11/5/08 class assignment

My Del.icio.us account is at http://delicious.com/jackhenry

In order to participate in election activities I need to know answers to questions I have about the campaigns and candidates and media coverage. I also have my own resources that others may find useful in their research. One way to do this is to look for information that can used to implement actions or see how others have acted, preferably in a manner that reduces searching time. Along with tools like Facebook and Twitter, I’m finding that Delicious is a valuable tool both in its specificity of information and in its wide net of resources. And, as with Twitter, I was not impressed with Delicious at first. Its been a matter spending some time with it and searching and posting and watching. Now I think its pretty cool.

If I am looking for information about virtually any aspect of the election I can look at Delicious for websites that have already been posted by others- in my case, journalists and election coverage particularly- and I can add sites I’ve found to be helpful. The real power of Delicious is apparent when I create a network of sites of my own, or I join networks already in place. One very helpful service from Delicious is the ability to put a link to Delicious on my blog or Facebook, and, vice versa, to have Delicious automatically feed my blog or Facebook with ‘headlines’ from postings at Delicious. Another tool is the RSS option. Often the links are to sites that include action items and to share information and not just for acquiring information. Searching is aided by tags given to each bookmark added to Delicious by posters. (Much like the tags available to each of the postings on this class blog.) Alongside each bookmark is a number that indicates how many other people have also bookmarked the site.

An example of a site that is using Delicious and that I found by searching the tags journalism , politics, election, election_coverage is blivet 2.0 at http://halrager.org/WordPress/category/delicious/ The site includes election and political information but its not restricted to those. I am especially intrigued by the “Share This” icon: “ShareThis is a free one-step sharing tool that makes sharing online hassle free. It is the easiest and most efficient way to share anything you want, where you want, to who you want!” This lets the reader post the bookmark to any of a number of social networks with a single click. And at the bottom of the page are links:
I am halrager on Delicious, and, Add me to your network, further efforts to keep the communications and information sharing as easy as possible.
Three examples of links posted to Delicious on the site from 10/29 include:

1) What Progressives Need to Do After November 4th | AlterNet
Assuming Obama wins, of course. If not, the ‘to do’ list is considerably larger.
(tags: progressive 2008+election politics)
2) Pew Election Preview 2008: What if We Held an Election and Everyone Came?
(tags: politics slate pew 2008+election pdf report vote)
3) Good Vote.org
"When you go to vote, do you know what to do if someone tells you you're not on the list or there's a problem with your voter registration?" [via mark @ wood s lot]
(tags: politics tools voting vote via:mark)

Delicious is also turning out to be a great way to look for information on Web 2.0 technologies.