Bookmarking

This is a very user-friendly site. I can see why it’s so popular and also why it’s sad it might be going away (though I’m not sure why the new owner would take it down if it’s so popular). I have not much looked into social bookmarking, but the convenience would be amazing. I love that delicious has the recent bookmarks tab so that you can browse others’ bookmarks. That is an excellent way to get info about new things that I may never have stumbled across. I also like that there is a “most popular” option so that when things of the moment are happening I can view them. According to about.com, delicious is “the standard by which other social bookmarking websites are measured.” I also agree with about.com in their claims that less is more with this site. I was surprised at how unattractive it was when it loaded, but I agree that in this case, less is more. One thing I found that bugged me, though, is that there didn’t seem to be a very accessible “how this works” link or anything for new users. I try to look into a program first before I sign up, but I had to sign up with this to even play around with it and see what it could do. On the flip side, sign up was easy since I already have a Google account. I just logged in with that and was good to go. Another down side: I HAD to share my info with yahoo.com to get in at all even though I signed up with my Google account.
 * Delicious **

This site is far better than delicious, I think. You do lose the less is more philosophy here, but you do get far more. As an educator, you can sign up for a regular account and then ask for the educator upgrade, which is really cool. That allows the following (copied from the site): This application could be excellent for class-sized collaboration or even small group collaboration within a class. Note to self: use this in the future! Anyway, the ads being school appropriate is just one more benefit so that ads with half naked women aren’t on the edges of the site needed for school work. There is still the concern that kids can communicate in an unsupervised manner through messages though. Depending on the class and kids, that could lead to some potentially serious issues. However, if one class is writing an essay on a certain topic (say, Salem Witch Trials), the teacher or librarian could go through and set up a bunch of links for the kids so that they just log on and go to the sites already saved. This is excellent for classes with kids who aren’t too trustworthy, for a project where the research process isn’t the focus, or for a topic where most site would be blocked (this is true for our school with Salem Witch Trials since “Witch” is apparently unmentionable). By preparing links in advance so as to avoid blocked ones, teachers can limit the frustration that kids feel and if the information is more important than how the kids get it, Diigo would be perfect.
 * Diigo **
 * · You can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation)
 * · Students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and annotations, and group forums.
 * · Privacy settings of student accounts are pre-set so that only teachers and classmates can communicate with them.
 * · Ads presented to student account users are limited to education-related sponsors.

Another awesome thing about Diigo is that you can post sticky notes to organize yourself and allows you to highlight portions of pages when you bookmark them. This is fantastic since I often save pages and then go back and can’t for the life of me remember why on earth I saved that page. I think that Diigo will become my main account since I can have educator access but I can also block my students from seeing my own bookmarked pages.

The reviews I looked at Diigo were all good, better than delicious on the whole. And as a random fact, which you probably found anyway, Diigo stands for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff” Evernote is something I have looked into before. However, I do not find it nearly as lovely as Diigo. It claims to do a good deal, but all it really does is store screenshots, create a list of text notes and bookmark. All the suggestions Evernote offers, such as keeping lists of gifts for others and yourself, keeling lists or restaurants you like, and capturing plane ticket information are all things that require a camera with internet access or a screenshot. This seems pretty inconvenient unless you have an awesome phone (which I don’t). So once you sift through the propaganda, the only thing it does is save pictures, bookmark, and take screenshots. It is nice that you can organize everything by tagging it, but that is a common feature found in nearly all sites similar to this one. One thing that makes Evernote stand out is that you can record voice notes too, but Diigo still stands out to me more than Evernote.
 * Evernote **

It seems that many sites are preparing for the disappearance of Delicious. Both Diigo and Google Bookmarks allow users to import Delicious bookmarks, which is handy if you already have a Delicious account and want to switch. One thing I find appealing about Google Bookmarks is that you can make your bookmarks and lists private while the other sites are far more public. So in a way, the thing that makes Delicious cool (that you get to see everything) is the thing that makes it uncool too. I like that I can control my privacy more and apparently easier with Google Bookmarks. Since I use Google all the time, it’s also convenient. A la Delicious, Google Bookmarks is a simple page without a lot of frills. However, Diigo offers more and can tie to your Google account so it still seems the better choice. However, Google Bookmarks allows you to avoid the faux pas of bookmarking your own links. A review I looked at on Delicious warned that bookmarking only your own posts on blogs and things to get them noticed by others is frowned upon and can backfire as people may refuse to go there. Honestly, I’d rather just make my stuff private than have to worry about the whole web-connected world thinking poorly of me!
 * Google Bookmarks **