A Bookmarking Fiend

Michele meant it in the nicest way…but I have been thinking about her comment this weekend that I am a delicious “bookmarking fiend!” Some might suggest that I am a bit compulsive or obsessive about using delicious, but perhaps a little reflection on that use will be illustrative.

I looked at my delicious bookmarks this morning and found that in the past two days, I have bookmarked 34 URLs. A quick breakdown shows my interests over those two days:

– Web 2.0 Tools ——> 14 sites
– Blogs and Blogging —> 5 sites
– eLearning ———–> 5 sites
– Web 2.0 ————-> 3 sites
– about delicious ——-> 3 sites
– tech adoption ——–> 2 sites
– personal ————-> 2 sites

So even though it was the weekend, my mind was obviously on work!

As to how I found those sites above, I have two related processes that work for me. First, I have a well-developed network in delicious with colleagues whose opinion I trust. Currently, that network consists of 9 graduate students and 32 colleagues from higher education. As they tag items worldwide in their delicious accounts, it shows up in my network. I then feed that stream into my Google Reader. Two in England and Romania make my tagging appear sluggish! They are the true fiends, and I reap the rewards of watching their tagging activity.

Coffee CatIn my Google Reader, I track 32 blogs, 11 news feeds, and 2 Ning feeds, as well as my delicious network stream. I have made it a habit to check Google Reader first thing each morning before I begin work and twice more during the day.

{Of course, I also track I CAN HAS CHEEZ BURGER! – but that is just to keep me smiling!}

Google Reader is therefore my connection to the wired world, and through it, I find the sites that interest me…and that I then tag. It has become my primary personal learning environment – customized to the interests that I hold. Between the RSS feeds from sites like SlashDot or TechCrunch to bloggers like Wes Fryer, Alan Levine, and Guy Kawasaki; and my network feed, I am continually shown relevant sites that impact my job and my life. Tagging is just a way to keep track of them for later use…and it is a habit I do not intend to lose any time soon!

4 thoughts on “A Bookmarking Fiend

  1. Hey–you’re the one who’s calling it compulsive. I’m just reaping the benefits of your bookmarking, especially in the times when I seem to have no time to surf! Thank God for the network!

  2. As a power Google Reader user, you may hate my new project, but please give it a look. In particular, you’ll probably relate to:

    egos.alltop.com
    socialmedia.alltop.com
    cute.alltop.com

    Thanks,

    Guy

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