Furl and Del.icio.us: Almost Perfect Together

Furl and Del.icio.us: Almost Perfect Together
Filed under:ResourcesArranging IdeasLabels and Metadata
— Amy Gahran @ 2:33 pm
As I’ve mentioned before, two web-based tools I use extensively to keep track of important or interesting online information areFurl anddel.icio.us. Both of these tools help me file links that I wish to remember or recommend, and allow me to share that information flexibly.
Over the last few months I’ve developed my own way of using these two tools together. It suits me, and I think it suits the unique strengths of each tool. So in case it’s useful to others, here’s how I use Furl and del.icio.us together…
MY GOALS
I need to:
Save my own collection of web content that is interesting, important, and relevant – both to me personally, and to CONTENTIOUS readers in general. I want it saved in an easily searchable form (full text as well as metadata) Freely categorize that collection of information in a way that makes sense to me. This includes associating each piece of content according to how I intend to use it (such as projects I’m working on), as well as according to topics of interest. Selectively share pieces of content in my collection with my weblog readers and the general public. For instance, most CONTENTIOUS readers would not be interested in information I collect related to environmental issues in my work for theSEJ Tipsheet. I want to be able to give CONTENTIOUS readers an easy way to access the material in my collection most relevant to what I discuss in this weblog. Allow custom access. I don’t want to deluge anyone with too much information. Therefore, I want my weblog readers to be able to access only the content I recommend in categories that interest them. For instance, some of my readers have no interest in editing or journalism, but they’re very interested in e-learning and knowledge management. They shouldn’t have to wade through the full onslaught of my omnivorous mind, they should just be able to find out when I’ve posted something of interest to them. Access from anywhere. I’m often working on various computers, so I need a web-based solution. Keep it simple. I’m willing to tolerate moderate complexity in order to achieve these goals, but not a lot. This can’t take too much of my time.
HOW FURL HELPS
Storage. From my perspective, and for my purposes, the big strength of Furl is that it allows me to save a complete copy of any web page. This is why the service bills itself as “your personal web.” (I think it used to call itself “your web filing cabinet,” or something like that, which I liked better.)
Full-text search. Because Furl saves a complete copy of each web page I want, I can search the full text of my archive. I do this often, since my memory gets jarred in all sorts of ways. If I had to remember how I categorized each item, I’d never find what I want – at least not fast.
Metadata. Furl also allows me to label and annotate each piece of content in my collection in very flexible ways. I can create unlimited categories (but alas, not sub-categories yet). I can rate each item, add keywords and comments, etc.
Safety. When I Furl a web page, I’m saving my own copy – so if it later moves, changes, or disappears I still have my reference copy.
Although my collection of Furled content lives on Furl’s servers, I can also download it (and its associated metadata – all my categories, notes, etc.) to my server for backup. (OK, well, it’s my husband’s server.) So if Furl suddenly goes belly-up or gets sabotaged, I’ll still have my content library.
Optional sharing. I can designate each item I Furl as private or not. This allows me to keep stuff I don’t wish to share with anyone in the same collection as the public stuff. I can still access it all in one place. Also, the “save and e-mail” option makes it easy to notify specific individuals about items I’m Furling, and provide comments as to why I’m telling them about it. I don’t have to get into my e-mail program (Thunderbird) and send a separate message. Only items not designated as “private” are visible inmy public Furl archive and its associatedfeed.
I only designate as “private” Furled items that are very sensitive to me for competitive, client, or personal reasons. Therefore, I publicly Furl many items that probably wouldn’t interest CONTENTIOUS readers. This is why I consider my public Furl archive everything that’s “on my radar,” as opposed to recommended reading for my weblog audience.
HOW DEL.ICIO.US HELPS
Since del.icio.us is a “social bookmarking” tool, the whole point of using that service is sharing – and when it comes to sharing a lot of recommended links with a specific audience, I think del.icio.us is a bit better and easier than Furl. (That’s just my opinion, and I’m sure others will disagree.)
