Yahoo has revamped Delicious, saying the site for storing, describing, and sharing Web site bookmarks is faster, easier to use, and has better search abilities.
The updated look to Yahoo's Delicious Web site for storing, searching, tagging, and sharing bookmarks. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: Yahoo)The speedup comes from a new server system that's snappier and more reliable, Yahoo said on its Delicious blog on Thursday. "You may not have noticed, but the old back-end was getting creaky under the load of 5 million users," the company said.
But for me, half the productivity gains will come from a rebranding of the service. No more will my fingers trip over my keyboard trying to type "del.icio.us," the old name of the service, because Yahoo now is calling it just plain old Delicious. (And conveniently conforming with CNET's ages-old spelling in the process.)
"We've seen a zillion different confusions and misspellings of 'del.icio.us' over the years (for example, 'de.licio.us', 'del.icio.us.com', and 'del.licio.us'), so moving to delicious.com will make it easier for people to find the site and share it with their friends," Yahoo said. The name change also means users will have to log in again.
The older Delicious limited descriptions of bookmarks to 255 characters, a cap that gave some appeal to rivals such as Ma.gnolia, but the new Delicious raises it to 1,000 characters. However, the Firefox plug-in I'm using to tag sites still imposes the 255-character limit.
Though Yahoo is working to unify its profiles, Delicious accounts are still separate from those at Flickr, Yahoo Mail.
Delicious founder Joshua Schachter left Yahoo in June.
Here's Yahoo's official word on the changes:
Speed: We've moved to a new infrastructure that makes every page faster. This new platform will enable us to keep up with traffic growth while ensuring Delicious is responsive and reliable...
Search: We've completely overhauled our search engine to make it faster and more powerful. Searches used to take ages to return results; now they're very quick. The new search engine is also smarter, and more social: you can search within one of your tags, another user's public bookmarks, or your social network. Now it's easier to take advantage of the expertise and interests of your friends, not to mention the Delicious community at large.
Design: Finally, we've updated the user interface to improve usability and add a few often-requested features (such as selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks). Our goal has been to keep the new design similar in spirit to the old one, so all of you veterans should be able to jump in without any confusion. At the same time, we're hoping that newcomers to Delicious will find it easier to learn.
The Delicious plug-in makes it easier to add descriptive tags to bookmarks stored at the Delicious site.
(Credit: Yahoo)Investors and industry watchers may have their eyes on Yahoo's executive departures and coming reorganization, but for most people involved with Yahoo are just users of the company's technology.
Which is why it's interesting that Yahoo released a version of its Delicious plug-in for Internet Explorer on Thursday. (Download Delicious Internet Explorer extension 1.0 for Windows.)
The plug-in, which Yahoo released in beta form in May, makes it easier for people to use the Delicious "social bookmarking" site. Delicious lets people store Web page bookmarks on a central server, label them with a description and tags, and share them with others.
Delicious got its plug-in start with the open-source Firefox browser, but the site can be used by anyone with a browser without plug-ins. The Yahoo plug-in works with IE 6, IE 7 and should work with the IE 8 beta, but Yahoo isn't making any promises.
Yahoo now offers a beta version of its Delicious browser plug-in for online bookmarking functions.
(Credit: Yahoo)Delicious, Yahoo's "social bookmarking" site that lets people archive, tag, and share Web site addresses, got its start closely tied to the Firefox open-source Web browser (download Delicious for Firefox). Now Yahoo is branching out to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, too.
The company released a beta version of the IE plug-in Tuesday (available on Download.com). Though there are differences, the IE version is similar, offering users the ability to add and tag bookmarks and to search their own bookmark collection.
"We're very excited about this release, as we have many users who use Internet Explorer as their primary browser," said Nick Nguyen, senior product manager for Delicious, in a Delcious blog postint Tuesday.
The software works on IE 6, IE 7, and the IE 8 beta on Windows XP and Vista, Yahoo said.
Well, it took a few months, but Yahoo on Wednesday caught up to Firefox 3 with a beta plug-in for its Delicious bookmarking service.
The Firefox add-on for Delicious "now has full Firefox 3 support while retaining Firefox 2 compatibility," said Nick Nguyen, senior product manager for Delicious, in a blog posting.
Delicious lets people save their bookmarks online, tag them with descriptive keywords, and share them with other Delicious members.
It's only one plug-in, I know, but since I'd griped about its absence before, it's only fair for me to call out its availability for download now.
Firefox has a wealth of plug-ins to extend its abilities, but several don't work on Firefox 3, which is still in beta. Delicious is one very widely used tool, so the new plug-in should help lower barriers significantly.
