Thanks to one of our UBC whiz kids, Enej Bajgoric, for developing and sharing some code that lets me render not only my del.ico.us tagcloud, but to navigate it for resources and related tags — all within my site, maintaining my own look and feel.
I’ve added a link to my blog’s del.icio.us page on the sidebar. I should note that I’ve only dabbled with del.icio.us in the past. I was an early adopter of Furl, and stuck with it for its file caching and full-text search of bookmarked items. But the momentum is clear, and I am finally prepared to make the move to del.icio.us. I’m loathe to give up the superior archival features of the old service, so for a while I’m going to try using OnlyWire, which allows me to submit bookmarks to multiple services, with tags, from a single interface.
So my del.icio.us bookmarks and tagset are nothing too impressive at the moment. There’s some goofy stuff flagged in there — consider yourself warned.
Does anyone know a good application or approach for importing Furl bookmarks into del.icio.us? My explorations left me all aghast and agog. (It appears I am not alone in this.)
Enej has graciously agreed to share the code he developed for this feature. (Note to self: buy this gifted fellow a beer, or perhaps several.) I’m hoping to tap some of the work he and others in the office are doing on this stuff for an EduGlu (or whatever it’s called) prototype of some kind — hopefully something good will be in place for spring semester.
That’s pretty cool! Buy Enej a beer for me, too! 🙂
Am I missing that this is more than embedding a de.icio.us tagcloud?
When I migrated, I had no problem using furl2 delicious: http://nerdierthanthou.nfshost.com/2005/04/furl-to-delicious.html
using the Windows executable version, and it moved about 300 bookmarks. But that was before there was ya.del.icio.us.hoo and the issue Scott noted.
Less noted but useful are the Firefox Quick Seraches you can use. Go to youe del.icio.us search form, put the cursor in the box and right/control click. From the menu, select “add keyword for this search”. If you use the keyword “del”, this allows you to search del.icio.us just from the URl bar by typing:
del dysfunction
or whatever keyword you are searching for. I use it all the time to find functions from the PHP web docs.
If I embed a tagcloud, can I click on tags, get a list of all entries with that tag, and see all related tags? Without leaving my site? Maybe so — maybe Enej is playing tricks on me, crafty bugger. But I think this is a bit groovier than what I’ve seen.
I’d looked at that link Alan, and it comes up as not found. I can install it myself, but depnds on Windows .exe and Python. Maybe this is easy, but I can’t figure it out.
Sorry to hear you’re unhappy with Furl. I’m wondering what do you mean by “the momentum is clear”. Both Furl.net and del.icio.us are huge services (compared to the rest of the social bookmarking sites), and I don’t know about del.icio.us but Furl.net is growing by large numbers of new members every day! In any event, you shouldn’t have to give up your archived cache copy or your full-text searching, available on Furl.net but not on del.icio.us, so if you want to use both, the OnlyWire approach seems like it’s worth a try. Just wanted to let you know that Furl.net is alive and well, and better than ever.
Best wishes,
— Michael (from the Furl team)
Thanks Michael — as I said I like Furl, and to be honest the full-text searching is more useful to me for personal info management than tags are, so I won’t be giving it up.
The ‘momentum’ I refer to concerns the applications that use a tagging structure similar to del.icio.us, or work directly with it via the open api. And when I get requests to lead social bookmarking workshops, they usually want to know about del.icio.us (though I usually take the opportunity to show them Furl and other services).
I appreciate the buzz, and did not wish to seem like I was dissing your service, which has worked well for me.
Just to make it clear. This whole delicious browser is Novaks Idea. I just helped impliment it. If anyone has questions about how it works feel free to email me at enej.bajgoric(at)gmail.com. Michael I hope that this doen’t cause people to switch to delicious. Furl has great features as you and Brian pointed out. It would be nice if Furl would provide users with json feeds the way delicious does.
Cheers Enej
I wish Novak had a blog so I could point out what a sharp fellow he is. I just spoke with him, and learned that this iteration is just a step in his master plan, which makes me very happy.
So the apology should be mine — the last thing I want to do is slight the efforts of the magnificent Mr. Rogic.
Hey, so I am not a mac user and can’t attest to it working, but check out http://ianhenderson.org/delimport.html for a mac-based delicious importer. There is also this http://www.hybernaut.com/bdv/delicious-import.html perl script. Again, your mileage may vary.
But I liked the Onlywire suggestion – I too never really disliked Furl, it was just, as you said, the momentum in terms of apps that used the del.icio.us API seemed to be swinging the other way. And like, you know, all the cool kids were doing it too 😉
For fulltext searches of my del.icio.us bookmarks, I use the Cocoalicious client application. It also provides a great (and instantly responding) interface for searching and adding bookmarks.
http://www.scifihifi.com/cocoalicious/
Oh, and it’s free.
Brian (and Scott) I just found a Python script that scrapes items from a Furl account, and uses the del.icio.us API to squirt them into the database.
http://nerdierthanthou.nfshost.com/2005/04/furl-to-delicious.html
It doesn’t work “out of the box” but a comment at the bottom of the page describes the fix. Just modify 2 lines of code, and run from Terminal:
% python furl2delicious.py
answer 3 questions, and it should Just Work. I tried it on my Furl account, but it only had 2 items in it so doesn’t really count as a stress test.
I can send you my modified python script if you want to try it.
D’Arcy, you just get more awesome all the time — please do send the modified script my way. I’ll try to get one of the office techies to help through the rest.
it’s in the mail. let me know if I can help get you migrated.
Don’t know how I stumbled across this great demo on how to maximize use of del.icio.us. But, it’s worth a few minutes. The audio is clear and matches the visuals well. Thanks to John Udell
If you are experimenting with meta-bookmarking services (like OnlyWire), take a look at ListMixer.
It’s a vestibule for new bookmarks. Promote worthy bookmarks into the service of your choice. Old, unclicked links are automatically deleted (after 30 days of going unclicked).
Other nifty features: RSS, linkrolls, and no signup required. Really.
Cheers- Sid (ListMixer guy)