I heart delicious…

Of all the multitudes of Web 2.0 tools that are popping up every day, I have found Delicious to be the most useful and the most used. The fundamental basis for its usefulness is a simple idea: one set of bookmarks, no matter how many browsers or computers you use. Adding the ability to tag, bundle and share bookmarks just augments this basic usefulness.

My husband thinks del.icio.us is an evil conspiracy to track every single place we visit on the Web for nefarious but ill-defined purposes. If that’s the case, I say, then track away! If you look down the left side of this page, you’ll see all my latest del.icio.us links. This list is a real-time glimpse into what I’m thinking, reading and writing about. I like to take a look at it from time to time to see what patterns are emerging from my own web surfing and link collecting. Ideas emerge from bringing those subconscious connections into consciousness.

Because every tagged set of links has its own RSS feed, del.icio.us just gets more useful and makes my life even easier. When I am working on a project, I can capture my research links in del.icio.us and give them all the same tag. I grab the RSS feed for that tag and plug it into a feed display on a SharePoint team site or on one of my blogs. Now I can share all my links on the project with everyone else who’s interested, without the hassle of copying and pasting URLs or making sure the links list is up-to-date. I just post a good link to del.icio.us with the appropriate tag, and it appears everywhere it needs to be. It all integrates with my regular work and research habits. That’s a fundamentally useful application.

When I am working on a complicated project, I can create tag bundles with different tags corresponding to sections of an outline or project phases or whatever. As I research over days or weeks or months, I just need to post and tag the relevant links that I find. Then, when I’m ready to start compiling my research, it’s all waiting for me, already organized and labeled. del.icio.us is also useful for creating lists of things to do, such as recipes I want to make, articles I want to read or blog about, or a wishlist of things I want to buy.

David Brewster at Management:Simple recently posted about how he can’t keep up with all that’s going on the wide world of Web 2.0. I don’t think we should even try. Sure, dip your toes in every now and then, see if something that catches your eye is actually going to help you do whatever it is you’re trying to do. And once you find something that really does work for you, stick with it. For me, it’s Delicious and WordPress and Gmail. It’s even Amazon’s Wishlist, which I use in ways Amazon probably never intended — it’s a great tool for a reader like me who wants to keep track of what I’m reading, what I’m going to read next and what I’m considering reading later. My husband gets a lot more use out of Flickr than I ever will, but he’s the one who likes to take photos. Backpack, LinkedIn, Technorati and Clipmarks haven’t proved as useful as I thought at first, but the jury’s still out. Digg, Twitter, Facebook… I cruised by and just kept going.

Sure, there’s a lot going on and more coming online every day. You’ll only burn yourself out if you try to be on top of the latest and greatest all the time. Find what’s useful, use it and stick with it. Chances are, you aren’t the only one, and those are the sites and services that will make it beyond any 2.0 “bubble burst.”