How seek engines rank your website?

A bulk of factors on your website as able-bodied as some offsite attributes are acclimated by the seek engines to accredit page ranks. Usage of keywords on your pages, anatomy of links, and superior of outbound links are all on-site factors. When you are affiliated to acutely reliable and accustomed web sites, you are reckoned to be in acceptable company. Offsite factors cover alien social links. To accomplish in your business, you should pay appropriate absorption to alien links. Alien links plan just like votes. The added votes your website can garner, the college placed will your pages be.

Beware of Seek Engine Algorithms

Even as the seek engine companies continuously strive to clarify out spams and frauds, those out there to apply the atramentous hat tricks are aswell growing in numbers. It is a connected war or sorts.

To convulse out from this abandoned circle, you should accede abutting Social bookmarks clubs. While a lot of of these clubs crave you to allot fair bulk of time, and may be even pay some fee, there are chargeless versions too. Do some analysis to acquisition the one that apparel you best. Remember, these clubs can accompany you the accurate links with agreement that they are spam free. Since the clubs action on alternate basis, you accept annihilation to lose.

History

The abstraction of aggregate online bookmarking dates aback to April 1996 with the barrage of itList.com. Within the next three years online bookmark casework became competitive, with venture-backed companies like Backflip, Blink,[citation needed] Clip2, Hotlinks, Quiver, and others entering the market. Lacking applicable models for authoritative money, a lot of of this aboriginal bearing of amusing bookmarking companies bootless as the dot-com balloon burst. The abreast concepts of amusing bookmarking and tagging took base with the barrage of the web website oneview in 1999[1] and delicious, in September of 2003.

Functional Overview

In a amusing bookmarking system, users abundance lists of Internet resources, which they acquisition useful. Often, these lists are about accessible, and added humans with agnate interests can appearance the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some amusing bookmarking systems acquiesce for aloofness on a per-bookmark basis.

They aswell assort their assets by the use of artlessly assigned, user-defined keywords or tags (see folksonomy). A lot of amusing bookmarking casework acquiesce users to seek for bookmarks which are associated with accustomed "tags", and rank the assets by the amount of users which accept bookmarked them. Abounding amusing bookmarking demon casework aswell accept implemented algorithms to draw inferences from the tag keywords that are assigned to assets by analytical the absorption of accurate keywords, and the affiliation of keywords to one another.

Advantages

This arrangement has several advantages over acceptable automatic ability area and allocation software, such as seek engine spiders. All tag-based allocation of Internet assets (such as web sites) is done by animal beings, who accept the agreeable of the resource, as against to software which algorithmically attempts to actuate the acceptation of a resource. This provides for semantically classified tags, which are harder to acquisition with abreast seek engines.

Additionally, as humans bookmark assets that they acquisition useful, assets that are of added use are bookmarked by added users. Thus, such a arrangement will "rank" a ability based on its perceived utility. This is arguably a added advantageous metric for end users than added systems which rank assets based on the amount of alien links pointing to it.

Automatic Notification

Since the allocation and baronial of assets is a continuously evolving process, abounding amusing social bookmark casework acquiesce users to subscribe to alliance feeds (see RSS) based on tags, or accumulating of tag terms. This allows subscribers to become acquainted of new assets for a accustomed topic, as they are noted, tagged, and classified by added users.

Disadvantages

There are drawbacks to such tag-based systems as well: no accepted set of keywords (also accepted as controlled vocabulary), no accepted for the anatomy of such tags (e.g. atypical vs. plural, capitalization, etc.), mistagging due to spelling errors, tags that can accept added than one meaning, cryptic tags due to synonym/antonym confusion, awful beatnik and "personalized" tag schemas from some users, and no apparatus for users to announce hierarchical relationships amid tags (e.g. a website ability be labeled as both cheese and cheddar, with no apparatus that ability announce that cheddar is a clarification or sub-class of cheese).

There are some issues about amusing bookmarking you should apperceive about so that you're not afraid by them. If you're application amusing bookmarking the way I do, you're application it in what is apparently an adventitious fashion-for some sites, that is. Let me explain this.

The aboriginal abstraction abaft amusing bookmarking is a array of online, basic association building. You acquisition a website you like. You column it to the amusing bookmarking site. You acclaim it to your friends. They attending at your column and vote the website up. It rises in acceptance on the social bookmarking services, and at some point it goes viral and takes on a activity of its own.

