Well, I tried to look at the tutorial--four times. The first three I got a message that the image couldn't display. The fourth time it actually showed up and I assumed you could just click on the image to start it. Nothing happened. I was nervous about clicking "download," what with our IT paranoia (although it isn't really paranoia if they are out to get you). I finally clicked, which seemed to work. It started fine, but kept stopping for no apparent reason, then eventually starting again--multiple times. I got tired of listening to dead air so I gave up. The other tutorials were fine. I took a look at the San Mateo PL site, since they're in my neighborhood, sorta. I liked their idea to organize their tags by the Dewey Decimal system--clever.
I'd be the first to agree that the bookmarking features of Internet Explorer suck hugely. I have a lot of bookmarks on my office computer, and if I wasn't paying attention to the title when I added one I find I often have no clue what it is when I look at it later. Being able to add tags at that point would be nice. The advantages of the status quo are (1) the ability to organize in a hierarchy--that's not a bad thing; (2) speed of access. If I'm answering a question on the phone in my office--from a patron or colleague--in most cases I could put my virtual hands on a bookmark faster without going to a web site where I had to sign in first.
On the other hand, I can really see the value of it when you have a lot of different people adding and wanting access to the same set of bookmarks. One application that immediately leaps to mind is the desktop computers at the Reference Desk. I'm always finding that several different people have made links to the exact same page, but each has put it in a different place. You end up with a mess. With something like De.licio.us everybody could call it whatever they wanted and all could find it under what made sense to them. (This is assuming that De.licio.us either doesn't let you make duplicate links or makes it easy to spot and eliminate them.)
The other big deal is being able to access all your bookmarks from one place, no matter what computer (or mobile device) you were using. I'm not a big traveler, and generally I prefer not to think about this place during my precious time at home. But there have been occasions when I've been home and wanted to access a site that I knew I had bookmarked at work--but couldn't.
Overall, tough call for me whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. I might explore this further after I retire. Which, 11 months from today, I will have already done. Excuse me, I need to go meditate upon the wonderfulness of that phrase.
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3 comments:
Did you view the tutorial using Mozilla Firefox? You should try using that instead of Internet Explorer; when IE doesn't load properly, Firefox usually works for me.
Did you check out our own del.icio.us page?
You're using IE instead of Firefox?! Come on, Capt. de.licio.us is super fly if you want to bring a bunch of itty bitty links into your personalized Google portal with an RSS. Pretty much puts your bookmarks at your fingertips wherever you are.
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