Tagrolls are a handy way to display your del.icio.us tags as part of your website making it easy for yourself or anyone else to browse your bookmarks by topic tags. There are several customizations which can be done to display your tagroll using the del.icio.us service including specifying the order, size, and color of the tags. Using these customizations a lot of additional information about your tagging habits can be conveyed in a visual way. When creating my own tag cloud, I choose to use colors and sizes that would display additional information about my tags - a large font and a hot color (red) for my most popular tags and a smaller font with a cooler color (blue) for the less popular ones. I ended up with the following two tag clouds:
When displayed as a tagcloud sorted by frequency, you get a nice looking gradient that not only looks cool but that says a lot about my tagging preferences. When displayed as a tagcloud sorted alphabetically, you get a more ordered listing with “hotspots?��Ǩ�� representing the most popular tags. The alphabetically listing conveys the most information since it provides two ways to scan (alphabetical listing and visual clues to frequency) whereas the tagcloud sorted by frequency only allows for browsing by frequency, something which is enforced twice in this organization. Although I like how the gradient looks visually in the transition from hot to cool, I choose to go with the alphabetical ordering, as it is the easiest way to scan a list of information and the “hotspots”, given their color and size, provide a visually attractive and effective way to identify the most popular tags.
Originally published December 12, 2005 in the Amy@MEdTech blog.
Great article that contains some handy tagging tips and information on how to use some of the more obscure del.icio.us features such as the inbox. Well worth a read for both the beginner and experienced del.icio.us user.
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Originally published December 12, 2005 in the Amy@MEdTech blog.
I just came across two great resources which can help you make the most of social bookmarking with del.icio.us. The first is a fantastifc article The Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users from Slacker Magazine. This article has some great tagging tips and also explains how to use some of del.icio.us more obscure features such as the inbox. All in all, a helpful read with plenty of useful tricks for both the beginner and experienced user. The second resource is Absolutely Del.icio.us, an extremely comprehensive list of del.icio.us tools. The list covers anything that you’ve every wanted to do with del.icio.us and more from how to search, post, and view bookmarks as well as how to integrate del.icio.us into your site and with other applications.
Originally published December 12, 2005 in the Amy@MEdTech blog.
I’m happy to report that today Yahoo announced that they have acquired del.icio.us, my absolute favourite social bookmarking service. I think that this will be a great boost for del.icio.us and was a very smart buy on Yahoo’s part. Not only can we expect faster access times to del.icio.us due to the added Yahoo server power, but I think that there is a tremendous potential for integration between Yahoo’s existing services especially in regards to tagging. How cool would it be to share tags between your bookmarks, blogs and pictures?
Thanks to the Social Software Weblog for being the first of my feeds to report the great news.
Originally published December 9, 2005 in the Amy@MEdTech blog.
I’m writing this post from the blogging interface of Flock, a new Mozilla-based web browser which integrates social software technologies like blogging, RSS, Flickr and del.icio.us right into the browser interface. Not only can you write blog posts directly from the browser, but you can use the browser to post and view your del.icio.us bookmarks as well as read your RSS feeds.   Although you can do some of these things in Firefox using Bookmarklets and their RSS subscription feature, the added features and seamless integration that Flock provides makes these technologies that much easier to use.
Originally published October 21, 2005 in the Amy@MEdTech blog.
The MEdTech Bookmark Manager is a tool which allows users to store bookmarks online, tag them, and share them with others. Not only are bookmarks stored in one easy to access place, but this application allows users to rate and comment on bookmarks, as well as choose to keep them private or share them with others. The bookmark manager was especially designed for medical students and faculty at Queen’s and contains several features not found in traditional social bookmarking applications, such as a thumbnail screen shot of the page you are bookmarking and the ability to rate your bookmarks and share these ratings with others.
The bookmark manager is accessible to all staff and faculty of the School of Medicine that have a MEdTech account. To begin using, simply log on to the MEdTech Bookmark Manager and begin adding bookmarks. For more information on how to import existing bookmarks from your browser and how to customize the bookmark manager visit the About page.
Originally published October 18, 2005 in the Amy@MEdTech blog.
I’ve been using del.icio.us for several months now as a way to catalogue all of my bookmarks. So far so good, although I find myself yearning for some additional features, such as ratings, notes, and the ability to export the bookmarks. Then along came de.lirio.us, an open-source knockoff of del.icio.us that would allow me to make my own social bookmarking application with the features I wanted. Despite my best efforts I’ve found it nearly impossible to get the required Perl modules up and running, mostly due to my innate aversion to Perl and a set of very ambiguous installation instructions.
So, I’m very happy to report that today I found a much more elegant and sophisticated solution done in PHP/mySQL called Scuttle. Not only did it take less that 10 minutes to install (which is nothing compared to the hours spent trying to understand the cryptic Rubric installation instructions), it’s also has a much nicer GUI than the del.icio.us-style interface of de.lirio.us, and it’s got a handy import feature so that all my del.irio.us bookmarks were in the system in no time. Scuttle can be downloaded from Sourceforge here.
My Scuttle bookmarks can be found here, and previews of my own implementation of Scuttle will be coming soon.
Originally published June 8, 2005 in the Amy@MEdTech blog.