This is if you end up on the foreground page of Digg, and aswell blast your host company's server.

The bouncer dogs of a lot of amusing bookmarking sites yield a dim appearance of anyone who tries to bold their arrangement just for their own benefit. This is not accurate of all amusing bookmarking sites, but is actual accurate of some of the earlier ones, like Digg.

Now, I dig Digg! (If that makes any sense?) I in fact aswell use Digg in the way it was advised to be used-a association building, array of accidental amusing validation blazon thing. But, getting an internet marketer, I aswell try to-how shall I say this? Not bold the system, but accomplish it fit me instead of me fit it!

In added words, I accept been accepted to just column my own pages to Digg just for the traffic! There, I confessed!

That's not what Digg wants. They wish some array of virgin, pristine, advice acquaintance for their users.

But we're marketers! Our actual acumen for active is to bold systems and accomplish money! So, in a actual absolute way, internet marketers are generally at allowance with amusing social networking.

Having said all of this, there are some amusing bookmarking sites bustling up that acceptable commercialism! I won't acknowledgment any here, because I'm not announcement anyone one way or the other. You can acquisition these easily.

Part of my point is-Yes, amusing bookmarking is abundant for creating traffic. But aswell just be acquainted you may run afield of what ability assume to you to be self-defeating rules and hindrances.

For instance, don't be aching if your annual at StumbleUpon, Digg, Propeller, or any of the added sites, gets suspended. It's happened to me added times than I affliction to admit. Don't yield this personally! Just actualize a new email annual at Yahoo! or Gmail or about abroad and accessible addition annual at the amusing bookmarking site.

Okay, now that we're bright about the ins and outs of amusing bookmarking, let me accord you some added active up about how to use it.

There was a time not too continued ago if I amusing bookmarked everything-and I beggarly everything!

In an ideal world, that would be the best affair to do.

There are, however, problems with bookmarking everything. It either takes a lot of time or money. In added words, back time is money, it's not at all free!

Even if I use chargeless amusing bookmarking casework like bookmark manager, it still takes a acceptable ten account to absolutely bookmark a page. I could pay anyone to do this, or pay a bookmarking account for it to be done, but I don't absolutely anticipate the acknowledgment on investment is there.

Now I too was in the identical abode you ability be, activity afflicted with what to do next and how I was traveling to ascertain time to antithesis all the plan and life. I was generally larboard activity abashed some canicule with my arch actually spinning.

But let me bright this up if you do this appropriate and ride the after-effects of amusing bookmarking & web 2.0 websites the after-effects can be actually outstanding, you can accomplish assorted listings in the seek engines aural just a few of days. You will absolutely access your business efforts if you apprentice the step-by-step action that I am traveling to acknowledge to you, you will body an burning Buzz for all your web 2.0 efforts.

Now there are abounding web2.0 platforms online area you can upload your agreeable and actualize links pointing at or active cartage to your website. Let me explain, if I was traveling to ambition a keyword in my bazaar I would:

1. actualize a hub

2. actualize a squidoo lense

3. column an commodity to accumulate

4. column an commodity to Ezinearticles.com

After that I would aggregate all the URL's and RSS feeds of all my posts that I just congenital and I will bookmark them 1 by 1 to all the top amusing bookmarking sites. Now there are abounding different methods to do the bookmarking, so my tip for you is accomplish all your amusing social bookmarking accustomed and you accept to aswell save some of your favourite pages as able-bodied so there are not just URL's you are marketing.

Next Step is to get an burning 'buzz' you charge to aggregate every URL & RSS augment from all the sites additional all the tag URL's and RSS feeds, you accept bookmarked or appear agreeable to and adhesive them into a spreadsheet. Sometimes a lot of of your time is ashen because it is a continued action acquisition all the URL's but is aswell the abstruse amid success and failure.

This is the ambiguous ingredient, the section of the addle area a lot of entrepreneurs bead the ball. Mainly because it does yield too abundant time and accomplishment to go and login to anniversary website you acquaint or bookmarked to and aggregate all the URL's you accept just posted.

Then what you charge to do is accessible pingomatic and ping every URL you accept collected. Again this could be time arresting but is aswell an capital allotment of the accomplished process.

The Web 2.0 environment

With the appearance of web 2.0 technology, amusing bookmarking provided the ability of administration anniversary others' bookmarks or admired links. In addition, visitors can aswell vote on or amount web sites, content, etc., and even allotment claimed links. This alternate affection congenital into the amusing social network has fabricated it a actual accepted apparatus in the easily of webmasters and internet marketers, to accomplish amusing bookmarking traffic.

