del.icio.us/alan.dean

This is a social bookmarking web app. It is definitely in my top three most-used sites (at the time of writing I have just short of 7,000 bookmarks saved).

At the simplest level, it is far easier to save your bookmarks in del.icio.us than on your local machine (favorites or desktop). I have installed both the IE Add-In and the Firefox Extension which make saving your current page in the browser a doddle. Here is a screenshot of the IE Add-In Save Dialog:

The key to making del.icio.us work for you is to get the tagging right. In the screenshot above, I have simply tagged the Charteris website as 'Charteris' but usually I use many more tags, for example:

Here I have applied eight tags to the [httpRange-14] resolution. Doing this builds up a rich 'tagspace' that I can drill-down into when I want to use my saved bookmarks.

I have published a short introduction to navigating del.icio.us with user tags.

Having a rich tagspace (also known as a folksonomy) can make your bookmarks an invaluable resource and research tool.

To finish up, I have put together a brief screencast demonstrating how to set up your del.icio.us bookmarks as an IE7 search provider.