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The Internet Announcements

Open Source Social Bookmarking Service 263

Posted by timothy from the and-share-alike dept.
comforteagle writes "This past week I launched an open source social bookmarking competitor to del.icio.us - de.lirio.us. After running it for a while open to the public it appears to be running relatively bug free so this is the invitation to the Slashdot crowd. The code is entirely open and the content is cc licensed, so I'm sure it won't take too long for folks to cook up some additional tools aside from the blogging feature. For those not familiar the meme is social bookmarking, which is basically a service to share bookmarks publicly instead (or in addition to) only within your browser. There are lots of other additional benefits, but that's the gist of it. More details here and here."
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Open Source Social Bookmarking Service More

Open Source Social Bookmarking Service

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  • ...okay... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @12:54AM (#12086192)
    So how is this an advantage over del.icio.us, exactly?

    I mean, having source code to a del.icio.us like service available is nice, don't get me wrong. But I don't see how it makes del.irio.us itself any better. I'm not going to be upgrading the software on del.irio.us anytime soon.
    • Now if people want to hack on new features they can add code to the server side as well as the client side.

    • whatever happened to homepages? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @02:26AM (#12086638)
      So how is this an advantage over del.icio.us, exactly?

      Here's a better question. Remember way back in the day, when search engines were kinda finiky? When we found a cool site, we didn't just bookmark it, we added it to our personal homepage. Along with something to tell people what that site was, and hopefully we made sensible links [w3.org]. How is this better than that?

      Google capitalized on that linking, figuring the more people linked to a page/site, the better it must be. Too bad everyone stopped keeping homepages or publishing their bookmarks. Too bad SEO's, spammers, and bloggers figured out there wasn't much linking going on, so the system would be easily tipped. Too bad Google is repeatedly and regularly fooled. For a bunch of guys that are so goddamn smart, they seem to regularly get taken to task...and what are they doing during this? Goofing off with mapping and social communities and webmail and and and and..basically falling into the same trap Apple did many years ago, the same trap HP fell into a few years ago... Overdiversification.

      Maybe I'm old, but Netscape stored its bookmarks in an HTML file you could regularly FTP up to your homepage, or something similar. Oh, and back in the day, if you had the time, you could update your homepage a lot. That was kinda like what you kids keep telling me is so "revolutionary"- this whole 'web log' thing.

      So pardon while I yawn at this service which..um..does what? Let me post my bookmarks? Which I can do already?

      Seriously- the web is supposed to be decentralized. Why do I keep seeing all these people expecting me to put my eggs in their basket? The search engine article earlier today was great- part of the reason Google sucks these days is precisely because we put all our eggs in the Google basket, when there were at least a few other good engines, like Teoma, for example. Google lost the motivation to innovate, because they didn't have to. Frankly, searching these days with Google is like walking down a supermarket baking supplies isle and having people scream at you...and what are those boxes of cereal doing here in the baking supplies?

      • Times are changing, webapps are no longer tarpits (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Paradox ( 13555 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @02:48AM (#12086711) Homepage Journal
        Seriously- the web is supposed to be decentralized. Why do I keep seeing all these people expecting me to put my eggs in their basket?
        Ahh! You're right, but you're missing something. With RSS syndication, SOAP backends, and now swank javascript bookmarklets to instantly add stuff, del.icio.us actually makes it easier to keep your data around and get it to where it needs to be. With the increasing popularity of RSS, it turns out that data isn't really "locked up" inside webapps. Indeed, a good interface and fast RSS summaries can mean that content is more accessible once it goes into one of these services, instead of languishing on your hard drive.

        I can easily make a portal page from del.icio.us, by using the rss feature combined with tags search. I can dynamically query and feed my del.icio.us bookmarks into my blog or webpage info. I can integrate them right into my browser UI with Firefox's "live bookmarks". Compare that to them sitting in a directory, statically, on my home computer.

        The days where web apps are tarpits of information are slowly disappearing. Soon, apps will interoperate with each other because it provides a competitive advantage (want to move from livejournal to blogger? Blogger is going to make this as easy as possible for you, and Livejournal provides the interface because people use it for site syndication). Already, data sharing is very easy, and getting easier. It's only a matter of time before the real tipping point happens, and then the real question will be "Who has the best interface for handling my data," instead of "Who will avoid squirreling my data away in a dark hole."

