I just loooove del.icio.us. Here is a little tip for mixing in the best of Furl to add persistence to your valuable bookmarks:

Furl is another social bookmarks manager, and – unlike del.icio.us – Furl also saves copies of the websites and allows a full text search within your archive. I do prefer the minimalistic beauty of del.icio.us for everyday use, but I want some of my del.icio.us bookmarks backed up in Furl, just for the case they die (the average website has the lifespan of a horsefly).

Luckily Furl provides the possibility to import bookmarks from del.icio.us. Now it’s possible to stove in just everything from del.icio.us, but I prefer a hand picked selection of articles, postings, and the like – mainly for two reasons:

  • there is no added value in saving and searching the front page of google or slashdot or some webservice.
  • these ressources pollute the rest (probably no big deal if you have 100 bookmarks or less, but cumbersome if you want to page through 2000 articles in steps of 25). OK, you always can search or browse by topic, anyway…

So here is one way to do it:

(1) bookmark and tag like mad in del.icio.us, but add a special tag (e.g. 2furl) for the articles you want to save in Furl later.

every few days:

(2) export the bookmarks tagged with 2furl :

open http://del.icio.us/api/posts/recent?tag=2furl in your browser (you’ll have to identify yourself with your delicious username and password);
save the result (you might not see anything, but it should be there) to your disk (e.g. as 2furl.xml).

(3) import this file to Furl:

in Furl go to ‘My Tools’ – import;
select the file you just created;
make sure ‘Import from del.icio.us’ is selected and ‘Save files..’ is checked;

click ‘Import It’ (this might take a while);

(4) back in del.icio.us delete or rename the tag 2furl (in settings – tags) so you can start fresh again. I prefer to rename it to something like furled, so I can see right within del.icio.us whether I’ve already furled a link)

(5) start happy bookmarking again

This might seem a little complicated, but once you have done it two or three times, it will take you less than a minute (and made me sleep just a little bit better).

Links:
If you don’t mind popup windows you alternatively might want to check out Alan Levine’s Multipost Bookmarklet Tool which is pretty cool and can be configured to accomplish pretty much the same.
Furl and Del.icio.us: Almost Perfect Together is an excellent introduction to del.icio.us and Furl.

Comments:

The export/import capabilities are good to know. I still vastly prefer Furl, but I really hope that interoperability will be maximized. That’s why I love Technorati Tag searches. I just wrote an entry on getting the most out of Furl on my blog (http://marshallk.blogspot.com) and much of it would apply to delicious as well. Most important to me is that the user base be expanded into as many demographic groups as possible, for maximum value via the social part of social bookmarking.
posted by Marshall Kirkpatrick : 5/26/2005 03:16:30 AM

interesting. that adds some foreigh matter to my cornflakes.
should i think again, i wonder?
posted by James Governor : 11/04/2005 02:22:53 PM