Why you should make the leap.

We all have websites and blogs we visit waiting in anticipation for the next update.  Back in the day I kept all of these websites as widgets on my iGoogle homepage.  This was okay (not really… but I didn’t know any better) when I was only interested in 10 or 15 websites.  However I kept adding websites and after a while it was be a “hot-mess”.  I would scroll up and down, up and down my iGoogle homepage checking for updated widgets then I would have to click on a link, visit the site, comeback to iGoogle and start the whole process right over again.

Enter Google Reader.  You have probably heard of Google Reader before.  If you are ever lucky enough to completely clear your Gmail inbox you will see the message, “No new mail! Want to read updates from your favorite sites? Try Google Reader”. 
Google Reader brings the web to you.  Watch the video below to get you started!

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Using Delicious

5 Reasons to Use Delicious

1. Delicious can integrate into any web browsers via bookmarklet for on click save and tagging.


2. Delicious integrates into other popular sites like Google Reader, RSS readers for your phone and Read It Later.


3. Saving bookmarks with tags makes finding and organizing bookmarks a breeze.


4. Search what other people have saved.  If you don’t know what you are looking for you can always search “To Do List” inside of Delicious and see what other people have tagged.


5. Follow your friends, coworkers and classmates and easily share things you think they would like.

5 Tips for Delicious

1. Install the Delicious Firefox Ad-on.  It will be the best thing that has ever happened to your bookmarking.  I put the tag button to the right of my address bar and the delicious icon (that takes you to your delicious homepage) to the left of my home icon.


2. Keep all tags singular – Otherwise you may have some items saved under bush and others saved under brushes.


3. For important tags or items, I place an “@” in front of them. This moves them up to the very top of my tag list making them easy to find. Also you can use “via:” to note where you found an article.  That way if you know where you saw it you can just search you bookmarks for that site.


4. Use the search.  Search will find items by tag or title.  If you want to limit your search to specific tags, then use the prefix “tag:”. An example for all you productivity junkies might be “tag:gtd”.


5. Use lots of tags. Of course, they should be relevant to the page  you are tagging.  If you bookmark an article about CSS3 styles tag it: CSS3, Web Design, Code, CSS via:WhereYouFoundIt.  Also if you are bookmarking it for a project, tag it for that too (ie. Capstone).

Take it one step further with Read It Later.

Read It Later is the place to store articles you find but can’t read right then.  Read It Later integrates into just about everything, but the best combo is Firefox and iPhone.

Create an account and download the Firefox Ad-on.  This will give you features like one click saving, Google Reader Integration, offline reading and fly-through saving.  Then download the iPhone app and take those articles with you anywhere!

Don’t use Firefox or have an iPhone?

That’s cool, there is a bookmark for all other browsers and a mobile version of the site. 

Any additional tips for organizing your web?  Share them in the comments below!