I don’t sync my browser bookmarks with my del.icio.us bookmarks. The possibility that some of my browser bookmarks might become public is enough to keep me from setting up a way to keep everything organized. In general, my bookmarking strategy is this:

• Browser bookmarks are for frequently used sites
• Del.icio.us bookmarks are for articles and posts that are interesting or helpful, or require further attention (finish reading, further research on subject etc.)

This strategy makes it easier to go through bookmarks that end up in my browser “Favorites”. If the site doesn’t fit into either of these categories, it is deleted.

5 tips for Weeding out your Browser Bookmarks

1. If you are using firefox or safari or another browser that has tabbed browsing, make sure to use the open in tabs feature. Not familiar with this feature? You can view all of the sites in a folder without double clicking all of the links in that folder. Just right click on the folder in your bookmarks sidebar, and select “Open in Tabs”.
2. Match your bookmark organization with your file system organization. For instance, if your My Documents folder has three sub-folders (school, work, media), then your browser bookmark folders should also atleast have school, work and media folders.
3. Unsure about whether to delete some set of bookmarks? Write a post on your blog about them. I was unsure about whether or not to delete some links to scholarship sites that I had been saving. So, I wrote a short post about those scholarship opportunities and posted them here. Now, not only do I still have access to those links, I have passed on some information that someone else might find useful.
4. Still unsure about whether or not to delete a bookmark? Don’t delete it. Maintain a large “Reference” folder; this is where most of your bookmarks should be. The links in the Reference folder are what you are going to look through when you are trying to find that awesome site you used three years ago to create a presentation that you have been asked to give again.
5. Create action folders. I use to.buy, to.blog, to.read, to.try and email. I like these folders because I can quickly put links here and not worry if they stay there for a while or if I forget about them.

My favorite thing about del.icio.us is that there are lots of things to do with the app without downloading an extension or spending an hour or hundred ;-) with the API writing code. These are my list of very simple things you can do with del.icio.us without needing extra del.icio.us tools.

1. Add del.icio.us to your rss feed. If you have a site or blog on a particular topic, a great way to find ideas for new articles or posts is to go through all of the posts tagged as your topic everyday. Do it quickly, though. Depending on the keyword(s), there may be too many sites to go through easily.
2. Create a Fashion LookBook, like this one by tagging flickr photos as “lookbook” or “to_try”.
3. If you keep up with you favorite bands using del.icio.us, you are going to be suprised at the music you discover by voyering someone else’s music. Use the FtF rule (ahem, the find the first rule). Come on, you know you do it! Find the First del.icio.us user to tag a site/band/artist you like and see what kind of crazy music links they are savin’!
4. Take some time to actually go back through and review all of your del.icio.us bookmarks. Which bookmarks have been the most useful to you? Are they particular articles or posts or links to home pages or large site?
5. Share links with study buddies, students, coworkers, family… you know, like people you know in real life. For example, here are my math links. If I were in a math class right now, I might share this page with group project members or someone I was tutoring.
6. Tag sites that you use in creating a presentation with a single tag (e.g. “some_presentation”). With that tag, you now have an instant resource for remembering how you pulled the presenation together and a bibliography.
7. Make your own del.icio.us vocabulary. Don’t want the world to know you think some site totally sucks? Mark it as “~g” or whatever. Pick some characters and make them mean something.
8. Find things quickly away from home. Need your favorite pumpkin pie recipe when baking at your mother’s house? If you have bookmarked on del.icio.us, you don’t have to google pumpkin pie and then search through all of the recipes to find the one that uses brown sugar. And no, this particular recipe does not show up on the first page when you google pumpkin pie brown sugar.
9. Did you leave your ipod at home? Look for music that has been bookmarked.
10. Tag Liberally… it feels good. As you might have guessed, I tag liberally (as in at least 5 tags per post) because you never know what weird kinds of things you are going to be looking for in the future. For me, as well, it is a way of being more articulate about the reasons I am marking the site.
11. Bring you obsessions into your consciousness. What tags are you using the most? Are you surpised? You can find out which tags you are using the most by selecting sort by freq. in the tag options on your main del.cio.us account page. Ok, so what you bookmark doesn’t capture what you put your time into, but they do give you a general idea of the sites you think you will need in the future.

Sample lists, comments and tasks on del.icio.us

Keep a variety of Lists:

• Tag sites you are using in your business plan as “business_plan”
• name_of_your_project

Comment on sites by giving them special tags like:

• good_writing
• funny
• weird
• gross
• f’‘ed_up
• competition

Create Tasks for yourself:

• to_do
• to_read
• to_blog
• to_research
• put_on_adgenda
• email_to_phil (because he is so uncool and doesn’t have a del.icio.us account—I do not want to imply that people who do not have del.icio.us accounts are uncool, rather I am just trying to get Phil to get an account!)
• don’t_forget