Useful tools: Delicious

In the second of this (very) occasional series about things I use to help me work, I want to talk about Delicious. It’s been around for a while, and indeed I’ve been using it since I started up as a freelancer. Its staying power can only be a good thing!

It’s ideal for keeping track of all those handy articles I find and read (or intend to read…), as well as sharing them via my websites. However, it was only at the weekend when I had a bit of a fiddle around with it that I discovered some handy features.

From many to one

Previously, I had a Delicious account for each of my blogs (which proliferate faster than I can keep up), with a different log-in for each. In addition, since Yahoo bought Delicious, many of these now have Yahoo log-ins instead.

Fed up with all these different usernames and passwords (plus I don’t use Yahoo for anything else), I decided to bring all my bookmarks (both public and private) under my original account. Delicious offers an easy-peasy import and export tool for doing just that.

Tailored link rolls

However, I don’t want all my bookmarks to show on each website; they’re very different topics. So, I created a tag specific to each one, which I apply as relevant to the saved article. Delicious’ link roll tool then allows me to specific that tag when creating the each feed.

In addition, there’s an option to bundle articles and pages with specific tags (like Gmail’s labelling system), to help you quickly see articles once in your account (rather than searching by a specific tag).

Keeping things private

Of course, some pages are not for the general public, and there’s a simple ‘private’ option (which also appears as a tag) to make sure these are kept hidden. I’m sure there are other tools still to discover too.

And, hey presto, one account with a single username and password, but tailored for each blog. Now I just need to remember to use the correct tag (the one possible source of error!). Follow me on Delicious.

The art of letterpress

There’s an interesting audio slideshow about the ‘disappearing act’ of letterpress on The Guardian’s website. The article introduces us to the craft and how a master of the trade puts it all together to produce beautifully printed items.

Letterpress in action: Photo by Graeme Robertson for The Guardian

After I left university I spent a short spell working for a printer in Oxfordshire. He’d spend hours in the hot, stuffy basement with this mechanical wonder, enveloped in ink fumes.

He used to put off the task for days, with an understandable dislike of the humid air and emerging light headed at the end. Still, I wish I’d insisted on learning more about the process (although I don’t recall it being letterpress).