The new plug-in also has a handful of features. None struck me as major, though the low-profile "classic mode" sounds promising; check the blog for a list.
Hooeey is a new bookmarking and tracking service for your browsing habits. You install a small toolbar in your browser, and it will quietly keep tabs on all your tabs, including which sites you're going to, how long you're staying at each one, and when you're doing it. At the same time, Hooeey adds a social networking layer, letting you share specific sites with others, both on the Hooeey network, and other, larger social bookmarking services like Del.icio.us and Reddit. The goal is to let you centralize your favorites, and make them easier to share with others, while combining some facets of other free tracking services like Google Web History to let you see which services you're visiting the most.
If this entire concept sounds familiar, there's also the now defunct Atten.TV, which recorded people's Web browsing as it happened, so it could be shared with others. An idea we thought was a little too invasive, and apparently users did, too.
So why would you install something like this? The idea behind Hooeey is combining what is usually two separate services into one. The actual tracking function is likely already done in your browser, but in this case is better equated to Google Web History, because your history is stored online instead of your local browser installation. Hooeey also has another leg up on your browser's history file because it works with both platforms, meaning if you're using Internet Explorer and Firefox, your history from both browsers will be recorded in the same space.
Keep an eye on all your activity and tag every place you've gone for easy categorization later.
(Credit: Hooeey.com)To help you track all this data, Hooeey has a built-in analytics service which will break down your browsing habits with all sorts of handy charts and graphs. You can then go in and hand pick whatever sites you want for tagging and sharing. Maybe the most interesting feature to come out of this is the WebTour, which takes your hand-picked links and turns them into slide shows of your links. You can annotate each and rearrange each site's order, as well as theme it with a background feed. The concept is a lot like Diigo's recently launched Webslides feature, although a little less feature-rich.
I'm both fascinated and terrified of this idea, as I'm already pretty freaked out by some of the tracking initiatives popping up on the Web, including YouTube's now watching and public history features. The good news about Hooeey is that there's a decent amount of work involved in setting it up, yet it's really simple to toggle the tracking feature on and off. If you're a Google Web History user looking for a little bit more versatility with your data, Hooeey is definitely worth a look. Considering you can use both services at the same time, it might make for an interesting head-to-head after a month of use.
Del.icio.us, the hugely popular social bookmarking service, has finally unveiled its new look. It's the biggest visual change the site's had since its launch in 2003, and the result of nearly a year's worth of work. Besides a face-lift, the service has undergone several enhancements, both in how you browse new links and search through them. Of course, this new site isn't open to everyone. In classic Web 2.0 form, access is limited to a select few in the form of a beta preview the Del.icio.us team is using for feedback before rolling out the changes to everyone.
The site first announced its intentions of a massive re-design in early February, and just a few months back noted some fun statistics about their usability testing lab, which had apparently used more than 2,000 Post-it Notes to organize observations about the re-design. This may not sound too impressive, which is why I'd recommend taking a look at this picture, which gives me headache just to look at.
The first thing you'll notice about the new Del.icio.us is that the name has forgone its dots to simply be known as "Delicious." Besides making it easier for newbies to pronounce, it's also a departure from its roots of a small, independent Web site who was one of the first to pioneer the gloriously cheesy domain name hack, a practice that's even led to a startup that figures them out for you. The other thing you'll notice is that there's more emphasis on tags, and tagging in general, as they've been given a much more prevalent look and presence throughout the site.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
The real change, however, is in search and navigation, which have both been streamlined and made faster. The old Delicious search was a tad on the sluggish side, whereas the new search is noticeably faster. The results have also been improved to show you who was the first to save it as a bookmark, along with pushing the tags out to the side in case you feel like drilling down by genre. The navigation now features drop-down menus to let you quickly drill down to various parts of the site, skipping an extra page view or two.
When it comes to actually creating new bookmarks on the Delicious site, the process is like Miss South Carolina: pretty but slow. Despite the advances in page design, you still have to navigate through two separate pages to add a new link via URL. I prefer the newer trend of opening up a lightbox pop-up to let me enter in information, and then getting shot back to the page I was viewing before. There's a handy bookmarklet to add whatever page you're visiting, which is actually the fastest way to add new content to the site short of clicking a site-integrated "add to Delicious" button, but the current system is still prohibitive for batch link uploading.
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Featured on this week's Real Deal podcast: Synchronizing two computers. If you want to know how to keep yourself sane if you regularly use more than one PC, tune into this show for a rundown of my tips on how to keep files, bookmarks, and e-mail synchronized over the Web.
How to make sure your work on one PC shows up on another.
