Knee deep in Delicious

Using Delicious:
I have been using delicious to organize a few projects I have going. While tagging is easy subscribing to others tags may be an entirely different kettle of fish. I can only imagine a tsunami of information and the valid question of how long will it take to wade through it all. So far I have 508,217 bookmarks that appeared as a result of one subscription.

The first project is a college level module on renewable energy for a 100 level environmental science class. There is a whole lotta old news on this topic. But a decade ago when I was living entirely off grid and using solar for electricity and water. I knew people who knew people. There was this guy (name long forgotten) who had products under development in Japan. In case you're not aware of their problems, air quality is extremely bad in highly populated areas. They are funneling significant resources in the direction of clean energy. Since they live over one of the most active fault-lines on the globe, one would hope that rules out nuclear reactors. As of then they were working on a window film like the ones that keep your carpets from fading. But this film was really a solar panel and all the windows of a home produced electricity which was stored in batteries. It was in development then but it might be a reality now. But how to tag for innovation and avoid the stack of yesterdays news?

The second project is creating a lesson for lesson plans for student study habits in grades K-5. I foresee another wave.

My account is http://delicious.com/sumner_walz.

How does it work? Easily, so far. Subscription is quick. Instructions are brief and clear. The help page could have a few more options but it does get one started. The installation didn't make my Firefox crash and that's always a consideration. Tagging couldn't be easier.

Tags are made by people like me and their personal idea of what organizing principles are useful. By being personal they seem to guide my research and are more intuitive. I'm aware of the term folksonomy but don't work it into full sentences yet.

Advantage for delicious, tag bundles, a tool that allows the formation of a hierarchy by tagging tags. (You can export/download your bookmarks but tag bundles are not portable) And tag clouds, a visual display of the popularity of tags, suggesting popular choices that might work for me.

Disadvantages include the fact that since tags aren't standard I could get many items that are not what I was looking for. I'm interested in alternative energy. I don't know how to avoid recipes for someone's energy drink.

I haven't solved the problem with the tsunami of information generated from subscribing to others tags. This is a handy feature I want to use but getting the right info is tricky.

If you are using Firefox, Delicious sort of takes over your desktop. It also has an intrusive pop-up if you choose to use the old computer bookmarks option. The huge sidebar can be easily removed but it would be more convenient if it was smaller. It's convenient to have but just too damn big.

In an article on Social Bookmarking by Hamond et al (2005), he describes the phenomenon of "Tag Soup". Traditional means for organizing information were specific, universal and hierarchical. The free tagging approach can end up with a jumbled mish mash of information. Order appearing from the users tags is possible. Confusion is a certainty. He says.

It's undeniably true that my old bookmarks tool is a confusing disorganized mess. It shouldn't be difficult for delicious to be a much improved mouse trap to help me find what I'm looking for. I'm still nervous about those half a million sites about alternative energy. Effective subscribing may require a little more finesse.