Claire's Alternate Version of Reality

Communicating with del.icio.us

You know you're not blogging enough when other people blog your stories. Of course, that's a rather negative view, isn't it? I suppose the more positive perspective is that you know your stories are interesting when other people blog your stories. :-)

Here's my story. I presented on OpenSolaris to an IT exec from an Australian University last month. During the conversation, I decided to pull up del.icio.us (yes, my favorite social bookmarking service) to show the exec the growing library of bookmarked information that has been tagged with 'OpenSolaris' at del.icio.us/tag/opensolaris. Why? Whenever I talk about OpenSolaris, I try to do two things:

1. Draw a crystal clear picture of how the OpenSolaris Project will benefit whoever I'm talking to.
2. Outline ways in which they can participate in the community.

One way to participate in OpenSolaris is to share information about OpenSolaris happenings. Which you can do quite easily with del.icio.us. Your bookmarks are public. You can annotate a bookmark with a compelling one-liner that explains why a bookmark might deserve a click. (Thlinking, James calls this.) And you can tag your bookmarks for e-z sorting and viewing along with other similarly tagged bookmarks from other users. I've discovered all sorts of valuable stories and ideas tagged with OpenSolaris by looking here on a regular basis.

So, during the preso, I clicked over to look at the OpenSolaris bookmarks on del.icio.us, and lo and behold, one of the most recent bookmarks included a note from Stephen O'Grady to me and a few others. He knows I keep an eye on his del.icio.us bookmarks, so it was an easy and effective way for him to pass along a suggestion. (It turns out that Glynn Foster had already responded to the item in question, so I didn't need to weigh in as Stephen had suggested.) The point? O'Grady put it well: "it's a quick, easy way to collaborate in a more permanent fashion than email."

Here's what my Australian customer saw:

Screenshot of del.icio.us

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag: del.icio.us

(2005-11-09 22:59:43.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Comments:

Hi Claire,

I also thinks that its a nice way to search the web, that is, if you make the assumption that
if someone else bookmarked it then it is possibly worth looking at.

Using firefox's keyword bookmarks makes it very handy.
eg) create a bookmark in firefox to the url:

http://del.icio.us/tag/%s

Now specify a keyword in the properties of that bookmark, I use the keyword "del".
Now you can type
del foo
in the firefox location bar and get the bookmarks tagged with foo.

Note that the "tag page" also offers an rss feed. This is good, as you can bookmark the feed
(using firefox live bookmarks)to see the newest items.

Now, back to collaboration. Suppose I want to share a message with you regarding a bookmark,
rather than you having to see all of my bookmarks or relying on luck of seeing my note to you
in the list for any old tag, I specify your username as a tag for my bookmark.

You susbscribe to the feed, for the tag with your username.
Now I have a way, via an RSS feed for that tag, to get messages(bookmarks really) from other users
specifically for me!

If I want to find out who sent it I just go to the page del.icio.us/tags/myusername

Adding your own username to the description it will appear in the RSS Feed heading
allowing you to easily see who bookmarked it to/for you.

Nothing really new about any of this its just the way you can or do use the tools that
makes things interesting. With cool tools like firefox and del.icio.us all sorts of idea's
spring to mind...

Posted by shaun on November 10, 2005 at 07:35 PM PST #