The awesome Amy introduced me to del.icio.us a little while ago and I have to say, it’s one of the most awesomest, most funnest inventions around. Sorry, I’m not feeling particularly articulate right now. But trust me, it really does rock. A lot.
If you don’t know what I’m on about, here’s a blurb that summarises what del.icio.us is and does:
del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website — the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.
You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved — which is made easy with tags.
All you need is a browser and an internet connection. Sound good? Here’s how to get started.
(from ‘What is del.icio.us?’)
So yeah, it’s essentially a really neat way to bookmark things, that allows you to organise as you go so that you don’t end up with a giant bookmark folder in your browser that you store stuff away in but never really venture into.
The sharing capability seems a bit weird at first, but once you get the hang of it it’s actually pretty awesome. For instance, Amy has a fantastic linux section on her del.icio.us which contains a load of stuff that I’ve never even seen before. It’s a total resource in itself, and saves you a lot of time because you get access to the cream of the crop without having to do any of the hard work yourself! 
The more I think about it actually, the more it resembles a kind of giant, diverse, web-based bibliography. Which is a pretty smart idea when you think about how often you find something cool on the net, only to lose track of how you found it. In this sense it’s a good way of having some extra control over your web browsing - less things seem to disappear into the nether.
Another cool feature I like is that you can directly recommend certain links to your friends that you think they might enjoy or benefit from. The above cat video is one example.
Here are some more, which are all awesome links for linux-y types:
Social bookmarking has come a long way. I started using delicious on dialup (slow at best, painful at worst) and I was having difficulty with the upload (taking an hour or more!).
Anyway, I got the DSL and now uploading is a breeze; although I haven’t had to upload recently… I just add to the bookmarks.
But, I think it’s neat the way you described it:
“It’s a total resource in itself, and saves you a lot of time because you get access to the cream of the crop without having to do any of the hard work yourself!
The more I think about it actually, the more it resembles a kind of giant, diverse, web-based bibliography.”
is brilliant. I never thought of it that way… I just thought it would be a cool way to share with friends what I had found (and the rest of the world), but I have found it’s a neat way to explore what other people have found and not do all the hard work!
I’m glad you’ve found my resources to help you. I’ll keep tagging and bookmarking. There are always new things out there to read up on!
Amy
I agree.
Would it be Ok if I linked your del.icio.us to this post??