Amid news this week that Yahoo! is laying off 4% of its workforce, it appears that it is also going to be ending some of its services. One of the services Yahoo is most likely closing is Delicious, a popular social bookmarking service.
Delicious was an early social site that used cloud computing to store user data. Instead of saving bookmarks and favorites locally within a specific web browser on a specific computer, Delicious would allow you to save links to a Delicious account. These links were then always available on any computer that was able to access the web. Additionally, you could add tags to your links so that links about similar topics were easier to find. At the Troy Public Library, I used Delicious to track various sites regarding eBooks and eResources. I also tagged reference books that may be of interest.
While Delicious may be closing, there are some alternatives. Xmarks is a popular choice. If you have a Google account, Google offers a bookmarking service. Additionally, Google's web browser, Google Chrome, gives you the ability to sync bookmarks between computers that are running Chrome.
4 comments:
Another excellent alternative is Pinboard.in It has a nominal fee one time charge (~$7), and really is what Delicious should have been.
Excellent service, and HIGHLY recommend it.
You would think I would be a perfect user for del.icio.us. I am always saving/sending/using links. I tried del.icio.us, advocated that we use it at the Library, and taught it to the staff and public. I tagged and tagged. I loved the cloud.
Sadly, del.icio.us never lived up to its promise. It was not a good product. The reason for its failure and ultimate demise? A terrible interface. Constant pop-ups. Too freequent, unnecessary updates. It could never achieve the simplicity of google, twitter, or the other successful 2.0 sites.
I am eager to try the google equivalent. You would think it would be natural to store links in the clouds; del.icio.us did not quite get it.
Am sorry to say this buts Xmarks is closing down on Jan/2011, so that's not a good alternative either.
Maybe diigo.com? Or zootool.com.
It seems that I need to check my sources better! Apparently the scheduled closure of Xmarks will not happen, as it has been bought by LastPass and will continue to exist and hopefully will get better!
(and sorry for spamming you with comments, I rarely use blogger *g*)
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