Getting a taste for del.icio.us

First, a confession. After the fun of playing around last time, I dragged my heels a bit this week. The topics seemed a little like hard work. Now I don't mind a bit of hard work, but I like to see an outcome and I wasn't really sure how much value I'd get from this week. "Learn about tagging"- not really very enticing after last week's "Play around with!". Did I really want to learn about tagging? It's winter, I'm cold, and can't we play with pretty pictures some more?

But now the good news. I girded my loins, gritted my teeth, did other things beginning with g, and set up a del.icio.us account. And it was ok! I'm floating around here in a happy sea of tags - come on in, everyone else - the water's warm! :)

I wasn't sure initially what use del.icio.us would be to me - yes, I can tag sites, but isn't that what my favourites are for? Well yes, it is, but del.icio.us does it better. The initial setting up is a bit tedious, as with anything new. Add site, add tags, add site, add tags, add site, and so on and so forth. But once you've got a few tags in there, then del.icio.us really works. No more plowing through a list to find the website you want. Just go to your tags, click on the one you want and there are all the sites relevant to that tag - too easy!

But wait, there's more. As del.icio.us lives on the web, that's where all your tags are too. No longer do your favourites reside on your hard-drive, uncontactable out of business hours. They're out there in the world, and you can get in touch with them anytime you like, from anywhere you like.

So the lesson for me this week has been, give it a go. You never know what you might learn.