Quality adjoin abundance for amusing bookmarking traffic

You can accretion affluence of amusing bookmarking cartage if your website is bookmarked with a amount of these amusing bookmarking sites such as Technorati, socialmatic, delicious, or even the amusing networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, mybloglog, friendster etc. Submitting ample amount of online writing to these sites will not advice back humans alone attending for quality.

Catering to the visitors' interests

If you analysis to accept the needs of the visitors and augment adapted content, again you can acquaintance astounding advance from amusing bookmarking traffic. Added cartage would acutely advance to added about-face and even baby allotment changes can bolster your profits in quick time. Go for it now.

Social bookmarking submission has developed into a powerful tool for SEO experts. It involves linking sites within the various forums, blogs and message boards on social networking websites, blog sites and content centric sites like Digg.

Considered a better alternative to submitting a website on blogs, manual social bookmarking is a simple, convenient and hassle-free way of making sure that your site is noticed and marketed in the right circle.

Submission Features

• All Social Bookmarking is done Manually by trained staff members.
  
• We offer around the clock customer services and 100% guarantee that our services will be up to your expectations.
  
• We make sure that you completely understand the impact and the effectiveness of our social bookmarking submission service, by offering you a free submission report.
  
• Our prices are highly competitive and the best in the industry, only $50 for 125 social bookmarking service!
  
• We allow our users to give 3 unique Titles & Tags for nearly 100 social bookmarking service.
  
• Most of our sites we submit to have a minimum PR of 4 and go all the way up to a PR 9. You can view a complete list of sites we submit.
  

How to Get Better Ranking & Higher Position

Our team of experienced Web 2.0 marketing professionals will bookmark your website at Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit, Squidoo and 100s of other fast-growing social bookmarking and content aggregator websites.

While carrying out the social bookmarks special care would be taken to bookmark your site using relevant tags and descriptions. Once bookmarking has been done, you will be provided with a detailed report of our activities with the exact URL of the page where your site is bookmarked..

Social networking and social bookmarking in Dubai, a by-product of the Web 2.0 era allows users to voice their thoughts over the internet and interact with each other better, socially as well as professionally. Most networking sites like BlogMemes, Reddit and Badoo feature handy tools like discussion boards, communities or groups on particular interests, access to a member’s blog page, and review boards.

Social bookmarking in Dubai, which is actually part of social media marketing strategies, is one of the techniques utilized by SEO experts in Dubai. This strategy allows businesses and marketers to promote their brands by displaying them on different social media networks like StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, etc.

The tag and ranking options provided on such sites allow the content of a website to be displayed in search engine result pages. The crawlers pick out the targeted keywords and business names, which occur in the discussions that are either threaded or linked to. The more often a page is linked or ranked, the better its chances of a higher search engine positioning.

There are a lot of forums, blogs and even websites that feature icons below articles or photos or random content. These icons allow a user to tag or bookmark the part of a page he finds interesting. It is then featured on his profile in the social networking or bookmarking site he belongs to. Users visiting his site can also view the bookmarked pages and do the same, thus widening the audience.

Such options are more relevant as they do away with classifications worked out by mechanical web crawlers that are on no account as accurate as humans.

Cosmos Star Consultants, a professional online marketing company makes use of social bookmarking in Dubai to boost your website’s visibility.

In addition, I noticed a lot of similarities between blogging sites, microblogging sites, and social networks. These similarities include:

• They require an email to login and/or create an account.
   
• The sites make it easy to create an account. There is a distinct and obvious spot to click on to join the network.

• They all try to make the site seem easy to use. This is because humans are typically drawn to things that seem easy. If the network appears easy to use, people are more likely to actively use it.

Image by Nelson Zotto Rivaz Photography via Flickr

I think the key word, according to one of my compatriots, would be overwhelmed.  Not in the sense that I, personally, was overwhelmed.  More that I think the participants were.  Or at least that's what they seemed to be saying.  Personally, I see this as a good thing.  If you come to a conference expecting anything different, you are missing the point.  Your brain SHOULD hurt at the end of the day!  That is actually one of my favorite parts of it all.  Conferences should challenge you.  They should make you think.  They should give you pause to reconsider your methods and actions.  They should pry your mind back open a bit and then dump more stuff in for you to chew on.  Shouldn't they?

