So what exactly does the del.icio.us mean???

Ever notice at the bottom of our blog entry or on other web sites the del.icio.us icon? Wondered what exactly it did and why you would ever use it?

Well i learned alittle today from a conference where Alan November was the key note speaker. Now my technology descriptions may not be 100% but i'll take a stab as to the usefulness of this feature.

Straight from the http://del.icio.us/about/ web site, here is there description.... _________________________________________________________ What is social bookmarking? del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website, which means it is designed to allow you to store and share bookmarks on the web, instead of inside your browser. This has several advantages.

First, you can get to your bookmarks from anywhere, no matter whether you're at home, at work, in a library, or on a friend's computer.

Second, you can share your bookmarks publicly, so your friends, coworkers, and other people can view them for reference, amusement, collaboration, or anything else. (Note that you can also mark bookmarks on del.icio.us as private -- only viewable by you -- if you like.)

Third, you can find other people on del.icio.us who have interesting bookmarks and add their links to your own collection. Everyone on del.icio.us chooses to save their bookmarks for a reason. You have access to the links that everyone wants to remember. You can see whether two people have chosen to remember a link, or whether it was useful enough for a thousand people to remember -- which may help you find things that are useful for you, too.

What are tags? Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on del.icio.us. They're a little bit like keywords but non-hierarchical. You can assign as many tags to a bookmark as you like and easily rename or delete them later. Tagging can be a lot easier and more flexible than fitting your information into preconceived categories or folders. ________________________________________________________ So, your next question is- how can this be used in education? Easy- let's say that you wanted to find all the latest info on the web relating to Green Design in Construction. Well the old traditional way would be for you to do your own searches on the web and bookmark these sites. With del.icio.us you could create your one site that allows you to access these sites from any computer and share with others with the ability to collaborate on what your links and other people's links happen to be. It allows for more of a collaborative sharing of ideas with others.

I will share with you on my next blog- the use of RSS (Real Simple Syndication) in educaton. Stay tuned.....