Semergence

On the theme of “How to get my del.icio.us links to be useful”, I have another idea.

Problem: My del.icio.us links are a blackhole, where good links go, never to be retrieved again.

Hypothesis: Why are they never able to be retrieved? I believe it’s because there is no good way to pull them back out at the moment I need them.

Solution: My computer should *know* what I’m doing, and do the search or lookup for me in real time. Google is good for when I need a specific answer to a question. del.icio.us is good for when I don’t even know I know the answer.

Let me explain.

Let’s say I’m writing some Ruby on Rails code. As I’m performing Rails related tasks, shouldn’t my computer say, “You’re writing some Rails migrations. Here’s your del.icio.us links related to migrations.” Sounds a bit Clippy (It’s looks like you’re writing a business letter?!), but I think it would be useful. I want those information nuggets (my del.icio.us links) to appear when I need it most, and disappear when I don’t need it.

This is a sort of anticipatory retrieval, as the computer is performing searches and information gathering as I work. These search results are then waiting in the wings, ready to be integrated into whatever task I’m performing.

There’s a fine line between helpful and annoying. But if the search results are sufficiently in the background, with just a small hint of, “Hi, I noticed you’re doing X, I found some tips that might be helpful. If you’re having problems, click me and I have hints.”

To me, the problem with del.icio.us, is that I don’t know what I put in there. I need the computer to tell me I already found a link for that problem.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 23rd, 2006 at 9:14 pm and is filed under delicious. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.