Hey RSS subscribers. About my quicklinks. How I use del.icio.us, bootstrap with Yahoo! Pipes, and API's.
Just in case you don't know, I am offering 2 main RSS feeds. If you are reading this, you are probably subscribed to one of them. The main RSS feeds are:
All blog posts and quicklinks: http://ericatkins.com/rss.xml
Only blog posts (no quicklinks): http://ericatkins.com/clean.xml
I don't want to inundate your feed readers with my snappy "quicklinks". Some days I'll post 10 or more and that could annoy you. Other days, I won't post any. So, I want you to know that you can subscribe to this website without getting all my quicklinks. You can just get my humble blog posts if you like.
A note on my quicklinks.
"Quicklinks" are a neat little thing that I'm proud of. I can make a quicklink in a matter of seconds, which is why I can post several a day. I wouldn't do it if it required any more time.
The method (from my perspective):
I'm surfing along and I find a link, a video, an image, or page that I want to make a quicklink. I right-click in my Firefox or Flock browser to highlight my "bookmark this page in del.icio.us" option. This pops up a new little window where I bookmark my quicklink to my del.icio.us account. I tag the link with a "forblog" free tag in del.icio.us. I add a quick description to the quicklink and then I wait. Minutes later the quicklink appears on my blog. The title links you to the other website. My description appears below it.
Side note: I also do this with just about any data steam in which a feed can be handled (photographs taken with my cell phone, Flickr images, YouTube videos, Digg.com stories, etc.). I sometimes do that on this blog, but won't go into that now.
The technical reason on how quicklinks happen:
I'm using Drupal, aggregation.module, Yahoo! Pipes, an del.icio.us account, and the del.icio.us Firefox extension (which works just great in Flock).
- I use del.icio.us to store all my bookmarks.
- I use Yahoo! Pipes to scan my del.icio.us account for the "forblog" tag and to create a special RSS feed.
- I use aggregation.module to import my Yahoo! Pipes feed.
- I use the del.icio.us Firefox extension to quickly add new links to my del.icio.us bookmarks.
- I use Drupal as pseudo PHP framework.
Yahoo! Pipes
(this is a look at a simple Yahoo! Pipe)
I use Yahoo! Pipes because I'm able to take control of data streams. I can do some pretty miraculous things with a data stream and Yahoo! Pipes. That said, I'm not doing anything special with Yahoo! Pipes right now other than knowing that I can take full control of data streams from del.icio.us if I need to. I can change XML formatting, add images, strip HTML, add geodata, and more. But, I'm not doing anything special with the particular Pipe that I aggregate my "forblog" data. I did at one time (add favicons to the quicklinks) but I'm not doing that any more.
My use of del.icio.us.
Whenever I find a webpage, video, image, or file that interests me, I decide if I want to bookmark it or not. If I choose to bookmark it, it goes right to my del.icio.us account.
Take a look at what my tag cloud is looking like:
(a look at my del.icio.us tag clouds)
I don't add bookmarks to my web browser. I store my bookmarks online because I can access those bookmarks anywhere I have an Internet connection.
Del.icio.us can even come in handy professionally. If I discover a link from work that is not work-related or is otherwise inappropriate to view from my workstation, I'll bookmark it to del.icio.us. Then at a later time, when I'm at home or on my Motorola Q, I can pull up my del.icio.us account and view the link that I couldn't view from work.
Anytime I want to recall a place that I've visited on the web and have bookmarked, I go to my del.icio.us page, hit CTRL+F (to bring up a search box) and search the page for one or more keywords that I probably assigned to the link. In a couple of seconds, my link will be retrieved and I'll be hyperlinking to that link that I wanted to visit.
(BTW: The del.icio.us homepage is a neat way to discover what's happening on the web at the current point in time.)
(BTW2: Del.icio.us is a great way to find links that have been saved by the mass public. Interested in stamp collecting? Go to del.icio.us and search the site for the "stamp collecting" tag. You'll find that the links with the most "saves" to del.icio.us usually have the best content.)
So now I'm sending lots of bookmarks to del.icio.us. I only bookmark links if I think I may want to view the link at a later time. I figured that since I'm adding data to the del.icio.us service I should be able to own it and share it elsewhere. So, if I see a link that I want to share with my reads, I'll add the "forblog" tag to the del.icio.us bookmark. After my webserver runs its next cron job, the link will appear.
I could get really fancy and send this data to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Google Bookmarks, etc. But right now, I see no reason to do that - especially when I'm trying to consolidate my Web 2.0 and social networking experience. However, I do believe Yahoo! Pipes (or something link it) is going to play a huge part in whatever comes after Web 2.0. I'm predicting whatever comes after Web 2.0 will be about API's, data services, and data sharing (maybe something like Google's Open Social).
I encourage people to use del.icio.us if they browse the web often. If the internet is a part of your lifestyle del.icio.us will come in handy in the future. Ditch locally stored bookmarks. Securely save them online. Recall them easily in the future (ever lost a ton of bookmarks after changing computers or installing a new browser?).
Privacy.
Posts to del.icio.us can be public or hidden. So, I've got some private links stored on my del.icio.us account that you'll never see.
Next, Del.icio.us was bought by Yahoo!. So, technically you fall under Yahoo! privacy statements. I trust Yahoo! as much as I trust any other major media company (that is, I expect just about everything I do online to be exposed to the public - either by mistake or maliciously). That said, I'm not afraid of them because I'm not directly publishing compromising information (credit card numbers, financial data, and so on). I guess over time someone could look at all the links that I've posted and develop some kind of psycho analysis of me. (I know of at least 3 different potential employers that have researched me and my print of the web.) Go ahead. Look at my tag cloud.
The fact is that there are several entities that can already invade my privacy (and I'm not talking about government entities). Everywhere I go on the web, every email I send, and just about anything that comes in and out of my internet connection is recorded somewhere. It is most likely stored in dozens of places. The ISPs between my PC and the internet can record where I go. So they've got the info regardless of protocols and rights.
Furthermore, the mass public can get that info if they want it. If someone wants to sniff my internet connection and know everywhere I go and every piece of text that I input into the web, the can get it. It's not that hard. All someone needs is a little bit of time and a target whether you surf on a wireless connection or not.
I accept that anything I do online can be seen by anyone else. I trust that:
- the mass public isn't savvy enough to do this (it's not popular)
- the mass public is very populated
Happy surfing.
UPDATE: You haven't seen any quicklinks on ea.com for a short while. This is because I am re-organizing my linklet clouds over at delicious.com. Yahoo! recently changed del.icio.us to delicious and so I've got a little bit of work to do.
