Thursday, May 24, 2007

“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” Mitchell Kapor


Sticking with the subject of Web 2.0 I would like to talk about one my favorite websites. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. What does this mean? If I come across something I like I bookmark it. Now I see a lot of websites in an average day but the vast majority of them I will never see again. Only the ones I save will I revisit. The problem is that those bookmarks are only on one machine. So if I go home and want to check something that is bookmarked I have to do a search for it. Del.icio.us helps with this situation. Instead of saving your bookmarks to your machine you save them to the site and you can access them from anywhere. Now the Web 2.0 aspect of this is that for every bookmark you save you also tag it with keywords that would help yourself and others find it. Then you can look through other people's bookmarks by searching the tags. As an example I need a good website for a student about digital photos so I search using the keyword photo. I come across site after site of what other people think is important concerning photos. Also I can read their notes that may tell me how to use the site or why to use it. I have come across more useful sites that I use and blog about then I can name. Now understand that this means you are going to come across everything that people bookmark meaning items from the G rated to X rated. It seems the vast majority falls around PG-13. If a search engine has failed you give it a try.

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