I got a chance to meet and chat with our keynote speaker (who met with rave reviews by the way!), Kevin Honeycutt.  Kevin is a wonderful advocate for education in the state of Kansas and beyond.  Check out his Podcasts and current projects like Art Snacks on his blog.  I enjoy talking to people who THINK about education and DREAM about what it can be.  I find myself falling more and more into that category.  There is too much potential in our kids not to challenge it and dare to dream a bit.  It just involves us stepping outside the comfort zone a bit.  Thanks Kevin!

My presentations- I always worry when I present that I am cramming too much information in.  I get pretty passionate about the topics I research so when I present them I have to be careful not to just spew a stream of consciousness out and end up blowing everyone out of their chairs.  This conference was no different.  The two presentations that I think I may have overloaded a bit were my RSS class and the Social Bookmarking session.  There is a lot of stuff in there when you are trying to explain the concept, tools and uses in an hour or less!  My participants were engaged, if a bit wide eyed by the whole thing and asked lots of good questions.  Ran into the same old problem/excuse though...  "How do I make a list of safe websites using Diigo if my school blocks DIIGO?"  *sigh*

The participants-  Although they seemed a tiny bit quiet compared to the usual rowdy crowd, they were interested and thoughtful.  Although we may have overwhelmed them a little, they kept at it all the way to the end, with the last sessions being as full as the first ones were.  The conversations were fun and the questions were right on.  I love it when my participants make me think.

The conference-  We tried something this year for the first time.  We provided a dedicated area (manned most of the time) for participants to sit and specifically network and share ideas.  We also offered some short sessions that competed directly with the main sessions.  Although the sessions were lightly attended (OK, only one of mine actually had people), what it actually did promote was a comfortable, informal place to ask more questions.  I really hope we keep doing this because it seemed as if people really liked it.  It was fun for me because I got to present and demonstrate on a big 32" plasma while sitting in a nice, comfy chair...!

One final note I will share was a part of my chat with Kevin and a later conversation I had with another trainer.  We (the trainer and I) worried that perhaps we are still too far ahead in the information we deliver to our participants.  That, perhaps, we overestimated the level of technical sophistication in Missouri education and that is why our participants seemed overwhelmed.  On the same note, when Kevin and I were talking, he asked if I had submitted any presentations for NECC this year.  I admitted a lack of professional confidence in submitting at such a huge event and felt that I didn't have much to offer.  My assumption was that most of the participants at this conference were way above the level my presentations are written at.  I also feel that NECC presentations are more project specific.  Kevin disagreed.  He feels that, although there are a number of technology "bleeders" (he thinks it's about 10% in most places) at the big conferences, most participants are just like the rest of us and could benefit from this information.

I think may have slipped into that trap of cross targeting my presentations.  Trying to load them with stuff for the "bleeders" and then attempting to explain it all to a beginner audience.  Since part of my job is to research this stuff, I naturally gain a higher level of expertise and then I assume everybody must know as much about it as me.  But of all the people in my sessions, I would guess that LESS than 10 % were "bleeders".  Most were beginners and a few were just curious and had no intention of trying what I was showing them.  So I think I need to do a couple of things.

First,  I need to adapt my presentations a bit to answer more of the "why" questions and even the "what" questions (i.e.  What is it?).  Then improve my bag of tricks so that I can adapt up if my audience requires it.  Personally, I think this will slowly change, especially with the Web 2.0 tools.  Web 2.0 is still in it's infancy.  As it grows and more people get used to it, the level of sophistication will grow.

Second, I need to submit this stuff everywhere.  Why?  Because I believe in it and think I have something to share that benefits the education community.  And besides, how else are people going to get more into this stuff if SOMEBODY doesn't teach them?

Speaking of which, I'm off to present on the basics of blogs and wikis tomorrow!  And then I travel down to the wilds of Southern Missouri to teach Web 2.0 basics to librarians.  heh... I'm completely out of control...

Sorry for the ramble... I have a large case of brain fry...

8 Simple Tools for Better Bookmarking by Adam DuVander.

The author mentions an upcoming Twine and predicts that this social bookmarking site will be at the top of next year's list. I think that this site bears looking into . . . (Of course which I am more than happy to investigate.)

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In total, over the last 3 years whilst building HealthEngine I have been exploring how social and professional networking works. Trying to develop a better understanding of how individuals interact and network online; how individuals and groups develop 'trust' of each other and the web domain to which they are entrusting sometimes very personal information.