      • Re:whatever happened to homepages? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by RichM ( 754883 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @02:55AM (#12086741) Homepage
        Maybe I'm old, but Netscape stored its bookmarks in an HTML file you could regularly FTP up to your homepage, or something similar. Oh, and back in the day, if you had the time, you could update your homepage a lot.
        Firefox (and Mozilla) still store bookmarks as HTML.
        • They do, and you can upload the bookmarks file, but that is not what social bookmarking services provide. Simpy (link below) will full-text index your bookmarks (think Google-for-my-bookmarks), it will let you pull your bookmarks into other services and applications (via the REST API), it will let you watch other people's links (via something called Topics), it will let you find people with similar interests, and so on. It's not only about your bookmarks being available from anywhere and it's not only abo
      • Lazyness, thats what happened.

        (plus - tons of links vere really "interesting" like yahoo.com , also it became cliché - usually hypical homepage contained a) index with some animated gif of construction worker b) links section with links everyone knew. c) abou me section usually saying nothing and havin 75% of content dedicated to ones dog/cat d) guestbook with such great messages like "ur site iz good, look at mine at hxxp://... ")

        i too used to have links section of my homepage updated, but simply fo

      • Re:whatever happened to homepages? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by alphakappa ( 687189 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @05:01AM (#12087132) Homepage
        Too bad everyone stopped keeping homepages or publishing their bookmarks.
        It's called a weblog and a blogroll respectively.

        and what are they doing during this? Goofing off with mapping and social communities and webmail and and and and..
        I don't know where you get the idea that Google maps and Gmail are part of Google's 'goofing off'. I and many others find them incredibly useful applications that help me find the information I want. (Which is, btw, Google's objective in the first place).

        Maybe I'm old, but Netscape stored its bookmarks in an HTML file you could regularly FTP up to your homepage, or something similar. Oh, and back in the day, if you had the time, you could update your homepage a lot. That was kinda like what you kids keep telling me is so "revolutionary"- this whole 'web log' thing. Web logs are not revolutionary because they let you ftp some bookmarks. They are revolutionary since they give people an easy way to express their opinion.

        So pardon while I yawn at this service which..um..does what? Let me post my bookmarks? Which I can do already?
        del.icio.us (and de.lirio.us) are not about ftping your bookmark file. They let you easily bookmark an interesting site you find, straight from the browser, irrespective of which computer you are on. You could be on the road, in an internet cafe in timbucktoo, without access to any program other than your browser, and still be able to bookmark a site that you can visit later.

        Google lost the motivation to innovate, because they didn't have to
        Google is highly innovative. And so are the people who try to outsmart Google. Your earlier comment about Google Maps and Gmail seem to indicate that you do not really appreciate the finer points of their innovation. Rest assured that a lack of appreciation does not mean lack of innovation.
      • Maybe if they made it easy to bookmark sites, and had easy access to the database created by this service, and made the service easy to use....maybe, and I said maybe, the number of links from *real* people would outnumber the links by spammers, and Google searches would quit pulling up links to pages funneling us to a freaking Ebay auction.

        Also, some way for Google to pick up that huge amounts of *real* people hated the link they clicked on from a Google search, would allow Google to move that link down i
      • >Maybe I'm old, but Netscape stored its bookmarks in an HTML file you could regularly FTP up to your homepage, or something similar.

        You can sync/upload them from Firefox using these plugins. They work "as seen on TV" but I stopped using them after I realized that
        a) I rarely use my bookmarks
        b) what the hell - if my PC crashes I'll find those pages if I really need them

        1.
        https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/author profil es.php?id=22
        2.
        http://syncmarks.mozdev.org/

        >Why do I keep seeing all these peopl

  • Nice Ad (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @12:54AM (#12086198)
    Aren't you supposed to pay for ads on this site...

