Tuesday, 6 September 2011

Thing 12 - Social bookmarking tools

As I've so many Things still to explore, and not much time to explore them in, I decided I would just try out one of the social bookmarking tools on offer. I plumped for Delicious, as it seems to be the most popular, and the one I'd heard of! It's a great idea. I'm a heavy user of my browser's 'favourites' facility, so to be able to have a favourites menu that transcends individual PCs and browsers is great!

I wanted to import all of my current favourites into Delicious but, despite trying to follow the instructions on the site, I just couldn't get it to work (I stalled each time at the point of selecting the file to export, repeatedly being told to "enter a valid file name"...). This is a shame, but I think I'll go back to it when I have more time, as I definitely feel it's worthwhile.

I'm really not that excited about the social side of Delicious. I'm not saying that I don't care what other people think generally, but in this context, as with Pushnote, it just doesn't appeal to me to share! I'm concerned with Delicious as a tool for organising and recording, rather than sharing. I do acknowledge that I'd almost certainly come across some useful links if I spent some time browsing the bookmarks of like-minded (either professionally or personally) users, but instinctively I would rather get my tip-offs from other sources.

P.S. It's annoying that there's no standardised tagging language. Commas? Spaces? - it's frustrating when you forget what the rules are for the site you're on!

P.P.S. In preparation for Thing 16, Flickr, I've finally worked out how to use flikr photos on my blog. Here's a ridiculous photo of an orange acting as a bookmark. I know it's only extremely tenuously linked to this post (it's a bookmark, it's delicious), but it might make a few librarians (perhaps my longsuffering colleague?) gasp in horror at the very idea of fruit in such close proximity to a book, and that's always fun!

Orange bookmark, by Jaqian

3 comments:

Becky said...

Tenuous link? That is the best accompanying photo idea I've seen in ages. It would only be more delicious if you were using David Tennant as a bookmark. Sigh.

Aidan Baker said...

In my mis-spent teens I used to eat oranges over books to make them look lived in.

Jenny said...

Aidan - I'm horrified and delighted in equal measure!

Becky - I totally agree re David Tennant. I saw him in Much ado about nothing in London a couple of weeks ago. He was fab, and so cute!