Port 80

Stephen den Beste once wrote that webloggers can be divided into two catagories: Linkers and thinkers. The former tend to find articles written by others and bring them to the attention of a larger audience. The latter tend to write longer posts, which focus mostly on generating original content or analysis.

Most of the time, I work in a “thinking” mode at this weblog. (Or, if that seems too strong a term for what I do here, a “poorly-directed rambling” mode.) In rare instances, I may write a post that does little more than provide a link to another website, and which contains no more than two or three paragraphs of commentary.

Part of this is due to my weblogging system, which requires a fair bit of work to add a new post. (This is deliberate - I like being forced to think over what I’m writing.) As a result, I tend towards infrequent, longer posts - shorter posts just aren’t worth my effort. However, this occasionally miffs me when I discover a particularly interesting piece elsewhere which isn’t enough to justify a full post to the weblog, but which I wish to share nonetheless.

That’s why I’m exited about del.icio.us. del.icio.us bills itself as a “social bookmark manage” - a site that allows users to share links they run across on the web, and which allows other users find your surfing interesting to keep track of what you’re adding to your bookmarks. I’m starting to use it as a very low-end “linking” blog, and will be posting odd articles I find about the web there. If you’re inclined to do the same, leave a comment - I’m interested to see what my readers are reading. (Yes, all two of you. Hi, Mom.)

Of course, del.icio.us has all of those essential features like RSS feeds, customizable preferences, an XML API, third-party clients - the list goes on and on, but why bother? I mean, for heaven’s sake, the site has “Social” in the name. It’s social networking! The next killer app! Why, start using this, and the next thing you know, you’ll be sipping chai in Starbucks and editing Wikipedia articles on Winer numbers through your smartphone which is hooked up to your WiFi laptop via Bluetooth. Really, hardwired broadband connections are so 1999.