Phil Bradley's weblog

MultiPLX

RSS Reader Reimagined I got asked to take a look at a new RSS reader today, called MultiPLX. This is what they say about themselves: "

MultiPLX is a visual RSS Reader and works as a full web service, designed from ground-up to be as scalable and fast as Google Reader. "Although there are many variants that are trying to imitate Google Reader at the moment, most of them are desktop clients or mobile apps that depend on Google Reader engine. MultiPLX is a full web based service with a back-end that can scale-up to serve millions of users, and billions of feed posts each day with a speed that is unmatched even in desktop clients." said Emre Kosmaz founder of MultiPLX. "The speed and scalability of Google Reader is not something you can deliver overnight and we have been working on this project to be par with Google Reader for the last 8 months" he added. MultiPLX already supports seamless migration from Google Reader with capability to import OPML files through Google Takeout.

I've taken a look - it took me a few moments to sort out my Google OPML file, but once that was sorted I was up and running. This is what the screen looks like:

I have to say that personally, I'm not a fan. I found the boxes rather too large - with RSS feeds I tend to expect something more compact, with lines of headlines, rather than boxes. For me this looked more like a Zite or Flipboard concept, and I'm just not sure how well that works on a desktop or laptop. I talked about my concerns with the founder, who was a very nice chap, and who responded virtually instantaneously, which is always a good sign. He's looking to introduce more functionality of the type that I've mentioned in the near future, so I think that MultiPLX is worth keeping an eye on. When they add new functionality I shall revisit it and let you have more details. In the meantime, if you want to try it out yourself you can do so - you need the promo code when you go to sign up, which is FRIENDS so give it a whirl.

Pinterest - bookmarking images

This is one of those 'why didn't I think of it' resources. Pinterest essentially lets you bookmark and share images that you like. You can create boards or sets of images, annotate them and share them with friends. It looks something like this:

Simply add the 'Pin It' boomark to your browser and then when you come across an image that you like, it's a click to add it to a collection. Now of course, you can do this using traditional bookmarking schemes, but this makes the process much easier and it's much more enjoyable - and easy to see the images that you've got.

I can see a wide range of uses for this - Pinterest suggest boards for books you like, home style and so on. I can think of subject boards, motivational posters, information based images, library related cartoons and so on. I've had an account for less than a day and it's already really busy with people following me back, sharing images and so on. It doesn't take much work, and it's very simple. Worth while trying it out.

 

Related articles

• Thinking About Pinterest (freetech4teachers.com)
• How are you using Pinterest? (debsanswers.wordpress.com)
• Pinterest: not just a time sink (nagoonberry.wordpress.com)
• Meet Pinterest: A Private Social Pinboard That Collects Your Online Memories (mashable.com)

Diaspora given itself kiss of death

I mentioned Diaspora the other day as a network that was trying to set itself up as a competitor to Facebook. Today I got an email from them starting with "We love you. Yes. Really, we do." That never bodes well, and this time was no exception. They're clearly deeply in financial difficulties as they are asking for donations, with a suggested donation of $25. That's a lifetime membership to LibraryThing if I remember correctly! However, it's been pointed out that the 4 employees are giving themselves $28.8K salaries, which some may consider slightly excessive.

Irrespective of that, once it's out that there are financial troubles, people will run away, not towards. They certainly haven't done themselves any favours.

 

Related articles

• Diaspora Passing The Hat Again (techcrunch.com)
• The State of Diaspora and Fundraising Round Two (readwriteweb.com)

Years to build up Delicious - one day to wreck it

Delicous has managed to destroy itself in a single day. That's impressive by any standards, but I really think that they've done it. Users are complaining that they can't log in, and then when they do they're finding missing tags, no RSS feeds, the search function has been wrecked, tag bundles have disappeared, and that's just for starters. What do we get in return? Something called 'stacks' which are not interesting, novel or indeed new. At all. Plenty of other people have been doing them for ages.

The Delicious page over at Facebook is where most people are venting their spleen, and I've yet to see one complimentary comment. I really didn't think it would be possible to screw a service up that badly so quickly, but the new owners have managed it with stunning success. If you're looking for an alternative, and didn't jump ship last year, my blog post back then provides 28 alternatives to Delicious - I'll be going thru them to make sure that they still all work, but it's there in the meantime. I've had diigo as a backup for the last year, and I moved across today, lock stock and barrel. I suggest that you look around yourself!