I usemy del.icio.us page specifically to share links of potential interest to a specific audience: CONTENTIOUS readers. It’s also available to the general public, but that’s secondary to me. I consider that page as an adjunct or “link blog” for CONTENTIOUS.
Consequently, I’ve devised a different list of “tags” (categories) for my del.icio.us page than what I use in my Furl archive:
Inner focus. My Furl categories (tags) primarily focus on how I use each content item that I archive. This is because I Furl things primarily for my own purposes. Outer focus. My del.icio.us tags are intended to help other people find the information they want from my collection of recommended links. In others words, my del.icio.us tags focus on how others might use the information I’ve collected.
This distinction is not absolute, of course. My Furl archive contains some purely topical categories, while my del.icio.us page has a few tags that mean a lot to me but probably very little to others (such as arranging-ideas).
Because of this difference in focus, I have fewer Furl categories than del.icio.us tags. Also, I tend to designate multiple del.icio.us tags to each item, but only one Furl category to each item. This is because of Furl’s excellent full-text search function – I feel less need to categorize extensively than with del.icio.us, and little or no need to rate specific Furled items. Again, that’s just me. Other people handle it differently.
I like that on del.icio.us, my full list of tags always is visible on the right-hand side of the page (the “all tags” column). When you click on any category that column, it displays a second column of “related tags.” For instance, if you click on my content-style tag in the “all tags” column, you’ll not only see a list of every item I bookmarked with the content-style tag, but a list of every other tag associated with all my content-style items.
So what? Well, this gives you a greater sense of the connections I perceive between various topics. It’s kind of a sideways view into how my twisted, omnivorous mind works. Plus, it might encourage you to explore other topics in my tag list which did not initially command your interest.
Connecting to other people. Both Furl and del.icio.us will show, for each item in your collection, how many other people have bookmarked/saved the same item and then connect you to them.
I find this useful in both services. (I’ve encountereed some very interesting people, information, and ideas this way.) However, I think del.icio.us makes these connections between people just a tad easier than Furl. Del.icio.us shows right in the main listing of recommended links the number of other del.icio.us users who have bookmarked that same item, and allows you to jump right over to those other collections. In Furl, you only see that information once you’ve already zeroed in on a particular item in an archive. It’s a minor difference of emphasis, but to me it matters. Again, that’s just my opinion.
Drawback: Field constraints. Unfortunately, the form used to bookmark an item in del.icio.us allows the entry of only very limited information: link URL, short description (default is whatever’s in the page’s (title) tag), extended description (only up to about 250 characters) and tags (which you have to type in, you can’t pick them from your list, so typos happen).
Often I’d like to include a link indicating where I found out about a particularly good item (such as in another weblog), since I believe in giving credit where credit is due. I can do this in Furl’s ample “comments” field, but not usually in del.icio.us since the “extended” field is so very small. It’s more important to me to use those precious 250 characters to explain why I think a particular link is worth visiting.
Oh well, can’t have everything…
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
So here’s my current process for when I find a web page I wish to recommend to CONTENTIOUS readers:
Save my own reference copy. I Furl the page to make sure I have it for future reference. If a work of content spans several pages, I Furl each relevant one. (Sometimes there’s a printer-friendly version, so I Furl that instead since it’s complete on one page.) If my only intended use for that page is to recommend it to my readers, I categorize it as contentious-blogged. This is usually a very quick process, since usually full-text search is all I need to find what I want later. Add it to my recommended reading list. I then add a link to that same page on my del.icio.us page. Here I take the time to make sure the “description” is indeed descriptive and indicates the source as well as the topic or nature of the target content. I also take the time to indicate why I’m recommending that page – either a short excerpt or a brief comment. I also take the time to add all the relevant tags from my list.
The result is that I have two ways of accessing and sharing my collection of treasured content: one that works well for my own use, and one that (hopefully) works well for my weblog audience.
I’m sure I’ll refine and modify this process over time. If you have suggestions or observations, please post them below. Also, I’m not promoting this process for anyone else – only you can decide whether it sounds good to you. I’m just explaining how I use these tools.