  • I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Icarus1919 ( 802533 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @12:57AM (#12086216)
    Maybe it's just me, that's a possibility, but I don't understand people's fascination with these kinds of services. Blogging, bookmark sharing, it all seems to me like a cry for attention from other people. Blogging looks like it could be fun, but I never participated in it because it always seemed as if no one would ever particularly are about my life, and if they did, it would say more about their life than mine. For the same reason, I probably wouldn't participate in this type of service. I'm not trolling, I simply really do not see the appeal. If I wanted to keep a record of my life, I'd be much more likely to keep a private journal.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:01AM (#12086234)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Yep, it's actually really useful. When I wake up in the morning I dump a bunch of links into my "to-read" tag, and then I have a list of crap to read while I'm at work. ;)

    • Re:I don't understand... (Score:4, Funny)

      by T-Ranger ( 10520 ) <jeffwNO@SPAMchebucto.ns.ca> on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:02AM (#12086239) Homepage
      Man, I agree with you 100%. Do you have a record of your thoughts somehwere so I can read more and devote my life to the Church of Icarus?
    • I think it is more like a MUD or a MOO except played out in a completely different format. What it has in common is that features can be added by participants with relative ease and everyone benefits if they wish to use those features.

      Obviously it lacks the dungeon crawling and killing people, but it still retains much of the social interaction. And as a benefit, it emphasizes socially beneficial activities such as sharing and openness rather than grouping and attacking.

      It's a bad analogy because the tw

    • Re:I don't understand... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by The Amazing Fish Boy ( 863897 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:05AM (#12086259) Homepage Journal
      Blogs are of some interest to me because I get to see (somewhat) how people's thought processes work that are different from my friends'. (Friends think more or lesslike their friends.) I find them oddly englightening, but of course I don't mean the "I hate my mom I hate my dad I'm gonna cut myself but not die" kind of blogs, but ones that provde actual ideas I wouldn't otherwise hear. Funny blogs or tech related blogs are also interesting.

    • Re:I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nmoog ( 701216 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:05AM (#12086260) Homepage Journal
      I mostly mostly agree with you on this one... 99.9% of all blogs (and indeed anything people "share") are gunna be crap. But it does mean that over time the good stuff floats to the top. Every webdesign blog I go to has a link to alistapart. It becomes easy to find the good stuff.

      And all the other stuff just sits there not harming anyone. And its good that people write stuff, rather than spending that half hour watching tv, or doing something useful... Its good to work out your brain even if no one in the world is interested! (heres my brain workout [webeisteddfod.com] :)

    • Re:I don't understand... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I simply really do not see the appeal.

      The internet is a big place but sometimes it is difficult to find the cool stuff. I would use this service in the same manner that I use boingboing and memepool, to find the cool and interesting stuff buried in the web. Stuff that I might not stumble upon on my own. That is one of the many things that a service like this offers.

    • Re:I don't understand... (Score:5, Informative)

      by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:12AM (#12086308)
      I don't know about blogging but I love delicious. First of all with the foxylicious plug in to firefox I can have access to my bookmarks anywhere. Secondly I always find facinating things people have bookmarked. Sometimes I look up one of my own categories, other times I just type in a random word and see what people thought was valuable enough to bookmark.

      If you haven't used foxylicous then you are not taking full advantage of delicious.

    • then allow me to explain... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:13AM (#12086319)
      on the topic of social bookmarking, there are two uses:
      1. as one person already mentioned, you can have access to all your bookmarks when you're away from your machine -- without having to carry any removable media with you.
      2. since they're categorized, you can find new links to pages on your topic of interest -- links that have been handpicked by humans. it's like an intelligent filter for search engines.

    • Re:I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:14AM (#12086321) Homepage Journal
      ..yet you are on slashdot which is basically a combination of blogging, bookmark sharing and crying for attention.

      your comments form a blog of sorts. i'm nearing 5000 mostly useless posts yet some people have found a quite good amount of them insightful, informative and so on.. even some that are funny! some aspects of the blogging community is just re-inventing slashdot(in a distributed uncontrolled way that mostly is a mess of people rambling about meme of the week).

      personal blogs tend to be boring. most people have boring lifes, but don't want to admit it.

    • Blogging...posting on /. ... it's a slippery slope (Score:5, Insightful)

      by michaeldot ( 751590 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:15AM (#12086329)
      Maybe it's just me, that's a possibility, but I don't understand people's fascination with these kinds of services. Blogging, bookmark sharing, it all seems to me like a cry for attention from other people.

      By posting here & now you're letting us know your opinion. We read it because we're interested in comparing your views to ours, learning something you know that we don't.

      Bloggers are just doing that too, letting anyone interested know what they think or have learnt. Maybe on a more regular basis, in a more defined structure, but it's essentially the same thing.