At the same time I have the great honor and privilege of 'networking' and interacting with a wide range of interesting, enigmatic, energetic and inimitable personalities. Slowly an Australian online networking community is beginning to develop but at a 'less trusting' and tentative rate then other countries.

Hopefully this experience will help me to develop online education learning initiatives with vibrant and interested people...time will tell. Today I want to highlight some of the 'professional' networking sites which have been the most benefit in creating and maintaining a circle of trust within a virtual community.

Advice to 'would-be' professional networkers, wishing to dip their toe in the world of pixelated communications is to

• Define your objectives and define your ultimate goals
• Prepare your websites, blogs, profiles and personas into a single document to ensure rapidity of data entry to networking profiles.
• Review your email contact lists or open up a 'new' gmail account specifically for your professional networking - many sites offer to import or review your contact list to send out invitations as part of the sign up steps - and if you forget to 'uncheck' the long list of contact names, you will end up sending out 500 invitations including 453 inappropriate invites to family members, 'help-desks', florists, hotels and the vicar 
• Bookmark your profile pages and login pages in a single toolbar folder or home page - I use Zeadoo.com as my homepage and have a professional profile bookmarking section to quickly access my sites to review invitations or conversations 2-3 times a week.
• Have fun

There is no moral obloquy to being associated with social networking sites - in fact this pullulating megalopolis in a pixelated world provides surprisingly sophisticated colloquy.

Naymz.com Professional style networking with minimal scope for social interaction. Simple Invitation system and meta-tag structure allowing easy review of people in your profession. I really like Naymz as a profile holding bay and web presence gallery - and find it simple and easy to use.

• Personal Profile Completion Time - 45 minutes
• Features: RepScore - World Map of Visitors to your profile (with IPs) - Reputation monitor - Great way to add RSS feeds from blogs - high Google presence
• Maintenance: Login three time per week to check messages, review invitations and update website feeds
• Spam Count: Low. Efficient and simple clearing system
• Solicitations: Infrequent and easy to clear
• Tips/Tricks: Maintain a RepScore 10 to take advantage of the visitor tracking and reputation monitor. Complete profile in full, ensure new web profiles are updated regularly and add RSS feeds for your blogs. You only get 10 referees to display - so make sure they have the highest repscore (10) in order to increase your profile points. Once signed in - immediately alter the email settings so you only get notifications once a week!

 LinkedIn.com The ultimate Professional Networking system. Many professional networkers use this site to gather 10-20,000 contacts! I use it as a secure way of maintaining a select band of trusted contacts and to maintain a 'CV' like professional profile - which I use in my email signature.

• Personal Profile Completion Time - 45 minutes
• Features: Comprehensive and professional layout. Respected professional network site. Q&A section with rapid fire answers from respected professionals. Groups functions.
• Maintenance: Login 1-2 times per week to check inbox, review invitations and update website feeds
• Spam Count: Low. Efficient and simple clearing system
• Solicitations: Infrequent and easy to clear
• Tips/Tricks: Try to maintain contacts as trusted networking contacts 

 Ecademy.com Huge network in the UK and Europe, in fact one of the biggest online networking sites in the world. Initially I found this site to lack intuition, have inadequate explanation and basically be a bit of a nuisance. I stopped attending the site and only partially completed my profile. Then after 3 months absence I got an invite from a trusted colleague and gave it another shot with great success. Have now made lots of great contacts in Australia and throughout the world. Use this to get help and advice for the HealthEngine website, get some support and to create a viral medium.

• Personal Profile Completion Time - 60 minutes
• Features: Great profile page editing function (able to put company logo and website hyperlinks), internet feeds, website and blog feeds (appear in NetNews) Comprehensive and professional layout. Respected professional network site. Well maintained blogs by business professionals on the site to review. Groups functions.
• Maintenance: Login 3 times per week to check messages, review invitations, reply to messages.
• Spam Count: Moderate. Not complicated to clear - but can be a little oppressive at times
• Solicitations: Frequent and can become oppressive
• Tips/Tricks: Listen to Thomas Power (founder) and his interview with Stan Relihan. Remember that if somebody sends you a message and you reply - then you are 'linked'
• Black star members pay a lot for the privilege and generally have a product to sell - Power Networker status (orange stars) can be attained by inviting 10 people and gives some improved messaging services. 

rss-in-the-classroom03

socialbookmarking

Image via Wikipedia

We are "borrowing" an idea from NECC for the first time this year as well.  We call it (with apologies) Blogger's Corner.  The concept is for a comfortable, informal place for people to get together and network, brainstorm and learn.  During the two days of the conference we will also offer some "mini" session (about a half hour long) on things that don't get touched in the conference or are just not big enough to warrant a full hour session.  We hope that the extra opportunity to learn and the relaxed environment will encourage people to come.  I guess we will find out!  The first one is at 11am today.  I don't expect more than a person or two, but it's a first time thing so hopefully it will go.

