Delicious

I don't think Delicious is on the TECHsploration list of sites, but I have found this software to be the most helpful in managing my online wanderings. Ali Cohen helped me set up an account in April or May when she discovered the number of bookmarks floating around in my Firefox settings. I really hadn't had time to sort through the old bookmarks, explore the program's options, or figure out how to make it work best for me until now.

The tag feature helped me organize my bookmarks into units for the year...grammar, Of Mice and Men, cross-curricular, Middle School, etc. You can apply as many tags as you want to a bookmark, so you won't lose the website down the road. BUT, I would recommend you read the very thorough help menu before you start tagging. I didn't realize that the tags MUST be one word or the words must be separated by a period. I wound up deleting "To," "Kill," "A," "Mockingbird" as individual tags after I realized this. The "Kill" tag was a little shocking to see show up in my menu!

Also, you can choose to make your bookmarks private or public. What would be the point of having a public bookmark, you ask? If you mark your bookmark public, Delicious will show you all the other users who have also tagged this website. In addition, it will recommend similar articles or sites that users with that profile have marked. Rather than finding this invasive, it's been a great way for me to do some passive, professional, social networking. I'm not always into bulletin boards, chat groups, or posts, but marking my own bookmarks as public was a helpful way to tap into some other sources I didn't know were out there.

I would recommend dragging the delicious tagging icons into your toolbars in your browser. It made it MUCH easier to just practice using the software. It put it on my radar more often.

I'd highly recommend this program to anyone whose friends and family send them semi-random links that they're sure they will return to later....just not right now! Those e-mails had been clogging my inbox, but not anymore!