Hot on the heels of the del.icio.us beta plugin for Firefox 3 beta, Yahoo! has released a beta plugin for Internet Explorer. While Firefox is pretty popular these days, we're pretty sure there are still more people using the IE6 or IE7 browser that came with their computer than a beta version of the open source Firefox browser. Which is to say, seriously, Yahoo! is just now getting around to this?
The Internet Explorer plugin packs most of the features of the Firefox version. That means you can search and browse bookmarks from your sidebar, view recent activity, or tag pages with a button in your browser toolbar. The plugin works with IE6, IE7, and IE8 and runs on Windows XP and Vista.
This plugin is being released as a pubic beta, which means some features may change before the final release.
One of the nice things about modern desktop browsers is that there are tons of third party add-ons. These plugins let you do everything from change the way web pages look to making it easy to save web pages to social bookmarking services like del.icio.us.
Mobile web browsers haven't gotten nearly as much love from third party developers. That's why we're excited to see that Dale Lane has written a Post to del.icio.us plugin for Pocket Internet Explorer, the stripped down web browser that Microsoft includes as part of the Windows Mobile operating system for cellphones and PDAs.
When you click the link from the Menu toolbar, the plugin will automatically submit the current web page to your del.icio.us bookmarks, taking the name of the page from Internet Explorer. You can also add tags before saving your page.
Post to del.icio.us is available as a free download. You can also get the source code from Lane's web site. The plugin requires Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6.
Have your ever been randomly searching for something online, only to realize you closed a window and cannot for the life of you remember what website you were on? You might be able to check your browser history or use a bookmarking tool. But what if you want to share your browsing records and let other users see where you've been?
Hooeey lets you record eveyr site you visit. You need a hooey account and a browser toolbar in order for hooey to do its thing. The toolbar then tracks the sites you have visited in online folders allowing you to check out analytical reports and share links.
So if you are up for letting friends know where you have been, hooeey will gladly share your browsing patterns with them.
New social bookmarking site SugarLoving is a great example of an excellent idea that's terribly executed. The idea is that women will use the site to share stories they think will be of interest to other women. Instead of being well-rounded and smartly put together, though, it screams OMG!! Ponies!!1!!!
Here's what SugarLoving does right: the site clearly understands that sites like Digg and Del.icio.us have gotten so huge that it takes forever to wade through the cruft to find interesting things to read. Niche-driven sites like SugarLoving are a good idea because they offer a place for people with similar interests to congregate, instead of trying to be everything to everyone.
But the pink and powder blue hearts have to go.
It's hard to take the site seriously when it's awash in graphics like "i (heart) this" and the tagline reads "Link love." (Yeah, yeah...SugarLoving...hearts, love...we get it). It's overkill, though, and reads like an overblown Valentine's Day card.
On a purely technical note, we're surprised there's no way to bury or vote down a story but maybe since the site is still new, that feature is still to come.
The folks at Sugar, Inc. have a good idea with this Web site, if they could just tone it down a bit and realize that all women are not shallow, shop-a-holic clones. If SugarLoving beefs up the business and tech sections, and adds some sports and news categories, they'd have a site geared toward a greater cross-section of women -- and one that's more inviting that it is now.
The team behind del.icio.us has been feverishly redeveloping and scaling the application since yahoo purchased it over a year ago. del.icio.us has been building a new platform that speeds up the bookmarking process and enables it to grow without issues, adding more functionality and proper user interface design. Well, the time has come to let a select few inside the doors of the delicious preview to see what's hiding.
Notice there are no ".'s" in the name. Could they be taking the "web2.0" fad out and replacing it with a more mature application?
Let's begin with what's new. First off, the del.icio.us design has been revamped and looks totally refreshing. They have worked with users and gone over tons of feedback from the current site in order to build this new rendition. Complete with new links, navigation areas, sidebars and brand spanking new user interface design, any bookmarker will be happy.