I'm sitting in my presentation room now waiting for my first session of the day.  I'm presenting on our new tool for online classes called Adobe Connect.  It's a great tool but it is replacing a tool everyone is used to so there is bound to be a little resistance.  Hopefully this presentation will grease the wheels a bit.  After this one is over I am all about Web 2.0 for the rest of the conference.  Intro to Web 2.0, Twitter, Social Bookmarking and RSS are the rest of my sessions.  After the dust clears I am going to try to post all of my presentations (and hopefully those of my counterparts) on a Wikispaces site.  I will give it to you when I set it up.  If I forget, feel free to remind me!

A book mark saving and sharing web service started in 11/03 by Joshua Schachter, acquired by Yahoo in 12/05.

Delicious lets you store your bookmarks online, so you can access them from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. You use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

You can also see the links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return.

You can even browse and search Delicious to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved – which is made easy with tags.

This reminded me of an unconventional use of tagging that I've started at our Adolescent Parent Centre School in their . I'm working with students who want to earn a volunteer credit to inventory all the books in their classrooms and mini-library in librarything and tagging them by the location so that they can be easily located within the school. As of today 803 items are added. (I wanted to put the widget here but unfortunately Wordpress does not accept java script - Librarything is working on a compatable widget so please click the image above or here to visit the Adolescent Parent Centre librarything.) One thing I learned is that in order to sort them by location, the location had to be the first tag listed, and that it had to be added consistently - e.g. rm 18 OR rm18, but not some of each. Searchable fields include author, title and subjects that are often imported in via the ISBN # so I didn't think it was that important to add other tags - but may decide to go back and have students add them in later. I really like the book suggester and the book unsuggester for the APC students and am anxious to have them use librarything in a lab setting to see whether they enjoy exploring librarything including looking at other's tags others' libraries.

In her blog post "All Together Now" Donna DesRoches describes how useful social bookmarking can be for classes of students researching similar topics. For instance one class researching endangered species tagged their best websites as "species at risk" so everyone else in the class could easily find others' bookmarks. I believe Donna when she states students are more careful to critically evaluate websites if they know others are going to look at them.

What Donna has done in her school division that impresses me the most is "written social bookmarking into our ninth-grade information literacy skills continuum". I agree this is a research tool that all senior students should have in their virtual toolkit.

Check out my Diigo here or click on the Diigo Widget in the left sidebar of this blog. The first thing I noticed is that the widget automatically included a RSS feed button and some of my more frequent tags which is much more visually attractive.

Once logged into Diigo I was able to import all my bookmarks from Delicious. I was also able to install their toolbar for my browser easily. Diigo allows you to filter your bookmarks by your tags just as easily as Delicious, but one advantage is that it allows you to create lists based on tag searches. So I created a list of my bookmarks that I would share with just the English Team at my school.

The tools I appreciate the most  are the highlighting and sticky note tools. You can highlight text on a webpage and add a sticky note if you want that will persist in your bookmarks.

I like the slide show Diigo will create for those that want to have a visual scan of theirs or others' bookmarks.

I also like the way Diigo will allow users to make actual bookmarks private, allowing one to keep private/personal and professional bookmarks in one account.

I can explore others bookmarks based on their tags just as easily as in Delicious. I'm still shy for a social bookmarker, and haven't added any friends or groups yet. I think the best time to do this would be for a real collaborative purpose like lesson, unit or curriculum planning, but if for any reason someone else invites me as a friend, I'll probably jump on the chance to experience how it works.

Now getting back to the original question; Delicious or Diigo? Sorry if it appears to be a cop-out, but I can't make up my mind yet and I'm going to stick with both for awhile.