      • Slashdot is considered a blog. It follows the blog structure, it has people posting stories, people commenting on them... and being as widely read as it is it really is the MOAB: the Mother Of All Blogs. Slashcode is pretty similar to other blogging software packages, like WordPress [wordpress.org], for example, with some specialized extras like friend / foe and journals.

        The only difference between Slashdot and a normal blog is that normal bloggers read their stories before posting.

    • Re:I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by earthbound kid ( 859282 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:16AM (#12086338) Homepage
      We live in an age of social anomie. It's no wonder that people will do whatever is necessary to gain some recognition from the world. With shared values and public authority crumbling, people are increasingly isolated from those around them. Where once everyone in the village had a shared set of priorities, based on their shared social status, today, we are too fragmented to be able to really connect to people-- even people close to us.

      There is a positive side to all this though. Though we're all so isolated from our immediate neighbors, technology allows us to form virtual communities with those who have common interests. Look at open source software or Wikipedia-- most contributors are drawn in at first by the product, but eventually become members of a community. Firefox is a fine browser, but without colorful personalities behind it like Blake and Hyatt, it would never have taken off so quickly. People identify with the leaders, feel like they have a common bond, and interact that way. Even really small and silly niches, like Mac product rumors, can spawn a community.

      You have to be aware of some of this yourself though. Why post on slashdot at all, if not for the vague feeling that you're connecting with other human beings? We all long for connections, and being denied by our physical community, build virtual ones instead.

      It's as simple as that.

    • Re:I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Frodo Crockett ( 861942 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:20AM (#12086349)
      Del.icio.us isn't just about sharing bookmarks, it's about having all your bookmarks in one place. Use del.icio.us, and you'll never have to sync bookmarks between different browers, OSes, or machines again.

      I find it quite useful to see what other people have bookmarked using the same tag. In fact, it's kind of like a human-filtered Google search. Why wade through pages of questionable search results when I can check del.icio.us and see what sites people looking for the same thing thought were worth visiting?

      Also, I think your comparison to blogs is unfair. Blogs are the modern equivalent of a crappy Geocities website. Del.icio.us has more in common with Wikipedia than blogs.
    • I think you're looking too much at what other people are doing rather than what you might do with it.

      I use the living fuck out of del.icio.us, and I very, very, rarely do anything "social" with it. It just happens to be a fantastic way to manage bookmarks. It makes no difference to me that they're public.

      Likewise, if you think of blogging as "keeping a record of your life", and you feel like you have a boring life, then yeah, don't bother (too many people do). Some people have exciting lives, or boring
    • If I wanted to keep a record of my life, I'd be much more likely to keep a private journal.

      So you rapidly posted that opinion to a high-traffic blog/message board? God, I wish I could give this +1, Irony ... ;-)

      Cheers,
      IT

    • Re:I don't understand... (Score:3, Informative)

      by JanneM ( 7445 )
      The point of blogging depends entirely on your desired audience. You go all the way from people fishing for as wide an audience as possible, to a blog most like a private journal, except it's sort-of public as a way to solicit feedback.

      You can have blogs aiming for your chess/vintage car /BDSM-club, for other developers in your company, for your family or whatever. I write a blog, and my targeted audience is my family and my friends; in effect, it's a substitute for occasional group emails. If somebody els
    • Some people use del.icio.us as a social service, but I think they're in the minority. Most people I talk to (myself included) use del.icio.us as a way to organize and sync bookmarks between multiple machines.

      And now as I use the service more with FireFox's "Live Bookmarks" feature, I use it to make a "hotlist" of new stuff for given topics. You can keep an eye on certain tags, watching for new links. I can, for example, keep an ear to the ground for ruby links with a live bookmark pointed at http://del.ic [del.icio.us]
    • Obviously, it's so you can call yourself an underground journalist, while covering stories mostly about weird things your friends took pictures of with their camera phones. Don't forget to quit your day job first!
    • I no longer live in the same city (cities, actually) as my family and a lot of my friends. Blogs are a nice way for family and friends to keep tabs on what's going on in each others' lives. They don't exist JUST to attention-whore from strangers.

  • Wh.ats u.p wi.th th.e na.me.s? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @12:57AM (#12086217) Journal
    I haven't RTFA because letting the entire world know what my bookmarks are, without an option to let the world know what SOME of my bookmarks are doesn't appeal to me.