Here's a rundown of the new goodies you can expect:
Deep in the redesign of their online bookmarking service, del.icio.us has found time to build a Facebook application. The new application allows Facebook users to log into their del.icio.us accounts from the social network and display their bookmarks.
With the bookmark integration users can choose to either show del.icio.us activity in their Facebook news feed, and/or show a del.icio.us summary of recent bookmarks in their user profile with recent bookmarks or tag clouds. There is however an annoying delays of up to 30 minutes for all changes and for content to appear. Only bookmarks that have been checked as shared will appear.
Apparently there are a few bugs reported by users, but these will surely be worked out by del.icio.us staff promptly.
Yahoo is the original Internet location. Back in the early days everyone had their Hotmail email address, and had Yahoo search directory set as their start page in Netscape Navigator. Things have changed drastically since then. Google is in the spotlight for search, and Yahoo has branched out to offer some important services for todays internet users, (insert Mozilla fan boy comment now) and we should all be using Firefox.
Taking a queue from Richard MacManus' post on the Top 10 Yahoo! Properties, we would like to highlight some of Yahoo's services that are making a difference in our lives in this Web 2.0 landscape.
We certainly haven't heard a lot from the del.icio.us labs recently. As other social bookmarking sites announce exciting new features and designs, the one that started it all seemed to be lagging a tad. That's all about to change soon, apparently.
The del.icio.us team has been working their backsides off on building a new platform for the bookmarking site. Not only have they been doing that but they have also been looking at the current user interface and working out ways in which it could be easier to use, and more functional.
The usability tests have been in the works, and a dozen individuals have been working through the positives and negatives of the designs. So we think we can all breathe a sigh of relief as there should be a beta of the new design rolled out in the near future. Now if only we could nail that supposed date down.
Could Mister Wong hold the fortune cookie you've been waiting for in social bookmarking? European users think so.
Mister Wong is a social bookmarking site from Germany that's up against the strong del.icio.us, Furl, Sphere and Ma.gnolia. They have a lot of traffic hitting their European specific sites, but what could their recently launched English specific site offer that differentiates them from others currently on the market? Mister Wong has all of the things you would expect from an online bookmarking tool including a Firefox toolbar where bookmarks can be checked and submitted. They also have some interesting features like the ability to make bookmarks private, groups, buddymatching bookmarks, and private messaging. Mister Wong is also accessible on mobile devices.
Mister Wong was hitting more than 2 million visitors in Europe alone, that tops what Furl and Blinklist currently have so it's growing, just not into del.ici.ous territory as of yet. That could change as Wong users can choose to import their bookmarks from del.icio.us. Mister Wong's English site is currently in closed beta, you can sign up on their site to be notified when it's open.
Jason Calacanis, the man behind the Weblogs Inc empire, (that this blog is a part of) has officially announced his latest project, Mahalo, and its main goal is to help people - a lot. Jason has kept a great number of people itching to know what he's been working on during his Entrepreneur in Action at Sequoia Capital and the news was dropped today at the Wall Street Journal's D conference.
Mahalo(thank you, in Hawaiian) plays off what Yahoo and Ask did way back in the early days of the internet and what DMOZ is still well known for today, indexing internet content by hand. However Mahalo spices things up to provide much better end results for users. But how can people do this better then say for instance, Google's machines? Typically when searching Google, Yahoo, or other machine based search engines, top quality results can get lost in the mix, and a real deep quality search might not get made. Mahalo's search guides that compile these results do use top locations like Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, Flickr, Delicious and other services to create clean and organized results, except they aim to get the best results possible for users. Could it ever beat out Google? No, they really are not in competition, but it sure can provide an additional location to search for more accurate and higher quality results.
The 40 person team behind Mahalo currently has the top 4,000 search engine result pages complete so far in the initial Alpha launch, and hopes to have over 10,000 by the end of 2007.
