[TAG] TAG blogroll

[Jimmy O'Regan]

On 8/31/05, mso at oz.net <mso at oz.net> wrote:
> I've been torn between "do it yourself" blogging (modifying pyBlosxom --
> http://pyblosxom.sourceforge.net/) or using one of the services.  The
> services remind me of Yahoo Groups: good luck trying to export the data
> sometime later without screen scraping.  And a lot of my entries would fit
> better into a topic hierarchy than a linear date order.

It's not that bad, really! Most of the popular blog systems have some
sort of API (e.g. Blogger:
http://code.blogger.com/archives/atom-docs.html) that's intended for
editing software, but can be used for migration (WordPress does this).

You probably don't want to use a hierarchical layout for topics:
multiple tags/categories are *much* better, just compare del.icio.us
with regular bookmarks. I've yet to come across a free blogging
service that allows you to use categories, but you can simulate the
feature using del.icio.us.

Since I'm plugging del.icio.us, I should explain why it's cool. A few
days ago I found a GPL'd Polish <-> English dictionary
(http://www.bsdguru.org/index.php?f=1100006). If I was to file this in
my bookmarks, I'd have to choose between, say, 'Polish', 'Software',
or keep bookmarking it in different places until I'm pretty sure I've
got all bases covered.

With del.icio.us, I bookmark it once, using a convenient bookmarklet,
enter each tag, and it's automatically available in a 'folder' for
each tag: http://del.icio.us/jimregan/polish,
http://del.icio.us/jimregan/software and so on. On top of that, you
can combine pairs of tags like this:
http://del.icio.us/jimregan/polish+software and see only links with
both tags.

Then there are the benefits that come from del.icio.us being a
multi-user system: I can view  other people's bookmarks, all bookmarks
that use a certain tag, etc. del.icio.us has an 'Inbox' feature, so
you can subscribe to these within del.icio.us, and because it
generates RSS feeds for *everything*, you can subscribe with a
feedreader. You can also send bookmarks to other people's Inboxes by
using a tag like 'for:jimregan', and because these are also 'regular'
tags, you can use them as normal: I know I've got a funny link that I
thought Jason would enjoy, so I use
http://del.icio.us/jimregan/humour+for:jcreigh and there it is:
http://www.mil-millington.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/diary/

There's also been a recent improvement in the posting interface, so,
when adding a new link, you can click on any of your existing tags,
accept del.icio.us's best guess (a linuxgazette.net link would have
'linux' as a suggestion), or, if the link is popular, choose from a
list of popular tags for that item.

It also comes with a nice, easy to use REST API, so you can always
grab all your data at any stage.