    Now I could modify delirious to have this feature but I don't have enough time and incentive. But something I do find odd are the names. I've always thought the del.ici.ous name was odd, but this is ridiculous. Is there something in social bookmarking that requires things to have periods in the middle of everything? Or is delirious just copying delicious?

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:04AM (#12086250)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Get used to it: (Score:5, Funny)

      by Bingo Foo ( 179380 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:05AM (#12086261)
      # grep us$ /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l
      8939
      And for the truly barb.aro.us:
      # grep .................us$ /usr/share/dict/words
      autobasidiomycetous
      calcar eoargillaceous
      cephalothoracopagus
      chlamydobacte riaceous
      hydrochlorplatinous
      hypocraterimorphous
      intraparenchymatous
      Macracanthorhynchus
      membra nocartilaginous
      palaeodictyopterous
      parachromato phorous
      philosophicoreligious
      phycochromophyceou s
      platybrachycephalous
      platydolichocephalous
      pr otobasidiomycetous
      pseudocartilaginous
      pseudoery sipelatous
      pseudomonocotyledonous
      pseudoparenchy matous
      saccharofarinaceous
      saccharomucilaginous
      saccharomycetaceous
      scientificoreligious
      scrofu lotuberculous
      steganophthalmatous

    • Re:Wh.ats u.p wi.th th.e na.me.s? (Score:5, Funny)

      by millette ( 56354 ) <robin@ m i llette.info> on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:11AM (#12086300) Homepage Journal
      you mean it's ridi.cul.us ?
    • i.don.tkno.w.i.alwa.ys.rea.d.thedo.main.s.aso.ne.w ord.
    • Is there something in social bookmarking that requires things to have periods in the middle of everything? Or is delirious just copying delicious?

      The guy that runs del.icio.us just has a thing for domains like that. He also owns burri.to [burri.to], and a few others along such lines.

      Since del.icio.us got popular, people have been in a kind of mad dash to make clever riffs on the name.

      I haven't RTFA because letting the entire world know what my bookmarks are, without an option to let the world know what SOME of m

      • Re:Wh.ats u.p wi.th th.e na.me.s? (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I know this is a very common feeling, but I have a hard time understanding why. Could someone give some examples of bookmarks you would want to be private?
        www.chickswithdic... Hey, wait a minute! No trick questions!
      • Could someone give some examples of bookmarks you would want to be private?

        * intranet links
        * development websites
        * your bank's website (esp. if they can see this bookmark in combination with others that might be used to build an identity trail)
        * goatse

        but i can't imagine posting bookmarks to a third-party website unless i was generally ok if for some reason they became public (accidental or otherwise), so maybe i'm agreeing with you.
        • but i can't imagine posting bookmarks to a third-party website unless i was generally ok if for some reason they became public (accidental or otherwise), so maybe i'm agreeing with you.

          Which brings me to the point I forgot to make in my first post, which is that you don't have to post every single thing you want to bookmark. Your web browser's bookmarks won't suddenly stop working if you use del.icio.us, et al.

          In fact, I use my browser's bookmarks for exactly the things you listed (er, except the goatse

  • Internet Explorer (Score:5, Funny)

    by xixax ( 44677 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @12:59AM (#12086227)
    Big deal, my copy of Internet Explorer has been sharing my bookmarks with everyone for years. It can even share my passswords, cookies and credit card numbers!

  • Yah SB! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Social bookmarking helps make a better super-nerd.
    • Social bookmarking helps make a better super-nerd.

      You betcha. If I can't find information on Google, I often check del.icio.us to see if anyone has stumbled on anything.

      The other thing I find interesting is finding the number of people who have a bookmark in common with me. There are quite a few pages I have bookmarked (user kjw) that I consider to be obvious and easy to find, but few people (if anyone else) have them bookmarked.

      • that I consider to be
        obvious and easy to find, but few people (if anyone else) have them bookmarked

        I don't know about everyone else, but if there is a page that is obvious and easy to find I don't bookmark it. Easier to go to Google and simply type e.g. "scan today" is Scan's Today Only offers page (UK hardware- but mind the extortionate shipping charges.

  • quite an effect (Score:3, Informative)

    by millette ( 56354 ) <robin@ m i llette.info> on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:03AM (#12086245) Homepage Journal
    Interesting conversation on the del.icio.us list [del.icio.us], give you an idea from both sides.

