the staff room

http://del.icio.us/

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website -- the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved -- which is made easy with tags.

What are tags?

Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on del.icio.us. They're a little bit like keywords but non-hierarchical. You can assign as many tags to a bookmark as you like and easily rename or delete them later. Tagging can be a lot easier and more flexible than fitting your information into preconceived categories or folders.

Collaboration - Friends, co-workers, and other groups can use a shared account, special tag, or their del.icio.us networks to collect and organize bookmarks that are relevant -- and useful -- to the entire group. Here for example is my own del.icio.us collection for auchenharvie http://del.icio.us/auchenharvie/ and here only the articles tagged with smartboard http://del.icio.us/auchenharvie/smartboard/ .

Now the clever bit - you find a great link and want to share it with auchenharvie ? When you come to save the link in your del.icio.us account include 'for:auchenharvie' along with your other tags.

The most popular tags on del.icio.us

Here's a neat place to start exploring tags: a cloud of frequently-used tags on del.icio.us.

Find out more about tags, including some examples and ideas about how you can use them.

OK, what do I do next?

Here's how to get started with del.icio.us.