Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Absolutely del.icio.us
Although I had a brief play with del.icio.us before, I didn't really get it. A recent recommendation from a friend has given me the opportunity to reassess it, and I think I'm in love.
Unless you've been living under the proverbial rock for the whole of 2005, the site is a place where you can manage your bookmarks/favourites. You can import your own bookmarks or post new sites, then tag them with keywords of your choosing (if appropriate the site will present suggestions based on what other people have tagged that page with before). Having a central place to store your bookmarks is inherently valuable, but it's the openness of the place that is key to its success, because by default all your postings are public.
Tagging wins over hierarchical folders in a number of ways. Firstly, you can tag your site with as many keywords as you like, meaning that Penny Arcade goes naturally into 'games' and 'webcomics'. Secondly, you can quickly see what sites you've got listed under each tag by either surfing to http://del.icio.us/username/tagname, or by typing a tagname into the black-bordered box at the top of your bookmarks page. Want to see what everyone else has listed under the same tag? Just surf to http://del.icio.us/tag/tagname (so 'tag' acts as a meta-user). Finally, it opens up the notion of the collaborative web, with the ability to search for what other people have already added; sites with, say, the keywords of 'photoshop' and 'tutorial', those with 'recipe' and 'chicken', or maybe, if you're on the lookout to speed your laundry tasks, 'ninja', 'shirt' and 'folding' (no, seriously).
The whole site is fluid, thanks to AJAX behind the scenes - you get auto-complete as you're typing tags, can view your tags and bookmarks in variety of representations (including the cool tag 'cloud view'), and the interface never gets in the way. If only the owners fixed the speling mistaks on the help pages it would be perfect.
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Unless you've been living under the proverbial rock for the whole of 2005, the site is a place where you can manage your bookmarks/favourites. You can import your own bookmarks or post new sites, then tag them with keywords of your choosing (if appropriate the site will present suggestions based on what other people have tagged that page with before). Having a central place to store your bookmarks is inherently valuable, but it's the openness of the place that is key to its success, because by default all your postings are public.
Tagging wins over hierarchical folders in a number of ways. Firstly, you can tag your site with as many keywords as you like, meaning that Penny Arcade goes naturally into 'games' and 'webcomics'. Secondly, you can quickly see what sites you've got listed under each tag by either surfing to http://del.icio.us/username/tagname, or by typing a tagname into the black-bordered box at the top of your bookmarks page. Want to see what everyone else has listed under the same tag? Just surf to http://del.icio.us/tag/tagname (so 'tag' acts as a meta-user). Finally, it opens up the notion of the collaborative web, with the ability to search for what other people have already added; sites with, say, the keywords of 'photoshop' and 'tutorial', those with 'recipe' and 'chicken', or maybe, if you're on the lookout to speed your laundry tasks, 'ninja', 'shirt' and 'folding' (no, seriously).
The whole site is fluid, thanks to AJAX behind the scenes - you get auto-complete as you're typing tags, can view your tags and bookmarks in variety of representations (including the cool tag 'cloud view'), and the interface never gets in the way. If only the owners fixed the speling mistaks on the help pages it would be perfect.
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