I have a few problems with bookmarks (or favorites for you Internet Explorer users). On any given day I use at least three different computers. Not only that, I sometimes use more than one web browser on the same computer. Obviously when I bookmark an interesting web site at work, I have a hard time getting to it from home.
Also, I’m really picky about organizing my bookmarks. I have folders set up for lots of different categories. This is great until I run into a site that fits into more than one folder. For example: I read lots of weblogs so I have a “Blogs” folder for all of these, I also visit lots of sites about design so I have a “Web Design” folder for these. Now, where should I put a weblog about design? In both folders?
I had actually started working on a program to solve these problems. An online bookmark manager that I can log in to from anywhere and see my bookmarks. As with most things, this has already been done. I’ve seen several of the other bookmark programs out there, but I wasn’t really happy with any of them. That is, until I took another look at del.icio.us the other day.
del.icio.us solves both of my problems above in a very elegant, easy-to-use way. Not only can I get to my bookmarks from any computer, I can also assign multiple categories to each one. Best of all, it’s free.
There’s another benefit to using del.icio.us. They describe their site as “Social Bookmarks”. You can see everyone else’s bookmarks and the categories that they’re using. For example, to see my bookmarks go to http://del.icio.us/AnthonyLewis/. Under all tags, click on python. This will show you only the 5 links that I’ve classified as python sites. Now click where it says python from all users. This will show you every site that anyone has classified as python (a lot more than 5).
Basically what I’m trying to say is if you’re a geek looking for a way to manage your bookmarks, check out del.icio.us. It’s pretty cool.