Why Delicious Anything?

Victor Frost

I've been using Firefox for nearly 3 years now and all the while I've been using its regular bookmarking system. Happily, I organized my bookmarks by folder and used Google browser sync to keep the changes across all my PC's as well as having a recent copy up on Google as a backup of sorts. Like any geek, however, I've looked around at all these social bookmarking tools, most notably, Delicious. Everyone says its the best of them and for a while, I believed that sight unseen. Its seemingly omnipresent logo across websites of all sorts beg you to add that site to your list of favorites, as if that would bring it into the top ten of all websites. And that was proof enough for me, until I tried using it as a replacement for the Firefox bookmarking system via the handy delicious plugin.

Once I restarted Firefox, it happily walked me through importing all of my bookmark into my delicious account and automatically tagged them for me. I went on my happy way browsing the web and I suddenly remembered to check up on prices for FM transmitters. I had bookmarked the site before I installed the delicious plugin, so I expanded the delicious menu an went under tags to find out where it put it.
FM? No. Transmitter? No. Radio? No again.
I opened the sidebar to try and search for it, but the sidebar only searches with tags. I eventually found it, but only by using Firefox's bookmarking system!

Whats the big deal about using delicious as a bookmarking tool? Yes, I understand the ability to access what you've bookmarked online could be a great utility, but for someone who doesn't use that function, whats the point? I know many of you use delicious, so maybe you could clue me in?

AtheriShadow

Yes, I understand the ability to access what you've bookmarked online could be a great utility, but for someone who doesn't use that function, whats the point?

I think you really answered your own question. If you don't need or want to have online bookmarks like that, you don't really have a need for delicious. I might've misunderstood your question though.

Victor Frost

Well, I'm really trying to find out if theres other purposes for delicious other than that. For example, I use Google Browser Sync to sync my bookmarks and cookies across all my PC's. Does anyone use the delicious plugin in a similar way?

raquor

I've found that letting software of this sort automatically import things causes nothing but problems. When I finally started using Delicious I learned how it worked and came up with a decent system that stores things under tags similar to how I would search through my bookmark hierarchy on my browser.

What I use delicious for is to keep important type links or just useful one's handy no matter where I am. I've switched computers at work a couple times in the past year and I reinstall my computers on a semi regular basis. Using delicious helps avoid the problem of me forgetting to save off my bookmarks or thinking the saved file was up to date when it really wasn't.

I find it useful to analyze my thought pattern when saving a tag. Basically storing things in such a way that I'll find them even if I only remember the barest piece of information without remembering that I actually saved that information. Then later I go search my archives before surfing online. Future me has a great deal of love for past me.

Apreche

There are two types of bookmarks when it comes to web sites.

The first kind of bookmark is for a site you visit very often. I come to the forums often. Since it is faster to use a bookmark than to type the URL, I make a bookmark in the browser. Firefox bookmarks and keywords are very good at solving this problem.

The other type of bookmark is for when you want to remember a website, but you aren't going to visit it often. Say I see something cool, and I want to remember it, but I'm not going to be revisiting it all the time or anything. That is a job for del.icio.us. It allows you to bookmark and remember web sites without cluttering up your browser bookmarks. It also allows you to search those links, so you can find one in the future, if you lost it.

Dkong

I use delicious exactly how Scott does.


Some other uses I have for delicious:
- accessing my links from school
- accessing my links at friends' houses
- letting my friends see cool stuff (a few of my friends check my page when they're bored, cause they know I usually have interesting stuff)
- finding new sites (the "popular" page and rss feed is useful, as are tag searches in general)