Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. A site that allows you to share your bookmarks via the web, categorized by tags instead of folders and with more descriptive notes.

So what is so great about that, you might be asking. Well let’s think about this... You have probably noticed that the web changes rapidly. You surf and find new interesting stuff all the time, right? Well I do too and so do many others. If we try to "remember" the interesting sites by using bookmarks or favorites in our browsers we have to try to put them in some descriptive folder that hopefully will help us find them once again. That is if we work on the same computer… Del.icio.us allows you to put your bookmarks online, which makes them always accessible. Now instead of organizing them by folders to help you find them, del.icio.us allows you to assign tags and notes to them to give even more descripion to your filing system.

When you use Del.icio.us the tags will likely be similar to your bookmark / favorite folders, however note that you can assign as many tags as you want. This way you can put your bookmarks / favorites in as many “folders” at once without having to hide them in sub-folders. If you are anything like me, I am sure you have wondered which folder to save your bookmark / favorite, perhaps you have even saved a bookmark twice, in two folders that you thought were appropriate. With tags, there is no need for that anymore. The other great benefit is that you can give your bookmark / favorite a more descriptive note. And because your bookmarks / favorites are online you can easily let others see them. No need to email them to your friends anymore.

Click the "Read more..." link below to see more useful tips to use Del.icio.us effectively like;

• How to automatically add notes from the page that you are bookmarking?
• How do I easily find my or the sites bookmarked by others?
• How do I leverage the work of others?
• How do I export / import bookmarks / favorites from my browser?
• How do I navigate from the address bar and how do I use the RSS feeds?

Del.icio.us - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How to automatically add notes from the page that you are bookmarking?

You can automatically add notes to your bookmark by selecting text on the page that you are about to bookmark. Lets say that you are reading something online and something that you read caught your attention and made you want to bookmark it for later reference. Than all you need to do is select that text and bookmark it with the Del.icio.us bookmark button in your browser. Then add some tags, save and voila. You now have “quoted” the page. The descriptive note to this bookmark can now even be searched from within Del.icio.us. This ability to “quote” from websites in two clicks I believe is one of the best features in Del.icio.us.

One more practical example:

As you are scanning your (industry) news you read something that might be useful to later share with one of your clients, or perhaps to include in a pitch to future clients. Select that text, click the Del.icio.us “Tag” button in your browser and perhaps even add a tag with the client’s name. Now you will easily be able to find it back before you talk to your client at a future date. (Obviously this is very useful for research as well)

How do I easily find my bookmarks or the bookmarks of others?

Once you have saved a lot of bookmarks to your Del.icio.us account you can easily find them back by browsing through the tags that you have added. Tags can be viewed in list form but can also be viewed as a “tag cloud” by which the tags that have been used most frequently have an increased font size to easily spot them (also note the related tags). Alternatively you can also search through your bookmarks. You do this by simply typing the search term, selecting my bookmarks / favorites in the drop-down and click search. This will then trigger a search through all the tags that you have used and the notes that you have added to your bookmarks. Very useful! Please also note that you can do this type on search on bookmarks / favorites that others have added to del.icio.us.

How do I leverage the work of others?

Google is great but sometimes you need humans to add some more description to sites to more accurately interpret the information on the web. Del.icio.us does just that. As people use it and add tags and notes they describe what can be found at that location more precisely. All the notes and tags as well as the frequency of being tagged allow you to have more accurate searches. By leveraging this work of others you can save time and find exactly what you were looking for more easily. Click here for more info. There are two other sites that are great to leverage the work of others, or to see what others have found interesting online. www.Digg.com and www.StumbleUpon.com.

How do I export / import bookmarks / favorites from my browser?

Most likely you have a collection of bookmarks already. You can easily add these to Del.icio.us by first exporting them locally and then importing them to Del.icio.us. A detailed description of this process is available once you sign in and click settings.

How do I navigate from the address bar and how do I use the RSS feeds?

Del.icio.us uses simple navigation standards to help you navigate from the address bar.

• Every user has his or her own page for bookmarks: del.icio.us/john
• Also, every tag has its own page: del.icio.us/tag/travel
• To combine Bookmarks by user and tag: del.icio.us/maria/literature

Also note that many pages within the Del.icio.us system can be syndicated via Real Simple Syndication (RSS). This way you can add them to an RSS reader or website. For example you could add the RSS feed for the tag “Travel2.0_Site” to your Netvibes account by adding this RSS address http://del.icio.us/tag/Travel2.0_Site. For more help on this click here .