Another excellent day at OSBC, which I’ll get to whenever I get the chance. Given that I’ve got to hop a plane in about a half hour, only to turn around a couple of hours later and head back out that might be a while, but I wanted to relate a couple of quick anecdotes that I discussed last night. As many of you know, I’m a big fan of Josh Schachter’s del.icio.us service, and as of a couple of seconds ago I’ve stored nearly 2500 bookmarks in the service. Despite the service’s popularity, I still have a lot of people question me in just how I use it, and how – precisely – I find it useful. So two quick stories.
- The first anecdote was related to me by a Friend of RedMonk (who should feel free to reveal themself if they choose). While browsing one day, I came across a link I thought this person and/or their colleagues should be aware of, so I tagged it in del.icio.us with a note to that person. Somewhat coincidentally, this person happened to be demoing del.icio.us to a business associate, and after pulling up one of the keywords I used the link was returned as one of the top few results along with the message to that person. In other words, it’s a quick, easy way to collaborate in a more permanent fashion than email.
- More interesting, perhaps, was how I used to it to help prepare for my Zend talk. Knowing that I was going to be talking about simplicity and less code, I tagged items as I ran across them well in advance. Then, when it came time to put together the presentation, I simplicity visited my del.icio.us links for simplicity and less code, and voila – I had everything from the AK-47 to the bug story all neatly linked in one place. Was a hell of a lot easier than a.) trying to remember what I wanted to talk about and b.) trying to hunt it down again. Plus, it’s far more natural and sustainable a process than taking presentation specific notes.
So while these examples are relatively simple, I thought they might give a few of you an indication of just how you might be able to use del.icio.us. Enjoy.
