Become a Del.icio.us Power User
November 1st, 2007 (6:43pm) Judi Sohn 36 Comments
By Chris Poteet
As a web developer how we retain, organize, and use information is a high priority. One web application that has revolutionized the way I retain information is del.icio.us.
I originally used it just to save the occasional link. I realized that it’s much more than that.
Here are a few power tips to make the most of the social bookmarking application.
Tag, Tag, and Tag Some More. Tagging your links is one of the most important things you can do. Tagging gives semantic value to your bookmarks, and it also helps make retrieving your bookmarks a painless process. Remember to use tags that are as specific as possible. If you wanted to tag Web Worker Daily you would do well to use: freelancing, tutorials, webdesign, contracting, and collaboration. All of those tags associate the site with its content and make it easily retrievable.
Power Tip: Create a “review” tag so information doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, and be sure to occasionally review those links.
Bundle Your Tags. One feature I see a lot of del.icio.us users missing out on is bundling tags. It helps to provide taxonomy to your folksonomy. I find it invaluable to see the semantic relationship between the tags at a glance.
Power Tip: Don’t use more than a handful of bundles, and try to keep a 1-1 bundle/tag arrangement.
Use the Browser Add-on. Del.icio.us has official browser add-ons for both Internet Explorer and Firefox, or you can use their bookmarklets. This is a great way to instantly add your bookmarks while getting tag suggestions (preventing using both “plugin” and “plugins” as tags), suggested tags from other users, and you can easily search and organize your bookmarks inside a browser sidebar.
Power Tip: If you have more than one del.icio.us account (like I do) then login to each on in each browser, or you can download another add-on for the same browser.
Prune the Plant. For those in horticulture, you know that you have to prune the dead twigs of the plant so the living twigs can flourish. This also applies to knowledge management. Take a few moments to review your links occasionally to ensure that they are still relevant. You can add more tags as time goes on to improve organization.
Power Tip: You can also use the Fresh del.icio.us application to check for broken links in your repository.
Build Your Network. Although del.icio.us isn’t primarily aimed at social networking, it does help a lot to learn of other sites by “connecting” with other del.icio.us users that share your interests. You can also share links with other users with the for:[username] tag. I put all my RSS feeds together from the site using Yahoo! Pipes, and you can use it as a model to build a single feed.
Power Tip: Be prudent in the amount of RSS feeds you subscribe to so as to avoid RSS overload.
Use Subscriptions to Find More Links. You can also subscribe at a tag level and see when anyone adds that tag to a bookmark. It’s a great way to see how the community is using content you’re interested in.
Power Tip: Subscribing to one tag can get overwhelming so try and combine them to narrow your results (i.e. design+css).
Some Final Tips
When you search for tags you can narrow down tags by using the “+” sign. For instance, search your bookmarks for freelance+webdesign and find your link to Web Worker Daily.
Check out the absolutely del.icio.us collection for more application built on the del.icio.us API.
Share your links on your blog using a plugin such as these for WordPress, and/or you can set up del.icio.us to post links to your blog as posts through the del.icio.us admin panel.
Chris Poteet is a web application developer under his company name, Siolon. Add him to your del.icio.us network here.
36 Comments Post your own comment
Jobbertown Media says: November 1st, 2007 11:41pm
Thanks for useful explanation about Del.icio.us This information is good reading for everyone that is new to the Del.icio.us ways.
Archaeogeek says: November 2nd, 2007 2:17am
Thanks for the heads up about Fresh delicious. I had been using dead.ilicious (sp?) on the mac, but this works better for me. Also, I second the point about pruning- I have tags called _TODO and _TOREAD, where I mainly store interesting posts from my rss feeds for future reading, but they can grow out of control and most of the posts cease to be relevant. I am now trying to get into the habit of going through these tags as part of my weekly GTD review.
Andy says: November 2nd, 2007 2:51am
ARCHAEOGEEK: Good point about GTD integration.
I have todo and toread (and totest, toinstall, tofix, toupdate) which I have exported as RSS feeds for free moments, but I should be using a GTD approach. I have the GTDInbox extension for GMail which also uses tags to classify actions, projects and resources. I’ll try and figure out a good fit between the two.