LeapTag is a new way to discover all of the content you are interested in. Its way to read RSS feeds that enables users to locate news, blogs, books and other sources of material that match personal interests. However, it is not an RSS feed reader.
Users can sign up and download a browser toolbar. Through this toolbar you subscribe to tags and topics. LeapTag then scowers the web and finds links that you might like. The system learns by how much you like the items, and improves the results it lays out.
The download for this application is quite heavy, and it is still in beta form so things could change. Not only does LeapTag require a browser based toolbar with a new sidebar, but it also requires a Windows or Mac application to keep things running. For an alternative check out StumbleUpon or Del.icio.us.
Who's up for a little stalking? Its ok, no Britney Spears stalking, just some RSS and ATOM feed stalking. iStalkr is out of beta and ready for users to create a world of spying and nosiness.
iStalkr is a web application that creates a "lifestream" that will track RSS and ATOM feeds from a variety of services that you might use throughout the day including Digg, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Google Reader and Twitter over a time line. From that point, you can choose to paste a time line of data into a website or blog to let people know what you are up to, or monitor other people's timelines to see what they have been up to.
It's a pretty cool application, but really doesn't serve any other purpose.. Sure its great to see how many times someone twitters, when they check out their news feeds, and how many times they Digg something throughout the day, but it's just another fluffy Web 2.0 gadget.
Our favorite online bookmarking tool, del.icio.us, has just announced the release of a hot new Firefox add-on. Ok, so it's not too hot, apparently del.icio.us quietly released this one to the public a little while ago but just decided now to update it and let everyone know about it now.
The del.icio.us Firefox add-on allows users to create, manage, and search all bookmarks right in the browser bar. The big noticeable change is the speed. del.icio.us has bumped up the power and greatly increased the rate at which bookmarks can be made, read and accessed. Users now have full control over their synced del.icio.us accounts with tagging abilities inside Firefox.
del.icio.us is a great way to store all of you bookmarks in one location that can be accessed anywhere you are. This is a great improvement that old users are going to be thankful for, and will hopefully encourage more people to try their great bookmarking service out. Check out the tour of the new features here.
The team at del.icio.us made a quiet announcement last week--so quiet that Download Squad didn't even hear it. It seems that the beginning of February saw the 1.5 millionth user register on the social bookmarking site. Apparently since the Yahoo! buyout the team is bursting at the seams trying to integrate with Yahoo!'s user base. The del.icio.us team hasn't made a post on their official blog since December 2006 to inform us as to what they have been up to or give us possible hints at what's to come with the service, but del.icio.us creator Joshua Schachter ensures us that they have a lot going on and a lot more changes are in store for the future. To start with, del.icio.us is working to improve the UI and flush out any hidden design issues from way back in the day. del.icio.us is still trying hard to figure out what the future of the tool is, but I'm sure it will make any bookmarker happy. I use del.icio.us every single day to store, manage, archive and share bookmarks. It's a powerful yet simple tool that, after reading Schachter's comments, I'm sure will grow to new heights this year.
When favicons first started to become popular, I have to admit that I didn't really "get" them. I couldn't see what the value was to having a dinky little icon in the address bar. Maybe I'm slow, but it also took me awhile to figure out that my browser could remember the favicon for my bookmarks or favorites that I'd visited, making it easier to pick them out from a long listing of links.
Of course, now that I'm used to them, I feel like I can't live without them. In fact, any listing of links that doesn't use favicons frustrates me, particularly if I use it a lot. One tool that I use a lot that unfortunately does not support favicons is del.icio.us. Of course, what do you do if there's something on the web that you wish was different? Well, if you're a programmer you just hack yourself together a greasemonkey script. And if you're like me, you just cross your fingers and hope that some kindly developer has hacked together a script to do what you were wishing you could do.
In my case, I'm happy to report that someone has in fact written a greasemonkey script to add favicons to del.icio.us. Creatively called fav.icio.us2, it does what it says it will do, and that's good enough for me.