In a perfect world, Furl and del.icio.us would combine so I could handle this all through a single system. That would be nice. But in the meantime, I’ve found a system that works well enough for me and isn’t too demanding.
I’d like my audience’s perspective, though:
Do you read my del.icio.us page of recommended reading? (Either on del.icio.us, or just my five most recent additions presented in the right-hand column of CONTENTIOUS) If so, is it useful to you? Do you focus on certain categories? Do you scan my Furl archive? (Either though occasional visits, or by subscribing to its feed) If so, why? How do you use it, and what do you think of it?
Thanks! Enjoy! Experiment!
17 Comments
The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://contentious.com/archives/2005/04/20/furl-delicious-almost-perfect-together/trackback/
Furl Del.icio.us Indeed
Not ten minutes after I made the decision to shamelessly embrace both del.icio.us and Furl, Amy Gahran hooked me….
Trackback byChris Abraham — 4/20/2005 @6:39 pm
This is another very useful article, so thank you. I personally haven’t had a chance yet to experiment and use either the FURL or del.ico.us services yet, but when I do I will be checking out your archives to learn how it works. I have collected over the years thousands of important URL’s that could be useful for my blog readers and others, but they remained trapped in my IE6.0 bookmark folders.
Back in the 1990’s there used to be a (free) web-based storage service for bookmarks that I used but unfortunately they went out of business long before the Big Crash. If I understand what little I have read about FURL and del.ico.us so far both services are free and built upon open-source software code. The fact that one can use TAGS along with the bookmark URL’s should be a very useful feature for sharing. Do these web-based tools allow one to re-organize bookmarks imported from IE6.0 and other browsers bookmark tools, and do they have the capability to check for dead links?
Comment byBill — 4/21/2005 @7:51 am
Hi,
You’re a good writer. I struggle trying to explain clearly some of the ideas that you put forth so well. I do a lot of development work on a service I offer to businesses - Ideascape - where we use del.icio.us for external bookmarks and our own for on-the-fly, internal tagging and bookmarking. Anyway, I posted your page on del.icio.us hoping that others will learn from your experience. Thank you!
Jim
Comment byjim wilde — 4/21/2005 @3:00 pm
I like both tools, too. Sometimes it is difficult to say, if I should furl it or take del.icio.us. But I like your statement to social bookmarking. It is a very usefully for understanding the difference of furl an del.icio.us.
Comment byPR Blogger — 4/21/2005 @3:57 pm
Furl and Del.icio.us: Almost Perfect Together
Amy Gahran from Contentious wrote a very good article about two great social tools: Furl and Del.icio.us: Almost Perfect Together….
Trackback byBibi\’s box — 4/21/2005 @9:50 pm
In addition to the furl and del.icio.us uses that you describe, I also use the “to-read” tag on del.icio.us to label items that I want to save now and read later. When applicable, I also use a “from-” tag to indicate where I found the item. For example, if the item was referenced on your blog, I’ll save it with tags “to-read” and “from-agahran". After I’ve read the item, I replace the “to-read” tags with whatever subject tags seem appropriate but retain the “from-” tag.
Comment byJohn Remmers — 4/22/2005 @6:16 am
One Del.icio.us Ideascape
A week or so ago, I was exploring del.icio.us to learn what was new in the blogosphere. I usually start with my own tags (bookmarking, folksonomy, taxonomy, content management, knowledge management, idea management, enterprise blogging, innovation, etc
Trackback bythink again, ideas that move people — 4/22/2005 @9:57 am
Congrats! You’re most popular today on furl; I think you’ve done that before with another article if memory serves me correctly. As for del.icio.us, I’ve used it, and I loathe it. Oh, man. How to start? No place for comments. No full text search. No topics (I am just a directory style person, and I like these better than tags for some things). No recommended links. No (last I checked) most popular links. When searching through a set of tags, you will see the same link again and again and again and again if it’s been delicioused by many people. The tag list on the side is too long and in the way; I tend to tag a link with every single word that comes to mind and varients of that word, meaning that I often have tags with just one website. No keeping track of how many times you’ve seen something (furl will). The delicious bookmark tends not to work at random times. It’s harder to subscribe to others feeds in delicious. No easy way of sharing links with friends who don’t also use delicious (you can’t email the links to them, they have to open the delicious website and go look up the links). Delicious spam is starting to be a problem…oh, man…did I say that? Uh, moving right along. Furl has won my heart; I’m not willing to put up with a limited and unacceptable feature set, even to make life easier for whoever is browsing my collection of links.
