The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Social Bookmarks Trevor Gosbell |
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Trevor Gosbell shares with us a fascinating concept. Imagine if your favourite meeting place and my favourite meeting place and every other favourite meeting place were located at the same establishment. Think of the benefits — and the fun! |
Do your favourites play favourite with only one browser? Maybe it's time you
made your bookmarks more social.
Social bookmarking, sometimes called link blogging, is a relatively new
online idea that enables you to store your bookmarks online. So you can use the
same set of bookmarks in any browser, on any computer, wherever there is an
Internet connection.
It's del.icio.us!
There are several social bookmark sites but none as popular as del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/, so I'll start there
because all of the others offer similar services.
Share Between Browsers
If you have ever transferred your allegiance from one browser to another, you'll
know that the biggest hassle is getting your bookmarks to go with you. The
problem is that once a browser has your bookmarks, it's not inclined to let them
go - especially to another browser! And the problem is compounded if, like mine
your work or play requires you to use more than one browser from time to time.
Share Between Computers
If you regularly access the Web from more than one computer, say a notebook and
a desktop or a computer at work and another at home, you will almost certainly
have experienced trouble keeping all of your bookmarks in sync.
Storing your bookmarks on del.icio.us solves both of these problems, while
adding some handy features - and here's where the social part comes in.
Share With Others
On del.icio.us, all bookmarks are shared with everyone else. The idea is that if
you find a link interesting enough to bookmark, the chances are there is someone
else out there who will too. And you are encouraged to look at bookmarks others
have made; del.icio.us enables you to look at the most recently added links and
the links that are currently popular. This can be a very effective way of
finding interesting Web sites and picking up on the current hot topics on the
Web.
You can also use RSS to syndicate your bookmarks on another site.
Ditch The Hierarchy
Being a Web technology, del.icio.us bucks hierarchy. Instead of storing your
links in a nested tree structure, social bookmarks are categorised by "tags".
Tags are simply keywords that you provide to help describe each link you
bookmark. Tags are entered as a list of single words, separated by spaces.
Provided that you use tags in a consistent way, you can return later and
retrieve all links that share a common tag or set of tags.
If you're used to the nested folder structure so familiar with browser
bookmarks, you might find this a bit hard to get used to at first. But once you
give it a try you'll see that dumping the hierarchy in favour of tags is a
powerful and effective way to organise information.
For example, here is a possible URL at del.icio.us (where USERNAME represents
your own del.icio.us username):
http://del.icio.us/USERNAME/software
This works a bit like a search with everything after USERNAME being the search
term, so this will produce a list of all your links that have the tag
"software". This is quite useful - until you get a few dozen links all with the
"software" tag, then you will need to get more specific by including more tags.
For example:
http://del.icio.us/USERNAME/software +genealogy
http://del.icio.us/USERNAME/software +antivirus
Hopefully you can see how this makes each request more specific. You can keep
piling up the tags, and order is not important. All of the following produce the
same results:
http://del.icio.us/USERNAME/software +genealogy+windows
http://del.icio.us/USERNAME/windows +software+genealogy
http://del.icio.us/USERNAME/genealogy +windows+software
Generally by about the third tag, you're getting pretty specific!
Tags Are For Sharing Too
This is social bookmarking, so you're not limited to looking up your own tags.
You can look up a tag (or set of tags) to see what other people have recently
added on the topic, simply replace your username with the keyword "tag":
http://del.icio.us/tag/windows +software+genealogy
When you leave the tags out, you get a simple list of the most recent additions.
The following will show,
respectively, a list of the links you have added most recently, and the last 100
additions to the entire system:
http://del.icio.us/USERNAME
http://del.icio.us
For the curious, I will leave
http://del.icio.us/tag
as an experiment.
OK It's del.icio.us, But What Does It Taste Like?
The visual design of del.icio.us is sparse, some might say bland, but the lack
of bells-and-whistles keeps the site as lightweight and responsive as possible.
Anyone can view the links on del.icio.us, but you need to register to add your
own links. Registration is a painless process, requiring only a username, a
password and an e-mail address.
After registering you are provided with a bookmarklet that you can place
on your browser toolbar. When you browse to a page that you want to bookmark in
del.icio.us, simply click on the bookmarklet and you'll be asked for some
information about the page (see Figure 1). The URL and page title
(description) are detected automatically, and you can add some extra commentary
(extended) and your choice of tags. Remember tags are simply words that are
meaningful to you, and you can use as many as you like, so get descriptive!
