Golden, Blogged, and Del.icio.us

tagged: delicious blog

If you are reading this post on my site, you may have noticed you had to scroll down a bit to see the blog posts.  Maybe you thought I made 3 new posts today, the first two being very short, and if so my plan is working perfectly...

I have long been aware of the popular bookmarking site del.icio.us, but have never used it much.  I've never had a problem keeping up with the sites I want to come back to, and I have a hard enough time getting friends and family to check my flickr account so there is little chance they would follow a bookmarking site.  I saw del.icio.us as a solution in search of a problem.  Yesterday, I found that problem.

I often save items in my news reader (bloglines) to blog later, and I save way more items than I ever have a chance to blog.  In the past, these would build up until I would either make a blog post listing all the links or, more commonly, I just delete them.  One solution I avoided was mini blogging the links, or making very short blog posts just to say, "Hey! check this out!" because I don't want my blog archives to be filled with a bunch of random links.  I'll never sell "ViNull: The Book" that way.

Del.icio.us allows you to save some notes and tags with each site you bookmark.  You can then subscribe to an RSS feed of your bookmarks, that contain these notes and tags.  Using this, I can mark a site in del.icio.us and use the notes field to mini blog it.  It's separate from my blog, so I don't need to worry about the clutter - or duplication should I later decide to blog the topic in detail.  As a proof of concept I added a page for del.icio.us under links, and placed the two most recent sites at the top of the homepage.  There are some other features of del.icio.us that I want to explore, such as recommending sites to people and watching what friends (the few who do use del.icio.us) bookmark, so there will be some changes in the coming weeks.

Now I can blog at the speed of the Internet, or at least the speed at which I read the Internet.
by Mike
Bits and Bytes (10) comments | add comment
:p Sep 15, 2006 6:03 PM

10 Comments

On Sep 15, 2006 6:52 PM Daryl said...
Hmmm, but as a reader of your blog who reads it almost exclusively through a feed reader, how will I avail myself of this feature without having to jump through another hoop? Will the blogged links eventually be incorporated into your main feed? I don't have screen real estate enough for two vinull feeds, and I'm way too lazy to actually visit your site. I sense here an opening for Gabe to give you some hell about feeds. ;)
On Sep 15, 2006 8:28 PM Mike said...
I've thought about mixing the feed, and what I've come to is I need to think about it more. You'll notice I have several rss feeds linked from this site, so if I mix in one, why not the rest?

Why don't you have enough space in your news reader? I manage to track your two blogs and flickr photos, quid pro quo? Or is it some crazy thing about that web 2.0 browser you want me to use =p

I think before I get too advanced, I should make life easier and use the Del.icio.us API over the RSS - at least I would have access to all my sites and not just the most recent once.

You could always hope over to the sf.net project and add a task on the del.icio.us subject too!
On Sep 15, 2006 10:18 PM Daryl said...
My feed reader sidebar is one item away from making me scroll, and when that happens, I start deleting or consolidating things. You and Perry are very close to getting consolidated as the KnoxBlogers.com feed, for example. So I'm sure not going to add feeds at this point.

If I'm too lazy to scroll, I'm probably too lazy to go open a task. :)
On Sep 15, 2006 11:08 PM Mike said...
I take it as a compliment then that my comment form's level of friction is low enough you'll use it =p
On Sep 16, 2006 8:22 PM Daryl said...
That much can certainly be said. :)
On Sep 22, 2006 1:08 AM Perry said...
After telling you last night that I didn't see the del.icio.us bookmarks that preceded your posts, as you suggested in this entry that I would, I've now discovered why.

It's that, like Daryl, I read your posts in my feed reader (in that browser whose name you dare not speak). However, when I click on the title of the post to go to your site, it takes me to the specific post where the comment fields exist. Hence, I didn't see, until just now when I did actually visited Vinull, what you were talking about.

Do you not follow my posts in your feed reader? Or do you actually visit <a href="http://perry-nelson.com/blog/">It's News to Me</a> to read them?
On Sep 22, 2006 1:10 AM Perry said...
Can I not post HTML here?
On Sep 22, 2006 10:03 PM Mike said...
No, sorry no HTML.

You and Daryl use a feed reader, gabe and cicelie visit the site, so 1/2 my readers are feed based and the other 1/2 visit the site. I did start off with "If you are reading this on the site.." =p

Soon, I'll "mash-up" all the different RSS feeds, and it won't matter how you get the info.

...then maybe I'll look into allowed html in the comments box =p
On Sep 23, 2006 2:51 PM Perry said...
Thanks for the answer about the HTML, Mike. Whether or not you allow it in the future, please allow the author of a comment to edit his own comment after posting it, if you can. Or a preview before committing might solve that problem.
On Sep 24, 2006 4:31 PM Mike said...
Sure, you going to add those features to your blog too? hehe.

For people that add a comment with a site account, adding an edit button should be a simple matter.

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