  • Confusing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sbszine ( 633428 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:03AM (#12086246) Journal
    Hmmm. The de.lirio.us [lirio.us] website is almost identical to the del.icio.us [del.icio.us] website. I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all, but you'll probably want to change your site design...
    • Hmmm. The de.lirio.us [lirio.us] website is almost identical to the del.icio.us [del.icio.us] website. I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all, but you'll probably want to change your site design...

      I think the point is that since it's open source, now someone can.

    • Re:Confusing (Score:5, Funny)

      by dr.badass ( 25287 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:49AM (#12086488) Homepage
      Hmmm. The de.lirio.us website is almost identical to the del.icio.us website. I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all, but you'll probably want to change your site design...

      What's really amazing is that in the course of copying it, the few things they changed all managed to make it look worse. I guess that's how you tell it's open source.

  • Rubric (Score:3, Informative)

    by phUnBalanced ( 128965 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:06AM (#12086272) Homepage
    Here's a direct link to the software on CPAN:

    http://search.cpan.org/~rjbs/Rubric-0.06/ [cpan.org]

    • Re:Rubric (Score:3, Informative)

      by phUnBalanced ( 128965 )

      The software is in no way affiliated directly with the project, only in that they use the software.

      I'm friends with Rubric's author, but not associated with either project otherwise.

      There's an installation of rubric [wikalong.org] also setup to work with wikalong [wikalong.org], a Firefox extension.

  • Great news today for del.icio.us ! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by millette ( 56354 ) <robin@ m i llette.info> on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:08AM (#12086286) Homepage Journal
    Joshua Schachter had some great news today [del.icio.us], quitting his day job and now committed full time to del.icio.us, with the help of some outside investment.

  • I stumbled upon this (Score:2, Informative)

    by nastyphil ( 111738 )
    www.stumbleupon.com a couple of years ago. Sites are submitted, categorised and then can be rated. Using a (Moz or IE) toolbar you can stumble through the sites according to a mixture of preferences.

    It to me epitomises the "surfing" part of the web.

    • I wasn't too big a fan of StumbeUpon. First, I don't use Moz, I use Safari, which made it a hassle to use FireFox with their toolbar (I like del.icio.us's bookmarklet). Also, the Stumbles didn't seem very smart. It would often give me the same websites and they were usually predictable. They were also almost always top level domain websites. With del.icio.us, I find useful websites that are all around the internet. I find del.icio.us much more useful. I didn't think I would end up using it, but I did and I

  • Anti competitive or what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by nmoog ( 701216 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:19AM (#12086348) Homepage Journal
    I launched an open source social bookmarking competitor to delicio.us
    Nice work, directing people who want to assess your competition to a domain squatting service... I like yours heaps better.

  • Social Bookmarking or... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Admiral Justin ( 628358 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:35AM (#12086422) Homepage Journal
    Is it just me, or can you see spammers hitting these kinda sites soon....

    Granted, not everyone would be upset with a flood of porn links... *cough*

    But, like any thing that may at some time be 'good', it will go bad.
  • ... calm down, this isn't quite the heresy the subject line indicates it to be ;-).

    Having an open-source implementation of social bookmarking similar to del.icio.us [del.icio.us] is nifty, and kudos to the author for writing it. But what does the user actually gain by switching? Del.icio.us already has a web-service API (complete with Python wrapper [hackdiary.com]) and RSS feeds of its data. The above link shows that the development process is already pretty open -- follow it and the links from there to see what people have done with del.icio.us.

    Users of the new service will not be able to take advantage of the network effect that del.icio.us already has going for it; given that we're talking about social sites, this is significant. So, to summarize, yay source code, but what is the benefit here?
    • Well, what if a group of people want their own private shared bookmarks with god only knows what modifications? Maybe for an intranet? Parents who only want to allow their children net access from a rather large set of bookmarks? This source code is their start.

      In terms of your statement that "Users of the new service will not be able to take advantage of the network effect that del.icio.us already has going for it", you remind me of the quote about howt 5 computers should be enough for the US. Why

  • How do you use it? (Score:4, Informative)

    by PhracturedBlue ( 224393 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:46AM (#12086474)
    Ok, call me clueless, I've never heard of social-bookmarking, but I faithfully clicked on the link, and it looks like a very cool idea. It could make it easy to find specialty sites. As someone else said, it's like a human-filtered google. But one thing seems to be missing....How do you search?
    I'd like to see a list of ALL availiable tags. Or search for tags associated with one of my bookmarks (to try to find similar sites) But I see no such capability. Do you need to login to use it? I looked at del.icio.us, and at least there it appears I may get additional functionality by registering, but I see no point in that. Why force me to register in order to search other people's bookmarks (assuming I need to)?
    Or is this is meant by 'cook up additional tools'? Forgive me, but the site layout is atrocious, and it really seems like there is very limited capability to me.

