Tagging is simply Delicious

First cab off the rank is Delicious. The ultimate tagging machine with great network facilitation and now with a brand new look and feel. Initially took a bit of getting used to, but now find it a strong mainstay in the bookmarking arena.

Setting up Delicious is relatively simple with the standard registration and login screen – but STOP - are you ready? Don’t rush headlong into things – now is the time to apply some thought. If you are really ready to embark on the voyage of web discovery then it is important to review your current – and future web presence – your online identity. Remember that the user name/screen name/avatar that you create will (hopefully) be with you wherever you go. Networking contacts, friends and fellow bloggers alike will be instantly recognize who you are…it also helps to remember all those passwords (unless of course you have installed Sxipper to your Firefox toolset!)

Thus, with screen name and password in hand…walk on

What are the benefits of Delicious?

• Simple, clean and effective
• Great toolbar buttons
• Great functionality
• Minimal skill set required to tag
• Great sharing facility
• Effective place to start tagging

What do I do now?

• Import Bookmarks
  • During registration you will have the option to import all of your bookmarks.
  • This is a useful starting point and confers the opportunity to weed out those poorly bookmarked sites and re-rationalize your bookmarking experience
• Create a simple and easy to remember ‘baseline’ tag structure
  • Very easy to just tag randomly with words that come flying into your head – but stop, think and try to spatially compartmentalize your tags
• Don’t panic
  • The search function in the bookmark sidebar does a lot of the work for you – you can search for words within the title of the bookmark as well as the tags !
  • You can still create ‘uber’ tags within Delicious to create large and think about

Delicious Toolbar

The toolbar is fantastic. Nice and neat and crisp. Essentially there are three buttons. The Delicious symbol takes you to your Delicious homepage,the TAG button allows you to tag and the ‘bookmark button’ will open your sidebar with the Delicious bookmarks

Delicious Tagging

So you are ready to start tagging. Whilst you are browsing you will come across a page to bookmark. Instead of saving to your bookmark toolbar – you now click the tag button and a screen like the one above appears. Simply title your tag, add ’space’ separated tags for the page, and save…

For a full tour of all the options go to the Firefox tour on Delicious

Advanced options:

• Find some friends to add to your network – you can then share tags
  • When you want to share just click on the for:sandnsurf button, and a message will arrive at your friends browser in the bottom right  
• Keep bookmarked pages private
  • Simply check the ‘do not share’ button and you are done

For the really advanced user – consider using delicious for doctoral research tagging…