"del.icio.us" is fun to type.

Week #6 - Thing #13: discover del.icio.us & tagging. Tagging is a cool way to organize just about anything. It's simply attaching key search words to a particular piece of content. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. It allows you to catalog all of your favorite websites and tag them so you and/or other users can find them easily. You can also view how many people have a specific website bookmarked. I searched for the tag "23 things". The PLCMC library's "official learning 2.0" blog came up. 941 del.icio.us users have this site bookmarked. If you click on the number of bookmarks, it takes you to a page that lets you see exactly who else has that site bookmarked, and also, any comments that users have posted about that site. Some comments on this learning 2.0 blog were: "Get your library up to date", and "designed to encourage staff to explore new technologies".
I can see how surfing through del.icio.us could take up a ton of someone's time. Sharing your bookmarks allows others to find some hidden gems in the world wide web! I found a cool google map mashup. Dig to the Other Side. It lets you pick your location on one side of the world, and then shows you where you would end up if you dug a hole to the other side of the world. If I dug a hole in my bedroom to the other side of the earth, I'd end up in the indian ocean off the coast of australia!
I think another way del.icio.us can serve you is by giving you a place to access your bookmarks from any computer. It would also be a useful research tool to use, while searching in del.icio.us for sites with specific tags, you can see what other sites were tagged similarly that may not have shown up in a plain google search.

Is it ROLL-E-OH or ROLL-YO?

I have tackled thing number 12, which is roll your own search tool with rollyo. Rollyo is a site which allows you to create a custom search engine. You can search only the sites in which you want your results to appear. I was having a hard time thinking of what I wanted my search roll to specialize in, so I peeked at a list of starter subjects that rollyo had. I chose shopping, and entered a few of my favorite online shopping sites. The results page was a little confusing. There are a lot of hits from sites that I didn't ask to have searched, like blogs and "sponsored links". To help narrow things down, you can opt to just show results from one select site. I'm not sure I'd actually use rollyo for shopping! Nevertheless, Here is my shopping search roll. I also added a search box over there to the right. It allows you to either search the web, my shopping sites, or my blog (just choose from the drop down list). There are more useful search rolls on rollyo that others have created! I liked the quick quotes search roll, and the free photos search roll.