    Oh well. Maybe I'm bitching about nothing. Id so, please show me.

  • I'm a fan of Furl (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MSBob ( 307239 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:48AM (#12086480)
    I'm a fan of furl.net not because of its bookmark sharing but mostly because of the bookmark search capability. I tend to bookmark lots of pages (hundreds per year) and no built in bookmarking is sufficient.

    The main reason why those services are so useful is bookmark searching. They allow you (at least furl does) to search for keywords within the pages you bookmarked effectively turning it into your "personal Google". It changes the way you work with bookmarks.

    As for sharing bookmarks, furl gives you a preference option where you can have all your bookmarks private by default if it bothers you when they are shared.

    • The difference, to me, between furl and delicious is that the latter was created by someone with a clue. Furl gives away on the front-page that they're not going anywhere:

      "... the greatest Internet tool since Google!"

      Remember kids. Fake testemonials limit your audience to a very certain kind of people. You're not getting the "alpha-geeks" that way.

  • A project is only as good as its accessibility (Score:5, Insightful)

    by humankind ( 704050 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:56AM (#12086512) Journal
    This is a classic example of what may be a valuable application without an accessible interface. You may have some good ideas but the initial presentation of the system and its value and functionality is somewhat uncertain. You can have the best idea in the world, but if you can't present this idea in what's typically coined as an "elevator pitch" you will fail.

    I hit the site. I couldn't tell what to do. I generally like the idea of ranking and sharing bookmarks but I couldn't tell how your technology or system had anything to do with it.

    Someone else will come along. Maybe with a less capable system, but with a better way of translating and explaining the value of such an application and they will trump you. Sometimes if you're too engrossed into the technical details you can screw yourself over. Either you will adapt quickly, or someone else will take your idea and make it more marketable, but what I see right now won't work.

  • Why social bookmarking is kinda cool (Score:4, Informative)

    by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:56AM (#12086520)
    Several comments above say, "I don't get why it's cool." Here's my take on it:
    1: You can access your bookmarks from many computers
    2: You can check out the "popular links" on the site to see what's probably going to show up on slashdot tomorrow.
    3: You can tag bookmarks with multiple tags, so they can be accessed from multiple folders.
    4: Great way to share cool links with a group of friends.
    5: Firefox RSS feed of your own bookmarks = totally slick

    • And now, social bookmarking problems. (Score:5, Informative)

      by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @02:01AM (#12086533)
      Of course, it does have problems, too.
      1: When the social bookmarking goes down, you've effectively got no bookmarks. (Foxylicious helps, but it can still be annoying when the site goes down.)
      2: You can leak information about yourself, and if the URL contains any secret information, you're really screwed.
      3: There's no way easy way save a hierarchy and have it integrate into the browser in a slick way.
      4: It gets spammed every so often (people trying to get their links onto the popular page, for example)
  • another service, which throwing random bookmarck generated by "like-minded" person - http://www.stumbleupon.com/ This one having nice firefox tool bar.

  • Collaborative Aggregation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by psytrance ( 807019 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @02:27AM (#12086641)
    Collaborative Aggregation answers an extremely important need: Aggregated web pages form an answer to some research question, be it a one page discussion or the name of a bookmark folder. It is the mechanism of choice for sharing information that is included in more than one web page - contrasted with information that is part of a web page, e.g. how many guns there are in the US, or with information that is *A* web page, e.g. where is the order page for an O'Reilly book.

    While StumbleUpon (mentioned above somewhere) is nice, and Amazon has their booklist sharing function (which I'm sure they've patented, *hmpf*), the contender for social bookmarking seems to be Google Answers [google.com], from the Expert Sites category. However, rather than cross-referencing and indexing their DB, Google choose to let users mine it with (surprise) a search function, so you need to do some digging if the question is not well-defined and this causes the product to be pretty immature IMHO.