 

Related articles

• Oh God, what is this mess branded as Delicious? (socklabs.com)
• New Delicious is a Bitter Disappointment (readwriteweb.com)
• New Delicious Is Not That Tasty (stoweboyd.com)
• New Delicious - sweet eye candy but a bitter aftertaste (brendancooper.com)
• Bye bye, Delicious... (shannonturlington.com)

Boounce - seriously useful addon

As many of you know, I'm fairly jaded when it comes to reviewing stuff - looking at hundreds of sites a week, and seeing basically the same concept repeated over and over does result in a jaundiced approach. However, now and then, I come across something which actually rates highly on the "wow OMG" stakes. One such is a thing called Boounce. Yes, I think it's a stupid name too, but let's move on past that. As one of its major goals Boounce wants to reclaim forgotten search engines, and just for that alone it's worth mentioning. However, this is one of those times when I think someone might just be able to do it.

And there's more! Boounce is intelligent enough to realise that you don't want to see the same results over and over, so it can hide duplicate results as you Boounce between Google and Bing.

We're all familiar (or at least I hope that we are) with multi search engines such as Browsys, Trovando, TurboScout and the rest. That is to say - a search engine that gives you plenty of other options when you get there. The trouble is of course in remembering to go there in the first place. This is where Boounce comes into play, because it's not a search engine as such, it's a Firefox/Chrome addon. Don't be put off in their homepage documentation which talks about downloading stuff - it's just a straightforward browser addition, nothing else. I think they should change it however, because my general response these days is that I'm not interested in something if I actually have to download it! When you add the app you get a search box that looks rather like this:

All fairly straightforward really - you whack in your search term and then choose one of the options that are available for you - Google and Bing are the default options that you can't do anything about, but then you have a host of other options, add the icons/search engine options above are (left to right) Blekko, Duckduckgo, WolframAlpha, Wikipedia, Ask (note to UK users, this goes to .com not the .co.uk version, which I regard as a plus), Lycos, Snap, Answers and Exalead. Simply choose the one that you want to run your search, and off you go. If you get fed up seeing it on the screen it's a mouseclick toggle to get it gone and then back again.

You'll get taken to the search engine results page (SERPs) and you can browse through as you need to. At the bottom of some search engine pages (mainly Google, Bing, Ask although there may be others) you'll see a new bunch of options:

You can click on any of the icons and jump straight off to their search engines as well. I've not been able to make it work with my setup at the moment, but their tech folk - who were *very* quick off the mark today (sunday!) got back to me immediately and are looking at it.

So - why exactly is this a big deal? The main point is that you have a range of search engines staring you straight in the face - you don't have to remember to go to Browsys et al. Second big deal - it's fast. You don't find what you want, click on another icon and redo the search in no time. Third big deal - you get to the bottom of the Google/Bing first SERP and instead of going straight onto their second best guesses, you're reminded that if they can't do the job for you, someone else may just be able to.

Quite nifty so far, but we haven't even started. If you click on the Search option, you get a nice pulldown menu, thus:

Now, each of those options takes you into more options. Don't worry, we're going straight to clickhell in a handbasket - it's really simple to use. Let's try the next option down, Images. This is what we get:

 Clicking on the first option of image search engines gives us this:

Google and Bing options as per usual, but then Google and Bing images (the same icons is a tad confusing, but if they're working off Favicons, not much they can do about it), Icerocket, Picsearch, Exalead images, Yahoo images, Yippy, Pixsy and Kalooga. Again it's a simple job to flick from one set of results to another. But to stress the point those 9 image engines were just those for image search. There was also live photo sharing, clip art, stock images, icons and vector graphics. In total that's access to 38 different engines. You can click on each of the search engines individually, or you can do what they call a 'double boounce', which is a double click, loading tabs from all search engines, and you can visit the faster search engines first, and slowly make your way to those which take longer - a neat way of saving time. You can also then close the extra tabs that you don't need.

We therefore have access to 22 different subject areas from general search to images, to shopping, health, programming, travel, weather and so on. And within each of those we have subdivisions, and then within each of those, different search engines. If you want to see a collection of the search engines that Boounce is currently using, you see it in a tag cloud and also a list of their 'most Boounced sites' (on the same page as previous link). This is where we can really start to play with this resource. You may well say 'that's great, but I'm not interested in the 'Food' category. Simple, click on it, the 'Delete' option becomes valid and you can just click and drag the unwanted category to the bin and have done with it:

For those of you who are sharp eyed you'll also see that there's a 'New Group' option over to the left, so if you've dumped the Food option, but want to add something else, it's very easy. Simply click on the option, add in the new name for your group such as 'Librarianship' and you're done. A new group, and if you don't like the positioning, simply click and drag it to the place you want it to go.

