My Social Bookmarks: Delicious, Notebook, etc.

[Vineetha]

This course has been very exciting for me so far, even with my limited participation. Last week I learned some good stuff about social networking sites I was already using, but not to their full potential.

This week is about social bookmarking. I haven’t been big on sharing my bookmarks. Apart from the browser bookmarks, I’ve been using Google Bookmarks and Notebook from the Google toolbar on my browser to clip and organize my bookmarks. I use only my browser bookmarks for personal sites, such as banks. I use Notebook to clip and add notes to articles and blogs I find interesting or useful, and have also published them as posts on my blogs. Notebook also allows you to add links, clippings and notes to your bookmarks. You can create a “notebook” with a group of related or daily links, add your comments, and then publish it as a post to your blog or share it as an individual Web page. So, it can work as a social bookmark but not exactly in the way delicious or diigo does.

Since Delicious is the focus of this course, I decided to set up an account and try using it. And I quite like it. It is similar and different to Notebook in quite a few ways. Both allow you to add tags and comments to links and share them with your network. The way you group and share the links is different. While anything you add to delicious is instantly shared on the public domain unless you specifically select the option to not do so, with Notebook, you have to specifically share each Notebook by publishing it and then maybe invite people to see it. But, with Notebook, I can invite others to collaborate. Instead of me just putting up my views about a particular topic or link, I can ask others to share what they think as well. So, we can probably use this as a collaborative tool for maybe a research project, a study, a book review, and so on.

Paradoxically, I like the openness of Delicious and the privacy of Notebook. I’ll use Delicious to just quickly share links with the world in general and my network in particular (when I build one). I’ll use Notebook when I find stuff that I find interesting but may not necessarily want to share, or when I find an article I need time to reflect and comment upon in depth. Notebook won’t force me to think up my notes and reflections immediately. I can take my time to think, write, and then post.

I also tried Diigo briefly, but it gave me so much trouble with IE (we use it at work) that I stopped almost as soon as I started using it. From Melanie’s forum, I can see how useful Diigo can be in a learning environment. Maybe, when I want to implement social bookmarking as a learning/teaching strategy, I’ll consider Diigo more seriously.

Something that bothers me about all the different Web 2.0 tools is remembering all the different user names and passwords. There is open ID now, but it’s not as widely supported as I’d like it to be. Maybe that’s why I’m such a fan of Google and its products. I only need one login and I can use all its tools. The fact that Google has an answer most of your Web 2.0 needs is obviously another plus point.

[Vineetha]

Thanks for writing Michele.
I do try to use the same user name and password for all sites and tools. I also save the user names for the tools I use most often and I'm perpetually logged in to Google. But, I still feel it would be nice to have a common login to multiple sites instead of having to create/register new usernames for every new tool I try.
I agree that the networks on Delicious can be a very good resource. I'm definitely looking forward to building a strong network for myself.

[Michele Martin]

Hi Vinnie--thanks for sharing your experiences in using Delicious, Diigo, etc.

RE: the multiple log-ins issue--I use the same username and password for all of my Web 2.0 tools and then prompt my browser to remember the log-ins so I don't have to log in and out. I use Firefox, though, so not sure if saving log-ins is in IE or not. At a minimum, using the same username and password helps me get over trying to remember multiple options. :-)

Also, a huge part of using Delicious for me is the network option. I've made sure to identify good people for my network and they save me HUGE amounts of time and energy in finding great resources. I have a few who should be in a bookmarking hall of fame for their capacity to consistently find wonderful info. Although I like the ease of use of Delicious, probably it's greater value to me is as a "peer generated search engine" as someone in one of the Forums called the network sharing on Delicious.