Delicious is just that!

I started using delicious earlier this year when I was asked to teach a class here on social bookmarking and RSS. I'd heard of it before but had never taken the time to explore what it could do. I found I not only really liked the way you can keep your bookmarks with you, but also the opportunity to explore the bookmarks of others who share your interests. I tagged a few blogs that I read frequently via RSS and then explored other users who had also tagged them. Some really interesting discoveries came out of that.

I think the idea of tagging bookmarks makes sense, epecially if your collection grows beyond what one finds in a browser favorites file. It makes searching much easier, though you have to really think how you tag things. You can't call everything 'work' and then expect to immediately locate an article from 6 months ago. You have to really think what an article means to you and how you might search in the future. Of course, by not seeing everything as nested files right in front of you, if you haven't been dilligent about tagging you could misplace something.

I've already covered how I uncovered some new sites, including Esquire's Best Bar list which I found as a popular bookmark one day as I browsed. A link a found via another's tags was Alex Reisner's Road Trip '06 photo blog - really a beautiful site.

The biggest advantages?

• It's portable, allowing you to access sites from wherever you are without having to remember addresses.
• It loads fast so there isn't a wait
• It's popular so there's lots to explore

The biggest weaknesses?

• I'm so used to relying on my favorites and browser-based bookmarks that I forget to use it. I don't know how many times I have racked my brain for a website address when I could have just tagged it in delicious and been done with it.
  
• I'm not all that consistent with my tagging. I don't have too many bookmarks yet, but I worry that my lack of organization will bite me in the ass some day.
  

I do think I can use this at work. We often have to move from computer to computer for work or reference duty. Delicious would solve the issue of different machines. We also plan to continue to teach a class on the topic so the incentive is there to explore further. I just have to remember that it's there!