Thing 12: Delicious and my Picky Palate

After last week's happy experience with Evernote, I was wondering what bookmarking tools might be able to add to my increasingly enhanced web-browsing experience.

I'm terrible for finding interesting links and images, emailing them to myself and then losing them in the slew of renewal requests, important stuff about periodicals and myriad other emails that come to my cam.ac.uk account. So a bookmarking service is precisely what I need, right?

Yup, this is as far as I got. And I have no motivation to
[dii]go any further.

I decided to go a little off-piste and try diigo first, because I vaguely remember hearing something positive about it at the second Teachmeet in March (more about Teachmeets can be found here and here). This was a monumental failure, as the "diigolet" button on the browser toolbar seems to do precisely nothing, and is also fairly aesthetically offensive in comparison with the Lightshot feather and the Evernote elephant. I also could not work out how to even add a first bookmark on the main site, which kept trying to get me to watch a tutorial. If I can't work it out for myself or browse through decent FAQs in my own time, I'm not interested.

A very well-organized, information-rich layout (in my
humble opinion)

So diigo diiwent. Delicious was next up, apparently revived and rebooted after the fairly indifferent reception it received in last year's Cam23 Things programme (comments here and here illustrate the "it's OK but...meh" attitude that seemed to prevail). This was somewhat more successful from the off - I installed the add-on (though I'm still not quite sure why it necessitates three icons on the browser) and added my first bookmark without too much pain. The 'tag' icon add-on is swift and effective, and I like the web-based homepage, which provides a lot of information in a clear, digestible way. However, I dislike the fact that you can't just drag things around to make links appear, and that tags can only consist of one word. And they're really difficult to get rid of in the case of typos!

Delicious, frankly, has left me a little unsatisfied and still waiting for the next course. It seems quite useful, but I'm not sure that it captivates me enough to make regular use of it. It seems good for sharing huge lists of links en masse, as the excellent cpd23 programme has shown to good effect. I can also see its application in libraries for reading lists and the like, though for Classics in particular, so little of our material is online that it seems a little redundant there too.

To really sum up how I feel, I'm going to rely on the ever-insightful Library Wanderer to do the talking for me. A year ago, she expressed largely the same feelings, noting that she'd probably switch the most important stuff over to Evernote, which is what I'd be tempted to do too...I prefer the tag system and the way it can include attachments. The biggest factor is, that Delicious does what it does well. But Evernote does it just as well, with a lot of other features (see here for an extended take on this with beautiful accompanying pictures...)

Cake. Mm.
Photo by Dimitri N

The Delicious cupcake is trumped by the towering Evernote pineapple upside-down cake, with glacé cherries to boot.

Now I need to go and find cake...

Thing 11: Who is that girl I see / Staring straight back at me?

A girl who knew all about reflection
Photo from fanpop.com

...As Mulan said. Now, I'm not saying that the effect of Cam23 2.0 on my life is as great as the changes she had to make, but it has been a formative experience work-wise, and has made me evaluate more closely the ways in which I work and the changes I may have to make before October.

Most of the Things in the programme have not been new to me, but through exploring them more closely I have come to use them in slightly different, and hopefully more efficient, ways. As an example, I was always aware of Google calendar and had used it at work from September, but now it has completely replaced my paper diary and has made things simpler in (an aspect of) my life outside of work, too.

Of the new Things, there are a couple which really have filled a gap: taking screenshots may not be a crucial part of my working life but Lightshot makes it infinitely easier; Netvibes and RSS feeds combined have allowed me to keep in touch with much more information from a wider sourcepool; and I think that my sporadic and disorganised bookmarking habits will gradually be replaced by a much better-looking and effective platform in Evernote.

Other Things have had less of an impact: Pushnote is definitely being consigned to Room 101, and whilst Twitter is growing on me (and produced a very amusing conversation yesterday about Koine Greek and mooses' upper echelons), I'm struggling to see how it will be truly useful once I leave the Cambridge library mafia (sad days ahead).

