Someone wrote this guide to del.icio.us on The Screen Savers. Should help 😊 Dont forget to add Gear Live to your list :D :
Possibly the last website you’ll ever need…
Okay, here it is: http://del.icio.us
Now, after looking at a long page full of links, you’re probably wondering what the heck you’re looking at.
This is going to be a long article. But I promise you, if you’re a web addict, this is going to change the way you use the web for a long, long time. Trust me… keep reading. And I’m going to apologize now for a preponderance of exclamation marks, but I’m excited and you should be too!
Here’s a brief explanation of what del.icio.us is: At its heart, it’s a bookmarking website. You register for free, then use a bookmarklet (basically a bookmark that opens a pop-up window) to add sites to your list of web-based bookmarks.
So, you’re probably thinking, “Hey, that’s pretty neat! I can take my bookmarks/favorites with me from one computer to another, regardless of platform or browser, just by visiting my del.icio.us page.” And that, by itself, would make del.icio.us pretty handy! You see something cool (at home, at work, at school), you add it to your del.icio.us bookmarks, and you’ll never lose it. But there’s so much more… READ ON!
Adding bookmarks is easy. Just drag the bookmarklet that they give you to your browser’s bookmarks bar to add the shortcut for your account. Then, when you’re on a site you want to bookmark, just click that button and most of the info you need will already be filled out inside the pop-up that appears (as long as you’re logged into your del.icio.us account, that is).
Now, you just need to assign categories to each bookmark that you add. I like to assign multiple categories to help myself AND to help others (I’ll explain that bit in a second).
Here comes the payoff…
Any bookmarks that you add will be added to the front page of del.icio.us, too! So, with all those users, that front page fills up pretty fast and things start dropping off the bottom of the page. But those links don’t disappear forever. You can see them again. And this is the BEST PART!
Now, pay attention: del.icio.us has been described as Google in reverse because of what I’m about to tell you. Here’s how you can be the first person to spot something amazing on the web. Here’s what makes del.icio.us so cool!
Cool Thing #1: See the most popular things being posted for the day. A constant source of awesome links. Basically, your finger on the pulse of the web!
Cool Thing #2: By using the syntax del.icio.us/tag/category, you can search for links that other people (including you) have posted with that assigned category. So, if I want to see all the latest links that have been posted about Apple stuff, I can check out apple, or mac, or osx. I think you get the picture. There aren’t any spaces in categories and they’re not case sensitive, so TSS is the same as tag/tss. That’s why it’s tag/osx and not tag/os x.
Cool Thing #3: If you see a link you like and want to see who else posted that link to their bookmarks, click the link that says “and X other people.” Now you know who also posted that link AND you can see the other links they posted by clicking on their username. So you can see everyone else’s bookmarks! If someone posted a link to a cool site that you like, maybe they posted more great links.
Cool Thing #4: You can get RSS feeds for the bookmarks of other users whose links you like. So you’ll know instantly when that person posts another link. Or, you can get an RSS feed for a specific category and see it updated with fresh links throughout the day!
Here’s my del.icio.us page, named for one of my favorite directors because I hate coming up with usernames. You can call your del.icio.us account whatever you want. I don’t have that many bookmarks because I mostly use del.icio.us to browse other people’s links.
Although your bookmarks won’t fade away, the tag/category pages only hold the last few hundred posts under that category. This will at least ensure that the links will be fresh, relevant, and timely.
Here’s some starting points for you. If you use your imagination, you’ll probably think of hundreds of other categories you can check out.
del.icio.us/tag/geek
del.icio.us/tag/cool
del.icio.us/tag/awesome
del.icio.us/tag/funny
del.icio.us/tag/mod
del.icio.us/tag/tech
del.icio.us/tag/xp
del.icio.us/tag/pc
del.icio.us/tag/apple
del.icio.us/tag/weird
del.icio.us/tag/movies
Also, there are links on the right hand side for the most popular categories at the moment. They are a good jumping off point, too.
I want to hear what categories you’re searching under… post them in the comments!
You probably know that I work on G4TechTV’s The Screen Savers, and one of my responsibilities is to come up with pitches (segment ideas) for our show. You may have even seen a couple of my posts wind up as segments on our show (XP vs. OS X, Kingdom of Loathing, Fat Fingers, Paul Slocum who makes Atari 2600 games). It’s actually lots of fun to come up with segment ideas, but it’s REALLY HARD to find things that other people haven’t. So I get a huge kick out of finding things before anyone else (and it helps me do my job) and del.icio.us helps me do that. Now my best kept secret is out.
