Learn & Play @CML Thing #13 Delicious

This is a story about a journey that ends and continues at Delicious.

Getting there was, well it is kind of ironic.

Finishing the Mac to PC migration I decided I wanted to have a "perfect set of Favorites" to have on all the computers I use.

My incredibly organized wife helped me pare down and organize the Favorites from each of our computers. We created folders for Finance, News, Sports, and so on with subcategories as well. We saved the file to each of our computers. Voila! Right?

Not so much... The very next week, I was searching for something at work and found a site I wanted to add to my favorites. Immediately it occurred to me that I was only adding it to my work profile and not the computers at home. Well darn it!

Of course with Delicious I wouldn't have had this problem. But wait, there's more.

Recently, my friend LibraryJoy suggested I give Firefox a try. Okay - why not?

I imported my favorites into Firefox and started digging around. Some of the features in Firefox allowed me to organize my Favorites, now Bookmarks even more.

But hmmm... how was I going to get this all back to work where changes to my Firefox browser wiped out everyday, (forcing the continued use of IE 7) and to Netter's computer where she still uses IE 7.

The answer is Delicious!

I signed up for an account and imported my bookmarks. Delicious is so intuitive that it saw all my "categories" as tags and BAM! (as Emeril would say) - I was done.

Well not done completely - I'm going to reorganize a few things, decide what to share and not share, you know in general poke around.

But in this Delicious bit of irony - I don't mind at all.

Everything should be so easy...

Learn & Play @ CML Thing #11 Library Thing

Library Thing could become one of those things, that finds its way onto my list of things to do. The thing is I really like to organize my things, and keep things in order. Some might say I have an O.C.D. thing. Alright that's enough with the things.

To be a little more serious, - when I first heard about Library Thing, I was skeptical about its application for my purposes. While there was a time when I read quite a bit, I just don't much anymore. In fact, I just told a colleague today that the book I read during the power outage on Sunday was maybe my third of the year.

Still, everyone talks about Library Thing quite a bit so I thought I should at least check it out and get a feel for it so I could provide a hands-on recommendation and / or review where necessary. I do work in a library after all and "library things" sometimes tend to come up.

Day 1 - I signed up for an account, added a book, poked around a bit and came away confused for some reason. Is this supposed to be books that I've read or books that I want to read or what?

Day 2 - My wife informed me that she had tried Library Thing as a possible replacement or supplement to the database she already keeps of all the books that she has read. Netter said Library Thing is a great tool, but it cut her off at 200 titles, (the free account allotment) although she was only in the "C's" on her list. Since Netter already has her own database she didn't want to spend the money to go beyond 200.

Netter also took the time to explain Library Thing clearly for Jimmer's addled mind and off I went to check it out again. So...

Day 3 - I began by adding my favorite books, and the books I read most recently. Then I started tagging them noting that there was a theme of sorts in my reading. Okay - this might be useful after all I thought. In fact this could become pretty addicting, one of those all encompassing Jimmer projects. Uh-Oh!

So, I sent Netter an email asking if maybe she wanted to pay for an account for both of us to use. (See then it’s not just Jimmer’s project.) She said she was happy with her database adding "Plus the Library Thing doesn't let you put in the date of when you read it - which helps me remember details if I can sort by date and see what else I read around that same time." There’s probably a work-around for this like the comments field, (unless you’re using it for comments) but if you already have a database built I understand your standards becoming a little higher.

I don't know where I'll go from here with Library Thing. I know it would be a great tool for organizing my books on coaching for example, or the many books I seem to read about life lessons. Well maybe not that many – at 3 per year, it will take a long time to get to 200.

If you want to check it out - this is Jimmer's Library Thing.

Library Thing has found its way onto my project list. Whether it is the short list of things or the long list of things has yet to be determined.