Two Minute Offense

Just check it out. I don’t have time, nor is there really a need, for more of a review than this: Clipmarks is Awesome.

Yahoo has essentially eliminated the biggest competition for their My Web 2.0 by acquiring del.icio.us. I’m glad I switched over from del.icio.us to My Web a couple months ago. Why? Now I don’t have to deal with any weird integration going on between the two like I did with Flickr! The funniest part - at least for me - is that I have a draft post waiting here called “My Web 2.0 vs. del.icio.us” Now I guess I can delete that one…

Another post about the acquisition on TechCrunch.

Despite the fact that Yahoo’s “honchos” kind of came off as assholes in last night’s Apprentice, I have to applaud them for stepping up their game just when it seemed that Google was poised to take over the world. Nothing like rooting for the “underdog.”

del.icio.us: tags for two

We’ve just begun rolling out support for tagging items for others. To do so, use “for:username” where username is the name of the user you want to send the item to.

You can see items tagged for you at http://del.icio.us/for/ (it’ll redirect to your own page, which other users will not be able to see.)

Hello awesomeness! I’m a little hesitant to put my username on here, cause you could easily start spamming people with this one… But I guess a little nelsoc wouldn’t hurt anyone. It’s not like a mailto: link or anything…

This tip is for somewhat advanced users (and people who are trying to cut down on the amount of time they spend going through their RSS feeds). That’s just a warning, but don’t let it discourage you from reading on…

There are three types of subscription services you can utilize at del.icio.us (for me at least).

The first is what I’ll call “category” subscriptions. This is where you subscribe to something like http://del.icio.us/tag/productivity. This will give you all the web sites/pages that people bookmark and tag with productivity. That’s one that I subscribe to (cause I’m sure you hadn’t already figured that out).

The second type is “user” subscriptions. This is something along the lines of: http://del.icio.us/tag/devilishgrin. (These are real examples, people) I tend to think of this as slightly more “drilled down” than the category subscriptions since I keep an eye out for when users bookmark a lot of pages in a category to which I subscribe. From there, I’ll check out their page (like mine: http://del.icio.us/nelsoc. I used to use http://del.icio.us/new/nelsoc, but they’ve taken that away from me… Bring back the tag clouds!)

The third (and obviously final) type is “user category” subscriptions. This is what I try to use the most since it limits the amount of “crap” you have to sort through. Once again, learn by example: http://del.icio.us/tag/worldbfree/basketball. In case you are in need of an explanation: here I’ve noticed worldbfree posting things that interested me, so I subscribed to his feed. However, his interests, while as diverse as mine, do not exactly reflect mine (which is probably a good thing). So, instead of looking at all the things he chooses to bookmark, I’ve taken (in this example) only the things he categorizes as basketball sites/pages. Now, I don’t go around subscribing to just anyone’s del.icio.us feeds, so worldbfree should feel very special indeed. Of course, I’m the only one on BlogLines who’s actually subscribed to his feeds… but then, I’m the only one on BlogLines who’s subscribed to my feeds… and I don’t know where I’m going with this…

To recap:

First: Subscribe to categories
Second: Find users within the categories
Third: Find categories within the users within the categories

I wouldn’t recommend expanding the other way too often. The point for me is to cut back on the amount of time I spend in my feed reader, so adding users and/or categories is something I do very judiciously.

.: UNEASYsilence :. - How-to: Quicklaunch Applications/Files/Del.icio.us on Windows

Using AppRocket, we can now quickly locate, launch, or search for files on our Windows computers. I’ve found this especially handy for browsing Del.icio.us bookmarks.

If you were not already aware, I discovered the beauty, simplicity, and all-around wonderfulness of AppRocket before this post. The evidence is in the link to it from the sidebar. It’s over there. Now, go download before reading any further. Seriously, it’s awesome. I paid the $18 for it, and I have not been more happy with a purchase since I bought www.givemetherock.com.

Everybody with a blog and a PC should be jockin’ AppRocket like an NBA pundit on Dwyane Wade. Or a productivity blogger on David Allen.

The del.icio.us idea presented by UneasySilence is good enough that I went and downloaded Foxylicious so I could make it happen. I haven’t tried ActiveWords, which is what David Allen recommends, but AppRocket seems just as good, if not better. And for the frugal gourmet, it’s also cheaper. Either way, though, you need one of them…

You can make it - make it happen!

Maybe you subscribe to some del.icio.us feeds in your RSS reader. Probably means you have a del.icio.us account… Is it a one sided fence? Certainly not. Would there be the RSS feeds if other people didn’t have an account? No… because you’d be the only one tagging anything. So, there are people who have an account, and there are people who subscribe to the RSS feeds. Now, since a lot of the people reading the RSS feeds also have an account, let me help you help those people - the ones on the other side of the fence. Your del.icio.us neighbors, if you will.

Tag Appropriately

I’m not sure where ohskylab comes from thinking that How to avoid crying when chopping onions goes under the gtd tag. I’m perfectly fine with that going under cooking, food, lifehacks (since it was posted on lifehacker), and onions. The tag gtd for most “sane” people means Getting Things Done. Now, no offense to my friend ohskylab, but how does knowing how to not cry when cutting an onion help me Get Things Done? Do I get to move on to the Next Action faster because I don’t have to wipe me eyes after cutting up the onion? I guess so… And I guess I also increase my Mind Like Water state since all that saline stays in my head instead of coming out through my tear ducts. If you think the gtd is okay, then let’s move on. If you agree with me that it’s a bit overkill, you can skip down to the next headline.

Still there? Good, then you’re ready to look at food. Now, an onion is definitely food. On the surface, we’re Good2Go. But does knowing how to cut an onion belong in food when it’s also under cooking? If so, then nearly every cooking post could would also be tagged as food, and that makes the food tag kind of redundant, no? Speaking of redundant… if an onion is food, does it really need to be tagged as onions? Is there every going to be a time when you tag something as onions, but not food? There is The Onion… but I don’t think that would get tagged as the plural “onions” but rather the singular “onion” or perhaps even “theOnion.”

Which leads unceremoniously to my next point…

Reduce Overtagging

How Many Tags Do You People Have?? ONIONS? You have a tag for ONYUNS?? For Cry Pete! I’m not sure who ohskylab is, but he/she’s got 16.5 pages (on 1400x1050 resolution) of tags! That’s a {expletive} ton of tags. I like to use my del.icio.us account as a time-saving device, as opposed to a time-wasting device. I still do a horrendous job of saving things (I save way too much stuff that I will most likely never look at again), but I consciously try to keep the number of tags I have low to reduce the amount of time I have to spend looking through tags to remember what I tagged something as. (On a related note, you can search your del.icio.us bookmarks. Related like brother and sister, it is.)

Tag What You Need

Once again lacking all ceremony: My Next Point… Once you read how to cut out the bottom of an onion before cutting apart the rest of it, do you really need to save the page? Chances are, if someone is subscribed to the lifehacks tag at del.icio.us, they’re also subscribed to lifehacker.com and lifehacks.org and lifehackmetopieces.co.uk as well. They’re going to find the same information you are, and they’re never going to really need to look at it again either. Until they go senile. Which will probably be when computers (or else onions) have been advanced to the point where they’re nothing like anything we currently have anyway.

Summary

1. Tag Appropriately - don’t stick square pegs in round holes just because the holes are bigger than the squares
2. Reduce Overtagging - if you have more than about 2 screens of tags, that’s probably more than you really need. “Your focus determines your reality.”
3. Tag What You Need - are you really going to look at it again?

I am certainly going to examine the tagging process again… just you wait. Until then, Look Now Look Again.