Friday, May 29, 2009

Delicious' bad taste

They say you should never go to bed angry; maybe you shouldn't blog after getting beat down by technology either.

After seeing this (trying to add delicious to my blog):

job_name is the name for your posting job, which can be anything
out_username is the login name you use for your blog
out_password is the password you use for your blog
out_url is the full URL of the XML-RPC interface for your blog
out_blog_id is your blog ID number (which is probably 1 if you have only one blog)
out_cat_id is optional: the category ID number in your blog where you'd like to put these posts
out_hour is the hour (from 0-23 in UTC) to post your links at daily

or when trying to put the "social" in social bookmarking by adding button to my toolbar:

Installation denied: Abort, retry, cancel.

Maybe I'll give it another shot at home but for crying out loud if you have to work this hard to shave a few seconds off I'll pass. I don't need the hassle.

Here is what my hopes for Delicious are/have been/were.

While on the desk, roving during our new Model of Service approach, or being on SPL's new "Text a Librarian 24/7" desk from 2-3AM (I'll take the graveyard shift for awhile) I have a portable Internet device of my dreams in my hand. A teen mentions how much they liked Patterson's Maximum Overdrive books and now that school is out they would like a few recommendations. At this point I would pull up my Delicious account and search my tags for the perfect list of suggestions. I could zap them off to the patron's Blackberry or phone or laptop or take them to the shelf where we have the title.

So far I'm having difficulty finding out how to get to this point. I do, however, like a couple of things about Delicious. First, tags allow me the luxury of more specificity in categorizing sites than simple bookmarks. In the above example I could tag this site http://www.flamingnet.com/ with multiple descriptions such as "series recommendations" "I need a new book to read" or "I'm bored and want a fast-paced action series". A bookmark folder named "Teen book reviews" is too broad. I would have to create several bookmark folders with specific names and put the same website in each folder. I prefer using multiple tags for one site. Second, I did a search on U2 and found a gem of a site. It contained a list of fan-written descriptions of the meaning behind many of their songs. Another site had the Biblical references in each of their songs. This filtering of sites is quite helpful and I am a fan of this tool.

For now I will redouble my efforts to create a better collection of bookmarks for my time on the desk. I'd like to have my Delicious account open when I come out to the desk; it is more efficient than "favorites" and doesn't require me transferring them from my office to the front desk, and vice versa.

1 comment:

  1. Well, due to IT-related constraints, you wouldn't have been able to add the delicious button to your toolbar (lame, I know). Beyond that, I'm no huge fan of delicious anyway. But I do love your imagining ways to improve service!

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