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The del.icio.us bookmarklet comes in three flavours, and I recommend either the
pop-up version (which doesn't interrupt your browsing) or the "experimental"
version (which allows you to review and select from all of your previous tags).
But Wait, There's More
It's clear that del.icio.us is a popular site because there is a flood of
third-party add-ons, most of which can be found at Absolutely Del.icio.us -
Complete Tool Collection
http://pchere.blogspot.com/2005/02/absolutely-delicious-complete-tool.html.
del.icio.us works flawlessly with Firefox and there are several Firefox
extensions to be found on the Absolutely Del.icio.us page
del.icio.us is the brainchild of Joshua Schachter and it is truly the home of
social bookmarking. If you want to give social bookmarking a try, you can't do
better than to start at del.icio.us.
Spoilt For Choice
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Maybe del.icio.us is a bit plain for your palate, maybe you want a bit of
variety - there are now several alternatives to del.icio.us: furl Furl http://www.furl.net/ has a neat and tidy portal feel to it. Registration is straightforward, and an easy to install toolbar for Firefox (furltools) is available. On the downside, response from the system seemed a bit slow and its bookmarking page (see Figure 2) asks for too much information. However, there is an upside: furl allows you to make a bulk upload of the bookmarks file from your browser, which could be a big time saver. You can also export your links out of furl in an impressive range of data formats, including XML, as a bookmark file (for Internet Explorer and the Mozilla browsers), and in several academic citation styles (e.g. APA, Chicago, and MLA). Furl is owned and operated by LookSmart. |
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Linkroll A home-grown Melbourne product, Linkroll http://linkroll.com/ has been available since about the start of the year. Registration and general usage are easy, although Linkroll uses comma-delimited tags where the normal (i.e. del.icio.us) style is to use spaces to separate tags (see Figure 3 above). The design is modern and plain, and the site loads quickly. Developer Charles Coxhead has made some interesting additions to the del.icio.us model including JavaScript syndication and the clever "peek" feature that allows you to preview the linked Web pages without leaving the Linkroll site (see Figure 4). He also has future plans to add podcasting to the services available at Linkroll. |
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OpenBM
Run by Berlin-based Peter Schink, OpenBM
http://openbm.de/ has been running since December 2004. It is another
non-nonsense social bookmark site; like del.icio.us and Linkroll, registration
is uncomplicated and the form for adding links is simple and straightforward (see
Figure 5).
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Simpy
Simpy http://www.simpy.com/ didn't impress
me much, but it is clearly in Beta testing so there is a good chance it will
improve. My main beef is with the three-page registration process, which is
tiresome compared to the simple process on most others sites.
Simpy provides the ability to upload your bookmarks file - in fact it is very
insistent and pushy about it -but it takes 24 hours for your uploaded bookmarks
to "get verified". All-in-all registering for Simpy is not a friendly experience
and doesn't encourage users to return, and its user experience offers nothing
that can't be had elsewhere for less hassle (see Figure 6).
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Spurl Spurl.net http://spurl.net/, owned and operated by a privately held company based in Iceland, is a slicker offering. The page Spurl uses to add a link (see Figure 7) includes more detail than I need, and complicates the matter by having both categories and tags. It's trickier to setup than del.icio.us - for IE windows, you must download and run an installation program, which seems a bit excessive. Spurl looks more polished than del.icio.us and the server seems just as responsive. In a smart marketing move, users of Spurl who also have a del.icio.us account can have the links they make at Spurl automatically posted to del.icio.us as well. Using its database of links, Spurl has branched out into search engine territory with Zniff.com http://www.zniff.com/ - Google it ain't, but the links it presents seem to be useful and are guaranteed to be vetted by real live people. |
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| Tag Tips The value of tags is enhanced by using them consistently and extensively. Here’s three rules of thumb I use for tags on del.icio.us: • use redundant tags For example, for a link to an online computer manual I might include the tags “book”, “manual”, and “reference”. There’s no penalty for over describing things and when I come back later I don’t have to worry about which specific word I used. • don’t use plurals for tags It can be confusing to remember whether I put something down under “book” or “books” and these are separate tags that won’t match for each other. It is far easier to use the singular form for all tags. For pages that include more than one book, I might use an extra tag like “list” or “collection” to indicate that. There is an exception to this rule — where a tag is a proper noun that is usually in the plural form; for example, it makes no sense at all to put “window” when I mean “windows”. • use tags that make sense to you My list of links is primarily for my use — sure, others will also see my links as I add them, but as far as my list is concerned that’s just a side-effect. So I use whatever tags make sense to me. |
Reprinted from the April 2005 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