Comment byfastfinge — 4/22/2005 @8:28 pm
I’ve not tried these two together, but I do often use Spurl (spurl.net), and there are other tools of a similar nature - CiteULike (citulike.org), and Connotea (connotea.org) - this has a more serious database. Seehttp://www.irox.de/roxomatic/687/social-bookmarks-review-reloaded for details of several different systems. Note the chart rerenced - the socialbookmarks.pdf file.
I noticed also that there are tools which allow bookmarking in more than one of these social networking systems. One example ishttp://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/alan/marklet_maker.php
Dave
Comment by david martland — 4/23/2005 @1:16 am
Regarding comment #7: Tryhttp://del.icio.us/popular/ andhttp://del.icio.us/popular/TAG for most popular links and most popular links with a given tag, respectively.
Comment byJohn Remmers — 4/23/2005 @10:42 am
One Del.icio.us Ideascape
A week or so ago, I was exploring del.icio.us to learn what was new in the blogosphere. I usually start with my own tags (bookmarking, folksonomy, taxonomy, content management, knowledge management, idea management, enterprise blogging, innovation, etc
Trackback bythink again, ideas that move people — 4/23/2005 @1:13 pm
Furl versus del.icio.us = a very helpful. I only use Furl for the moment as I’m not into sharing yet. First, I want to sort out my own mess - apparently it is a lot easier to Furl fast than to actually read all that Furled stuff… To avoid a Furl-cabinet full of forgotten unread pages, I’m now feeding it into my Bloglines account. This way, it’s easier for me to stay ‘in touch’ with ‘my personal web’.
Comment by Sven De Haeck — 4/25/2005 @3:02 am
“In a perfect world, Furl and del.icio.us would combine”
Um, Spurl let’s you associate your account to del.icio.us so you don’t miss a beat. Also, all of the things you use Furl for, Spurl does. Plus it has better search, with their engine, Zniff.
I highly recommend you try Spurl, since you’re using both del.icio.us and Furl.
Comment byHashim — 4/25/2005 @11:43 am
You may be interested in taking a look at how I used the rss capabilities of furl on a recent project to create a resources list (aka pathfinder or webliography). Once the code is set on the page, all I need do to add new entries dynamically, without having to go back and edit the page, is create the entry in furl. The pages are automatically generated from the furl archive, and any rss subscribers to the resource list are updated with the new information. Seehttp://www.u.arizona.edu/~bfulton/rss/
Comment byBruce Fulton — 4/26/2005 @11:33 am
Friends and associates have thanked me many times for exposing them to FURL – and I then direct them to CONTENTIOUS. FURL has helped me clean up all the yellow stickies with good URLs from my office… I can’t thank you enough, Amy. Now, I wanna try del.icio.us (not the least ‘cause I own restaurants!).
Best,
Paul
Comment byPaul Lewis — 4/28/2005 @7:24 am
Given all your experience in using these bookmark management tools I was hoping you might be able to provide some feedback on a project I am leading that just launched,http://www.philoi.com . Philoi is a person-to-person link sharing community. Cheers, John
p.s. I personally like Furl and haven’t found too much use for delicious yet.
Comment byJohn Raezer — 4/28/2005 @11:48 pm
This post shows how to copy your bookmarks fromDel.icio.us to Furl.
Comment by Anonymous — 5/9/2005 @10:02 am
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