The Social Part of Social Bookmarking

I always noticed how many others had also bookmarked the same URLs, and I always took this as a sign of the sites' reliability. It never once dawned on me to actually click on that number to see who else had bookmarked it. When I did I realized I could look at their bookmarks. There was one member named bookwyrmish whose bookmarks I looked at and for a minute I thought I was back at my own bookmarks. The entries were so freakishly alike that I got a chill. The next day I checked out bookwyrmish's links again and he/she had added a whole bunch more that weren't at all like mine but included many that I was interested in - so I decided we simply had similar interests and subscribed to his/her delicious bookmarks through my RSS feeds. I learned I could add this person to my network of people, but decided to stick with the RSS for now. I think it would be good to use the network feature when I'm working with a group of teachers collaborating on unit development or a lesson plan.

I used to think that you had to create a separate account in order to share some of my bookmarks with teaching teams at work. For example, I created a whole separate Delicious account to share some rubric and assessment tools with the English teachers last year. I just discovered that I could have just searched for those sites with a tag which creates a subset of my bookmarks, then shared that URL. For example here is the list when I search my bookmarks for those bookmarks tagged with web2.0 http://delicious.com/mikisew/web2.0.  I can even narrow down further what I want to share with others by adding another tag to the search string - For instance if I added web2.0 and video tags : http://delicious.com/mikisew/web2.0+video .

I'm still not using Delicious to its fullest potential, but I'm more likely to now when the need arises.

http://www.kledy.de/buttons.php

Image by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML via Flickr

Web 2.0 Self-Education Project:  Shamanic Shift Center created accounts at Swurl, Profilactic, FriendFeed, and MyBlogLog.  I am testing the Lifestreams to determine which - if any - is the most reliable way to integrate most if not all of the many blogging, status, linking, and other streams we started around the web.

MyBlogLog (owned by Yahoo!) has been working well for the longest but the links there are ephemeral. The list flushes clean every day or so. MyBlogLog publishes as RSS and provides a feed widget for embedding into a blog or profile page.  BlogCatalog's activity feed is similar but it appears at this writing that the links there are lasting a bit longer, reaching back a few weeks.

Swurl integrates the fewest services into a Lifestream but allows the most customizing of the apprearance and offers both blog and timeline formats (illustated above). Since Shamanic Shift Center's web accounts happen to match Swurl's covered source feeds it seemed best - until ShamanicShift's Swurl broke on 9/28. First the StumbleUpon links stopped appearing, then the site could not be accessed, then attempts to delete and re-add StumbleUpon or other sources (to try and fix the problems) started resulting in an 'Unable to delete source - Try again later' message, and since then our Swurl only shows entries back to 9/28/2008 and states 'No more entries' even though it used to go back to 2002. Maybe Shamanic Shift's Swurl is the only one broken because I found others that appear to be working OK. So Swurl is no longer the favorite.

Profilactic integrates the most services and allows adding others by URL.  But it fails to load the lifestream on about half of my attempts and always runs into problems with (then skips over) one or two of the source feeds.  There is a useful sidebar with the URLs of 'Where to find me' on the web.  To make Profilactic portable there is an RSS feed, a badge for blogs and websites, and a Profilactic WordPress plugin.  If you're a Ping.fm user, you can post content from within Profilactic directly to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, Blogger and more. 

FriendFeed currently covers 43 services and has been working well consitantly updating the lifestream.  Friends from Facebook can be kept in sync and there is a help page of how-tos.  I have been unable to use the posting feature for messages, links, and photos except in Internet Explorer 7.  The same is true for the button to join any of the FriendFeed discussion 'Rooms' - the little bubble just keeps twirling around and around.  Five customizable widgets are available at FriendFeed.  And FriendFeed is still displaying links for us back to March 2007. Update 10/4: Updating Adobe Flash fixed the posting problems so now FriendFeed is the favorite.

Shamanic Shift Center and Companions Circle have been using customizable RSS feed-digests by Feed.Informer for years.  Apparently there have been big changes at Feed.Informer - which used to be called FeedDigest - and it concerns me just a bit that there is currently no way for us to keep paying Feed.Informer for our upgraded account.  The payment system is being revamped too, reads the notice on the upgrade account page and assures us our feed digests will be unaffected for at least a month - while our payment is now a month and a half overdue.  I don't want to see our Feed Digests disappear! 

This isn't the end of the testing period for Lifestreaming services - just the beginning.  It remains to be seen what kind of ads start supporting each of them.  Ads are OK with me if they stay simple - if not subtle - and do not cause browser troubles or worse. All of these Lifestreaming services encourage networking - through integrating friends from source streams or following favorites or joining/starting groups or a combination.

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