Products mentioned:
- FolderShare
- LogMeIn
- SimplifyMedia
- Orb
- FoxMarks
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AuditoriumA is a thoroughly ancient idea wrapped in a modern interface. The site is a collection of links (with commentary), hand-chosen by the site's editors and with the occasional help of the audience. It's the fanciest link-blog I've seen, and the stories are of high quality. At least it appears so to me--and it also appears that founder Tony Mars and I have similar tastes in content.
AuditoriumA's blog directory. Hey! We're on it! (We'll see how long that lasts...)
There will be a paid version of AuditoriumA when it is released later this year.
But as much as I like the content on the site, I question the business model. A paid directory? What is this, AOL? While I may bemoan the quality of community link sites like Digg, I still spend hours on it, jumping around the entertaining and informative sites to which it links. The basic model makes more sense for both users and the people who run sites: Find a community you like, and let the hive-mind drive. See StumbleUpon, for example. Or Del.icio.us.
Mars says that his site's hand-picked content will be compelling to people who don't have the time or inclination to participate in a community site. He wants to reach people who want great content but don't want to work to find it. And he thinks some people will pay his company to do that work for them.
Maybe some will, but it's a big, big gamble. You can try out the private beta yourself. Use this link for a special Webware sign-up.
See also: Mahalo.
A new site named fooWHO grabbed my attention earlier today. It pitches itself as a delivery service for links and stories that are "just for you." The site bases this presumption off of a rather lengthy personality test that you fill out at your leisure, consisting of questions in a dozen different categories, ranging from arts and entertainment all the way to your taste in automobiles and their transmissions. The remainder of the service is very similar to Reddit, with a front page of popular stories and a pool of submitted links that can be rated up or down. The hope is that you will be able to discover new links that are both popular to everyone, and a smattering of those that match your tastes.
Once an item is rated, fooWHO will break down which personality types it's the most popular with--based on the highest number of people who have answered a certain question the same way. From there, you can click on the question to find links people have voted on with the same disposition. There's a very exploratory nature about it.
One of the most innovative, and perhaps necessary, features of fooWHO that I really wish would makes its way into a service like Digg, is giving trusted members (read: heavy users) editing privileges for story titles and descriptions. If Wikipedia has proven anything (well, maybe not lately), community editing can work if judgment and reservation are used.
In the meantime, fooWHO is missing some key add-ons to help grow out the site and aid users in adding links--like submission tools and ways to promote items on blogs and Web sites. I still prefer Reddit, Digg, and Del.icio.us for serving up new and interesting links over fooWHO's system, but recommendation engines like StumbleUpon have proven that the wisdom of the crowds can be harnessed effectively with a little user elbow grease.
fooWHO is a little bit like Reddit and Digg put together, and look it even has a section for photos!
(Credit: CNET Networks)
I'm not going to beat around the bush here, Streamy is a Web service I've been looking forward to getting my hands on for some time now. Well, to be exact, it's been just more than a month since I first heard about it, from a mysterious YouTube video that caught my attention. I was lucky enough to get an invite to the still-private service earlier today. I've been testing it for the last hour or so and am already impressed. Not because it looks really flashy (which it does), but because it has the groundwork for a very socialized surfing experience without requiring you to install a new Web browser, or discontinue using services you're already familiar with.
In a nutshell, the service is a hybrid between Digg, Facebook, your favorite instant-messaging client, Google Reader, Twitter, and Del.icio.us. By its very name, Streamy is a mashup service. It pulls together a variety of your social streams: be it your favorite blog feeds, news alerts, or friends updates, and rolls them up into a slick package.
On the social networking and bookmarking side of things, every user gets a profile and an online presence. You can fill the profile with all sorts of information about yourself, but the real clincher here is a listing of what feeds you're subscribed to and groups you've joined. The feed reader itself lets you subscribe to as many RSS feeds as you'd like and view them all without having to leave the page. If there's any embedded content like video or music players, that comes along for the ride too.
If you find anything interesting while browsing, you can share it in several ways. There's the typical "e-mail this" option and quick links to publish it to the Streamy community, to a group you're a member of, or your friends. Much of the interface is drag and drop, and as an "aha!" moment earlier, I shared something with another Streamy user by simply dragging a story headline onto their buddy icon. Cool.
I intend on giving Streamy some more of my time to really get a feel for how it handles a huge influx of feed subscriptions and a growing user base as the service opens up. In the meantime, here are some screenshots of the interface. There are several more after the jump, so be sure to click the "read more" link below.
The front page of Streamy shows off the hottest stories of the day, along with story recommendations for you based on your RSS subscriptions and what you've clicked on.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
