Delicious is Delicious

So, it didn't take long following cool people on Twitter to be to be inundated with numerous links to awesome stuff. Being the teacher that I am, my first instinct was to save them somewhere safe in case later I had the urge to share or revisit. Out of habit, I pulled down the bookmark menu and before I could even slide down to "add bookmark" I was struck by the chaos of my list. There were random links for kayak storage racks, algebra worksheets, and poems I had considered for my wedding. Yikes. Cleaning up this mess was going to be a major undertaking.

The next day on Twitter, someone randomly posted about Delicious.com which I vaguely remembered from MACUL (but didn't really retain it because I wasn't ready for it to be meaningful). Delicious is a web based bookmarking site (talk about good timing!). The one huge advantage I saw was the ability to access my bookmarks from ANY computer with internet access. Long gone were the days of having to re-find links at school!!!

So, it was a tedious day (like any cleaning project), but what a sense of peace at the end. I purged outdated materials, created my common "tags" and started labeling. Tags are definitely superior to folders because I can attach multiple tags to a website as needed. As a finishing touch, I marked my favorite tags to be displayed across the top of my browser for easy access.

I am slowly beginning to discover that there is more to Delicious than meets the eye. For example, I can:
1.) see how many other people have also bookmarked the same page (quality check)
2.) import pertinent bookmark lists from people I respect by adding them to my network**
3.) subscribe to popular bookmarks for a specific tag**
4.) send and receive bookmarks with other people**

**Frankly, even though I think these are great features that I will really appreciate one day, I got distracted by another web 2.0 application and haven't really given these a fair shake.