After being stuck in a bit of a bubble, I'm finally breaking out again
Photo from Wikipedia

And so to the wider application of the Things and the programme generally. I have realised that my organisational skills will be key in order to succeed (and stay sane) on my Masters course next year, and that it is OK to write things down in order to remember them! I have also learnt that, in order to get the most out of web 2.0 technologies, you have to be prepared to put in and keep putting in, even if you occasionally feel like you're shouting into the wind. Which leads me on to the thing (with a small 't') that I have most enjoyed: having the motivation and the material to get me writing again, not only because I needed to get back into the habit for academic reasons, but for the pure enjoyment of manipulating language, the self-imposed discipline of proofreading and revision, as well as becoming more aware of other people's styles and how writing needs to be adapted for different new media.

Thing 10: Nota Bene, or else please, don't bother noting at all...

Thing 10 is the first time I have ever used online note-making/file organisation tools, for want of a snappier way of referring to them. As I about two weeks behind, I have tried to keep my observations as unbiased as possible (even though I couldn't help reading Gareth's hilarious reflections here)...

Pushnote. Before I even signed up I wasn't sure of how much use it would be to me. Luckily this was cleared up for me quite soon: it is of absolutely no use whatsoever.

Who are your notes for? And why would anyone want
to read them? Photo by styro

The main problem is that it seems to have cause and effect round the wrong way. As Aidan notes, it is self-defeating from the off if you view people's comments on sites you visit, as the site itself is there to be viewed and explored, and can probably speak for itself far more eloquently than most Pushnote users. As an example, the comment "a wholly remarkable site" on the BBC homepage constitutes nothing more than wholly remarkable hyperbole. Furthermore, the stream of {un}consciousness from 'friends' commenting on any old site is not as effective a way of sharing links as, say, Twitter or Facebook. This is probably exacerbated by the fact that my stream consists almost solely of Stephen Fry who, love him as I do, seems to get a little bit overexcited and just mark everything as 5-starred. I find that his link suggestions on Twitter have far more impact, not least because they're at one remove from the site, and therefore must have taken a little more consideration. (Having said that, one of my favourite Pushnote comments was on twitter.com, and read "this one [site] is good if you have capacity for digital noise". Exacte.) In fact, there are so many things that I could say about the pointlessness of Pushnote that it's pointless to even keep going.

So, if you haven't already guessed, I won't be using Pushnote again. It adds absolutely nothing to my use of the internet. Would Evernote fare any better?

From the off, the premise seems to make a lot more sense. I interpreted it as a kind of mixture of a bookmarking site and a kind of scrapbook for photos and bits of text - essentially what I've been using Google Docs for, as I mentioned here. It looks more professional than Pushnote and is clearly better developed in terms of the FAQ pages and suggestions for ways to link it in with other products (plus, like many others, I love the little elephant logo)! There is some new lingo to deal with - the slogan "remember everything" grates, and it took me a little while to realise that 'folders' are now called 'notebooks'. There are also some little issues which slow you up, for example the fact that there is no way to cancel or abort a new note if you decide it's going nowhere, and the fact that it doesn't copy across the complicated layout of some websites very well. It takes a little bit longer to familiarise yourself with than Pushnote, but then again it's a far more sophisticated programme (sorry, couldn't help it!) One of the features that I particularly like is the facility to email things to your account through a special email address (which is alterable if it starts receiving spam), though the fact that you have to enter locations by latitude and longitude smacks of a bit of self-aggrandizing nerdery.

Sometimes the old ways are the best ways...but Evernote
shows promise. Photo by .Bala

In summary, it's not perfect by any means, but I think that it could develop into a useful tool for me. It could even come in handy for my postgraduate studies next year, as it seems a more friendly and flexible way of dealing with links at the beginning than just ramming them straight into a bibliographic program.