Question: How do we create roaming favorites and bookmarks?

The IT Guy says:
This was a constant source of frustration for me. Between work and home I use as many as four different computers at times, and often I couldn't find something I had bookmarked because I didn't know which computer it was on! However, all that changed when my friend Glenn introduced me to a Website called del.icio.us.

To use del.icio.us, you first need to sign up for a free account. During that process, you will set up your user name, password, and install a small button on your browser toolbar. Once you have your account set up, any new bookmarks you set up will be stored in your del.icio.us account online, instead of on the computer that you're using. Once there, you can access them from any Internet-connected computer by going to the address del.icio.us/your user name (with your user name after the slash, of course.)

It gets better. When you create your bookmarks, you also assign them "tags", which are terms that indicate which category or categories you want your bookmarks sorted into. Not only does this allow for better organization of your bookmarks, it also allows you to share your sets of bookmarks with others. For instance, any resources that I think support this column will be at del.icio.us/cmcquinn/it_guy. Anytime I do a presentation or workshop, I set up a specific tag for that set of resources, and I only have to give participants one url!

This ability to share the bookmarks is why this is called social bookmarking. Del.icio.us isn't the only site for doing this; Furl is a similar service. Whichever service you use, it frees your bookmarks to go wherever you go!

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