    An extension of the concept into Wikipedia would be WikiStrings (suggested name), a group of terms spanning otherwise unrelated topics, plus a text field - the WikiString term - which explains the informational value of packaging the terms together, e.g. "Why Nationality is Stupid WikiString", "Lifestyle Impact of Full-Blown VR WikiString", "Info for Avoiding Media Manipulations WikiString", etc.

    In all collab. aggregation is hot. Good luck!!!!!
    -Yuval
    Tel Aviv
  • I think what's important here isn't the value of social bookmarks, it's about communities of people getting together and sharing interests. It isn't a cry for attention, it's people finding different outlets to express themself with. What's the big deal with social bookmarks, if found someone with similar interests, then there is no reason we can't easily share information. Same goes for blogs, no one is forcing you to read about someone's life, however there are people who enjoy posting to there blog, a
  • When first skimming the headline, I read it as "Open Source Social Bookmaking Service" and though "wow, neat idea, a free distributed gambling service. Without the bookmaker/local native American tribe taking a cut, betting on sports events would become financially fair and interesting (as long as you manage to get around the taxman)"

    Oh well, maybe someday...

  • Penny Arcade (Score:3, Funny)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @05:37AM (#12087211) Journal
    Is it me, or was there a ton of links to Penny Arcade on that site?

    Now, seeing the same URL multiple times, and a crappy search feature, more like, the lack of a search feature. I'm not understanding how this is of any use.

    And to top it of, no porn URLS?! I dont need more personal blog urls.

    No thanks.
  • I think social bookmarking and tagging would be more interesting when combined with collaborative ranking:

  • Short of it going down hard, I see no reason to leave Del.ico.us for this service. Del.ico.us has given me more than I have ever given it.

  • CTRL-V (Score:3, Interesting)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @10:07AM (#12088470) Homepage
    Too bad Pirated Sites [pirated-sites.com] is down.

    Basically, what Steve Mallet did, creator of Del.irio.us, is take the design, the idea, and most of the features of delicious, and copy and paste them with a special "open-source" CTRL-V buttons (he's since changed the site layout and design it would seem - to none at all)

    Not unsurprisingly, there has been a flurry of discussion about del.icio.us on the del.icio.us listserv [del.icio.us]. Most of it is fairly constructive and thoughtful. I think what bothers me the most isn't that yet another social bookmarking engine is springing up. Furl and Spurl have been around for a while and there are few minor ones. But each of these generally adds something new to the mix, such as private bookmarks, or longer comments, or better integration with the browser. Del.irio.us doesn't add anything new at all.

    Except maybe open-source. Yay.

    It reminds me of the goold ole days, when one friend who wanted to run a BBS copied all the files and ANSI from another friend who had been running a BBS for years. Morale of the story? The second, copied, BBS sucked and died because the "creator" didn't have any innovation or creativity in him anyway. That's my call on delirious.

  • Strange (Score:3, Funny)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @11:45AM (#12089552) Homepage
    Suddenly the .us domain name registration costs are going up.

  • Entirely? (Score:3, Funny)

    by slashkitty ( 21637 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @12:38PM (#12090241) Homepage
    "the code is entirely open" links to 404 not found. I guess it's not as open as they thought.

  • historyagent... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by joeldg ( 518249 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:24PM (#12090846) Homepage
    I built historyagent.com for myself..
    I like del.icio.us and the like, but wanted to build my own thing and add more types of feeds, have page icons and quick sorting..

    It isn't perfect, but works better for me personally than the others did at the time, and I needed it fully searchable.

    This is great though.. glad to see an open source version out there.. If this was done about six months ago it would have saved me some coding.

  • Creative Commons but non-commercial restricted (Score:3, Informative)

    by lennier ( 44736 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @05:05PM (#12093970) Homepage
    Note that the Creative Commons button on the de.lirio.us site shows it to be using BY-NC-SA, ie, with the NonCommercial variant.

    If I understand correctly, that's not compatible with the GFDL even in spirit, ie, you can't pull de.lirio.us data into Wikipedia. You also couldn't legally put an extract of that data, _or any derivative dataset_, into an RPM package that could be included on any Linux boxed CD set.

    Be careful of collaborative projects that use NonCommercial, especially with ShareAlike. It puts a lot of restrictions on what you might want to do later down the track. I don't think it would be worthwhile my contributing to a project like this simply because the licence means the data is useless to me.

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