Vishal Sharma says: November 2nd, 2007 5:46am
Frankly what you have mentioned is nothing new or mind shattering i presume most of us are using these tips already. Del.icio.us has become a good research tool because not only it gives me what i need but tells me the link is being bookmarked by others which is a good indication that the x or y link is popular or not. Google doesn’t tell u the ranking like that.
Its a very handy tool :-)
Good work from yahoo by buying this service.
Chris Poteet says: November 2nd, 2007 6:06am
@Vishal: If nothing in there is a new then you are a power user leveraging the power of the platform.
share.websitemagazine.com says: November 2nd, 2007 6:36am
Become a Del.icio.us Power User
As a web developer how we retain, organize, and use information is a high priority. One web application that has revolutionized the way I retain information is del.icio.us.
moekerr says: November 2nd, 2007 8:44am
I’ve just started with del.icio.us and found this a great how-to. Thanks.
DJ Inphinity says: November 2nd, 2007 10:01am
I don’t understand what the benefits of becoming a power user is… -_-
Tom says: November 2nd, 2007 10:52am
I posted a slightly similar post a while back on smart ways (IMHO) to tag in del.icio.us:
http://technorants.blogspot.com/2006/02/using-tags-effectively-in-delicious.html
Chris Coyier says: November 2nd, 2007 11:31am
Del.icio.us can be cool to use for a group of people too, just give everyone the same login/password and you can tag and share links among yourselves easily.
NetStrider says: November 2nd, 2007 11:52am
Thank you for this report. It is helpful. Some comments are:
1. Tags are critical, but as you can see from my site (NetStrider), the lack of any standard system is not as helpful as otherwise. Our language is rich with synonyms.
2. Also tag concepts are sometimes better described as two or more words. What I use to do was combine two words with an underscore (see some of my tags). Again, not as useful if there was a better way.
3. del.icio.us tech guys should devise a variance measure that indicates the range of anyone’s bookmarks. For example, I have some bookmarks that many others also saved, but a few that no others saved. One index for each del.icio.us member.
4. Seems like it would it be useful to access a list of (a) the most saved and (b) least saved bookmarks. Can that be created?
5. I still do not understand bundling. How about a few different cogent examples.
6. I list my tags alphabetically because I believe that it is more useful that way.
7. I believe that the descriptive text under the title and before the tags is the most important part of any bookmark. I have evolved a system of providing a description that will allow anyone to understand if they would be interested or not. The description for most bookmarks I read is not helpful.
Again, great tool but the next step is making it more useful.
Regards, George
Ozh says: November 2nd, 2007 2:03pm
Wow. I scrolled all the way down to check the date, I thought “wtf some old entry from 2005 is back from its burried archive!”.
What’s next ? An article on the benefits of having a blog ? :)
Nxqd3051990 says: November 2nd, 2007 6:21pm
I know the nice tricks : Del.icio.us’s keyword.
When you add new bookmark, you won’t see it :) . Use del.icio.us extension, show your bookmark list then right click on any bookmark. You’ll see keyword. Ex: I add my fav forum a keyword : neowin.
Go to your address bar, type “neowin” enter > It’s automatically changed to http://www.neowin.com/forum :)
I hope you like it :p
nXqd
Vaibhav Pandey-->Technofriends Team says: November 2nd, 2007 9:08pm
Interesting post. The idea of pulling the feeds using Yahoo Pipes was interesting.
Cheers
Vaibhav
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Mike says: November 3rd, 2007 11:29pm
Here is how I became a power user.
I use http://www.BlinkList.com
It allows me to: star my favorite links and tag and build an easy QuickStart page that is my on-ramp to the net.
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Tim Haughton says: November 6th, 2007 1:11am
+1 - good post.
I’ve been quite a late comer to del.icio.us, but I’m continually impressed at how it changes the way I work (for the better).
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Labudometr says: November 26th, 2007 2:49pm
“Tag, Tag, and Tag Some More…”
Good advice, but it is not suitable for all.
For those who have no time or desire for smart tagging, but like simple and useful del.icio.us interface, there is the deliGoo - del.icio.us fulltext search plugin.
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gbdpro says: January 18th, 2008 9:23pm
Great article, I’ve heard a lot about del.icio.us but never taken the time to check it out, but now I think I will make the time.
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OracleTube.com says: February 13th, 2008 4:36am
thanks a nice list. Cheers,
Praveen.