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.

Just thinking about how to get better ROI from my del.icio.us links. I typically put links in there that I want to retrieve later, usually multiple times. I don’t put transiently interesting links in there usually, as I know I’ll never go back there. I use del.icio.us to store links I know I’ll want to refer to again and again.

Problem is, del.icio.us is a black hole. I throw stuff in there, and I never return to it. Why? Because the little Google search box in firefox makes it way to easy to just search google.

What I need is a single search box, but with the ability to search google and del.icio.us. I want to see my del.icio.us links have very high priority on my google searches. If I can integrate the two databases, then I’d have something special.

I’m sure there’s a way to do this with a firefox plugin.

There real issue is, “How do I know I put something into del.icio.us?” Once it’s in there, how do I know I’m even able to retrieve it? That’s why google works so well, because I don’t have to know if it exists or not.. I just assume it does. With del.icio.us, that assumption isn’t valid all the time. But my workflow doesn’t involve me asking myself, “Maybe I bookmarked it, so first let me search del.icio.us” I need the searching of my bookmarks and the whole web to be integrated into one simple search.