Delicious

“Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source” (Delicious). Delicious is web hosted, so bookmarks can be retrieved from any computer at any time.

Tags

Delicious bookmarks are sorted by tags, which are keywords describing the bookmark so it can be found again through searching (Wikipedia, 2011). Basically, tagging is the layman’s cataloguing. The bonuses of tagging are that terms are usually the most common word used for a particular bookmark, rather than a technical term nobody knows of unless they have a thesaurus handy. The downside of tagging is that some people may only describe a bookmark for what they get from it, rather than for what the bookmark may be offering as a whole.
Tags can be descriptive to what the bookmark is about, or personal, depending on what an individual needs from the bookmark. For example, a student could use descriptive tags to make an item searchable for others, and also use a personal tag, such as a subject code or an assignment description, to retrieve resources used throughout a subject.
An example of a tag cloud for a delicious account appears below


Networks

Like other social networking tools, people can be added to a person’s network, where bookmarks are shared between members. Networks can be organised into groups, for a basic example, personal, professional, or study related.

Add-on

Delicious has a downloadable add-on for web browsers. This feature enables quick access to bookmarks and fast, easy tagging of websites without having to have Delicious open to achieve it. The add-on for Firefox notifies the user of any new activity in their networks, so they are aware of any new bookmarks added.

My thoughts

Delicious is a really useful bookmarking tool. Before undertaking this subject I had used it mainly just to complete a 2.0 course and a lot of the bookmarks in it were work related. I had actually forgotten I had signed up for it. I have since used it to store all websites used while researching assignment 2 and any other sites I find that may be useful throughout this subject. Many of my tags are basic, but I also have personal ones such as the subject code inf206 and ass3 for assignment specific needs.

References

Delicious. (n.d.). About. Retrieved January 29, 2011, from Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/help/about

Wikipedia. (2011, January 18). Tag (Metadata). Retrieved January 29, 2011, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_%28metadata%29