tutorial | Leave a Comment
Episode 9 -
Anyone who has lost their bookmarks from a computer crash or accidental deletion knows the pain of losing those “blazed trails” on the Internet. Bookmarks help us keep our bearings in the very big world that is the Internet. So, it makes sense that we should not only back them up, but use them to their fullest in today’s web world.Welcome to the world of social bookmarking.You’ve probably heard of “Del.icio.us” and wondered what it was and whether it could be useful for you.
“First, you can get to your bookmarks from anywhere, no matter whether you’re at home, at work, in a library, or on a friend’s computer.
Second, you can share your bookmarks publicly, so your friends, coworkers, and other people can view them for reference, amusement, collaboration, or anything else. (Note that you can also mark bookmarks on del.icio.us as private — only viewable by you — if you like.)
Third, you can find other people on del.icio.us who have interesting bookmarks and add their links to your own collection. Everyone on del.icio.us chooses to save their bookmarks for a reason. You have access to the links that everyone wants to remember. You can see whether two people have chosen to remember a link, or whether it was useful enough for a thousand people to remember — which may help you find things that are useful for you, too.” – Del.icio.us
This method of bookmark-management is quickly becoming the defacto/preferred method for millions of people. Del.icio.us has already provided extensive information in getting set up with your browser (however, I’ll show you a quick visual of the sign up process on the video) so we will move on to the different things you can do with it once you’re ready to go:
Del.icio.us Registration (this will get you set up with an account, browser buttons, and import your bookmarks -if you want-)
Del.icio.us’ Help Page (great information source)
Also, watch the video to see how I prefer to situate Del.icio.us in Firefox (I prefer to use Firefox’s Quickbar and hide Del.icio.us).
What Now?
So, let’s talk about some of the practical uses for Del.icio.us. I will be using the Firefox version for this article, but the IE version is similar.
Tagging a new site:
From now on, when you want to bookmark a site, you will use the tag button.
- URL: Shows the current address.
- Name: The clickable name that will show up in Del.icio.us and in your bookmarks.
- Notes: Good for communicating the nature of this page to others or simply to remind yourself why you liked it.
- Tags: Important! Separated with commas, you can use these keywords to help yourself and others locate this bookmark later.
- Do Not Share: If you check this box, you are the only Del.icio.us user that can access/search this bookmark. Good for private links.
To sort and browse through the bookmarks you have tagged, just click the . More on using this tool can be found here.
Using Del.icio.us to Find New Sites
This is, perhaps the most important function of Del.icio.us, in my opinion. It pulls everyone’s non-private tags, notes, and links together to create a user-based search engine. It won’t replace Google for most types of research but it is perfectly suited for discovering popular sites.
Method 1:
Go to Del.icio.us and type something into the search bar at the top (or just use the quick search in firefox).
I typed in “learn italian” and these were my results:
The “Best” Match is the bookmark that has the best combination of relevance, recency, and number of saves (others who have bookmarked this site).
Further down the list, however, I see a page that has 1,790 saves. While it may not be the “Best” match, it’s probably worth checking out because so many people considered it worth bookmarking.
In this case, it seems that the numbers were right. The BBC site is very cool. The LearnItalianPod “Best” Match was also cool, though.
It’s usually worth checking at least both the “Best” Match and the result with the most saves.
Method 2:
If you simply go to Del.icio.us, on the front page you can see the hottest pages. These pages are recent and have been rapidly accumulating saves, so it’s a good “buzz” board.
To the right of the “hotlist” you can see some of the tags that are experiencing unusual activity:
On both the “hotlist” and the “tags to watch” areas, simply click one of the tags to get instant results for just that topic. Here’s what I got after clicking “gtd” (“get things done”):
This is a great way to discover new and useful sites or pages on the net.
Sharing Your Links With Others:
Although all your non-private links are shared with everyone already, I’m assuming you might like to specifically share some links with friends or family. Here are the two most common ways to share your links.
Go to Del.icio.us and click “your bookmarks” to see all of your bookmarks. You can link someone there simply by copying the address at the top of your browser. For instance, mine is http://del.icio.us/justaleaf. Anyone can view this page and see my non-private bookmarks.
If you’d rather link someone to a specific set of links, just click the tag that contains those links (ie: “design”) and copy the new address instead. http://del.icio.us/JustaLeaf/design <— the tag is appended to the address.
Whether you are on a account page or looking at a specific tag in that account, you can also add it to your RSS reader (or your friends could) which will alert you whenever new links are added to this list.
Beyond This
Del.icio.us is a very powerful service and there are many, many, ways to utilize it. You can have your links dynamically display on your blog or website, streamline del.icio.us (adventurous only!), view cloud views of your bookmarks, and more. You can also make the interface easier on the eyes, as in the screenshots above, by using this greasemonkey script.
Stay tuned for my next article and video episode. For more tips and tricks, sign up for the Official Tech-Bites.com Newsletter! You will be the first to know whenever I release new articles and videos and receive special subscriber only articles and product reviews.
