I have my latest bookmarks saved as a message to this blog. It’s done overnight so that it’s not intrusive to people. I find it really handy for my own purposes when I need to quickly backtrack to find a recent bookmark. The process goes like this…
- I find an interesting web resource;
- I click the Diigo extension in my browser;
- I find a descriptor from the resource or create my own, including tags for later retrieval;
- Throughout the day as I find interesting resources I repeat the process;
- After each resource has been bookmarked to Diigo, I have it then copied to Delicious using Diigo’s utility;
- In the middle of the night, Delicious posts a nice summary to the blog.
Circuitous, perhaps, but it’s a technique that works for me. I am so grateful to Diigo and Delicious for providing these services for free. Both services have changed my way of thinking about bookmarks and social sharing. I started with Delicious where I built a nice network of followers and people I follow. I moved to Diigo where I have another nice collection of connections. At this point, I’m loathe to give up either. Both are great services and, for the most part, have served me well. Delicious goes back to 2007.
As I checked the list this morning, I noticed that there was one link that I just knew I had bookmarked late last night while watching football that wasn’t there. I checked Diigo and it was indeed there. I checked Delicious and it wasn’t. Odd. What was even more odd was that the layout of Delicious had changed! I guess I knew (and we all knew) that Delicious would change now that Yahoo! had cut them loose. I just found out that today was the day!
Like any brand new service, I poked around. This time, it wasn’t totally new as many of the features that had always been at Delicious were there – only in different places. And, some things were just not there at all. Hmmm. I flipped over to Twitter and the natives were already stamping their feet. I wasn’t ready to join them just yet, after all this was Day 1. I’m sure that there were monumental things happening in the design of a new interface and the migration of data. Surely, we can cut them some slack!
Things that I noted missing at this point were the nice big collection of tags that I’d accumulated over the years, the ability to see people who were following me (although I could see the people who I currently follow), and a whack of things that would normally be under settings. Things like configuring the post to my blog, which the former Delicious had always noted as being experimental although it generally did a good job.
So, it was back to my links. The layout here is new and modern looking. You have the ability to delete and share and, of course, go back in and edit a link. Crucial to any bookmarking scheme is the ability to filter by tags and that works nicely even though the tag didn’t appear in the list on the side. It’s comforting to know that they’re still there and functional.
The big new thing in store for Delicious users is the ability to create stacks. A stack is a collection of URLs that you put together under a label. I decided to create my own to give it a shot. I searched within my own collection for a few Computer Science links and put together this stack.
The process was very easy and you’re looking at the grid view. You’ll notice that there are other views available plus the built-in ability to send notice of the stack to others. I tested that out and an email with a link to the stack along with some description does the deep. Unfortunately, the notice doesn’t come from me but rather from the support account at avos.com. That could be open to abuse. I think I would share by sending that notice to myself and then forwarding from my own email account so that people would know that it came from me. The stack is now available by going to my Delicious page. The stack itself is pretty attractive – I like that Delicious goes out and snags a thumbnail from the site. Your stacks get displayed nicely once created.
Overall, there is a real sense that Delicious has made efforts to modernize the interface. The familiar blue, black, and white is there and and remains consistent throughout. For a Day 1, they seem to be off to a good start. I notice that the links that I’m saving on Diigo are not being passed along to Delicious at this time. I read on Twitter that Diigo has indicated that they are aware of this. I’m thinking that the API may be disabled or changed at this time.
Using Delicious as the default search engine within Google Chrome still works nicely. You’ll need to use the new Bookmarklet to post directly to your account from the browser. The existing extension doesn’t seem to work at this point. However, as I write this post the bookmarklet is giving a 502 Gateway error but I’m sure I just caught them at a bad moment.
It will be interesting to see if there are more to the new Delicious that gets rolled out over the next couple of days. My routine as outlined at the top is indeed broken at this point. I’ve reactivated Diigo posting to the blog so that I don’t miss anything. We’ll see. Share on.
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