Tuesday, January 26, 2010

It's magically Delicious!

(If anyone thinks this post's subject line is worthy of a stand-alone groan, bear in mind that it's continuing a trend of naming honeygarlic posts after breakfast cereals that Dan started three years ago.)

I've been on Facebook since 2006, had this blog since 2007, and been Tweeting since 2009. In my ever-growing quest to be a part of every social network short of the WD-40 one, you can now follow me on Delicious.

Much like last autumn's increase in political blogging here, my being on Delicious isn't a choice - it's a requirement for a course I'm in.

For those of you unfamiliar with Delicious - which I imagine would be most of you, seeing as I had only an elementary understanding going into this assignment - think of your Favorites or Bookmarks menu. Now, think of a website that not only functions as your bookmarks menu, but allows you to see the bookmarks of your friends (and vice-versa). That's Delicious.

There's no messages between users like Facebook, it doesn't ask you what you're doing like Twitter, you can't directly embed pictures or video...it's nothing but pure 'social bookmarking', allowing users to post, share, and view bookmarks - and nothing more.

At first I didn't see any value at all in Delicious. It's never going to replace my main bookmark list - having to go to a website and then look for a list is less convenient than just going through the list in my browser, and the ability to have my bookmarks with me anywhere is cancelled out by Google and knowing the name of any site I visit regularly. And okay, it's neat at first to see how many other Delicious users have bookmarked the same site you did, but the novelty of that wears off quickly.

My opinion has changed a bit, though, as I've started connecting with other classmates on Delicious - now, rather than ignoring the site completely (other than of course to add my own bookmarks), I surf over to the 'network' tab a few times a week to see if anybody else has found something neat. (They haven't, but the blame for that lies solely with Kyle Brown, not with Delicious.)

My Delicious account has become basically a repository for things I find online, find amusing at the time, but likely will never go back to. Things that might end up on this blog when I've gone a while without writing anything. In that spirit, here are a few gems:

You know the old game 20 Questions? You think of a person or a thing, and other people deduce its identity by asking its size relative to a breadbox, which side of the Mississippi it's from, and so on? Akinator has transplanted that game online, and has a huge database to guess from. I've tried Don Cherry, Terry Fox, Ronald McDonald, even Karl Marx - nothing stumps it.

The New Pornographers are releasing their fifth album in May. Even though my musical tastes have expanded in a million directions from "classic rock and The New Pornographers", I'm still looking forward to this.

An assault incident between two Americans resembles an obscure Dr. Seuss story. Rather than do actual reporting, the journalist explains how the incident is similar to and differs from the story. "In the story, however, a highway is eventually built around the two, and no one is stabbed."

Finally, Bob Rae in channeling his inner Stephen Harper by singing and playing a Beatles song of his own, overreached by also trying to come up with new words. Unfortunately, if politics don't work out for bob, the next Weird Al he ain't. Have a watch.



For more of this sort of thing...well, stay right here. We're grrrrrrrrrrreat!

--Ryan

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