So there's our new group! Now, that's all well and good, but to be honest, there's not that many librarianship search engines around out there, but this is the point where I really do hope that you'll go 'wow' because it doesn't matter. Go to a site that has a search engine - CILIP obviously, or the ALA, or anything else you like and right mouseclick in the search box. In the list of options that comes up (and yours will differ from mine obviously) there's an option to 'Add to Boounce'.

Click on that, give the new 'engine' and name and you're done. So my 'Librarianship' group looks like this:

It's a little bit dull, because Boounce doesn't always seem to pick up on favicons, and if a site doesn't have one, it goes with a default. So, if you want a quick and really easy way to search a favourite website, directly from the browser bar, you've got one. This doesn't always work - I've been talking to one of the developers and there are a few ifs and buts, partly due to some engines only working if you're signed in and so on.

OK, now let's go for a bit more jaw dropping. Let's say that you're really into search engines and such like, and you've created your own using something like Google custom search. You'll already know how valuable those things can be, but you can also include those in your Boounce options. It's not quite as straightforward as I'd hoped, since the base URL for Google and Google custom search engines is the same, and Boounce doesn't see a difference. Consequently what you have to do is to create your Google custom search engine, save it, and then import the HTML script onto a webpage that you have access to. Then you simply create your new group (or add the custom search engine to an existing one) and add the engine in the manner previously described. If you have a favicon, so much the better. I wanted to include my own Web 2.0 custom search engine into the Boounce family and it was a doddle. Here's the result, and for good measure I moved the position from extreme right to a more 'important' placing.

So what Boounce gives you is the opportunity to create a whole host of search engines yourself. Furthermore, if you work in conjunction with Google CSE you're giving yourself a huge amount of functionality, directly from the browser.

It is possible to log into Boounce and register. There is a community option, with members uploading collections of engines that they have created. This would in my opinion be a really good opportunity for specialist librarians and libraries to create collections, upload them and make the available for other people to use. These could then be included on browsers across the world, and what a fine thing that would be. You can also create your own Themes, and as you organise Boounce by adding sites and groups you can save your changes to another theme. Again, can see a lot of value here, by creating search engines and sites for different groups of users , by interest or age range for example, and customising the offering. There's also a Groups option which is similar, but due to an error message I've not explored that yet.

There are lots of things that I'd like to see it do - some basic engines are missing (Silobreaker wasn't in the news section for example) but that's the whole point of being able to add your own quickly and easily - and also why information professionals should get down and dirty with the service. I also find that the default set of search engines changes depending on the site that you're on (if I go to the CILIP site for example, the default suddenly becomes my Librarians group) and I can see exactly what that happens and why it's useful. However - it's irritating for a beginner, and especially when you want to add a search engine to different groups. I'm told that there will be an option in a future update however. I've also noticed a few bugs, but that's to be expected, but the point to make here is that they really seem on top of this - I spend quite a lot of Sunday evening talking to one of their staff, who was keen to do as much as possible to help. I really want/hope to be able to see full implementation of the application so that I can see it on any machine that I use and across all browsers. I'm trusting that isn't far off!

I'm really quite buzzed about this particular product - I've already used it a lot this evening just in general work, and I think it could save you huge amounts of time, and even 'straight out of the tin' you're going to be more effective and efficient using it. Harness that to the social element and we can all help each other. Just pray that Google doesn't buy them or we'll never see it again. Please do take a look at it, if nothing else, take a quick look through the videos.

UK Internet Access 2011 - a place for libraries

The ONS has released their report on Internet Access - Households and Individuals, 2011 and it makes very interesting reading. Access to the net now reaches 77%; 19 million households in Great Britain had an Internet connection. That's a great figure until you realise that's still only really 3 in every 4. Of those who don't have access 19 per cent indicated that equipment costs were too high, while 21 per cent stated that lack of skills prevented them from getting the Internet. However, half of those without a household Internet connection said they didn’t have one because they “don’t need the Internet”. That 50% figure isn't going to increase; I'll happily predict it's going to fall away in the coming years. So here's a library placemarker, and I'll be coming back to it in a moment.

An extra 6 million people using their mobile phone to access the Internet than was reported in 2010 with noticeable increases across all age groups. Mobile Internet use via a laptop, tablet or other portable computer also proved popular in 2011, with 38 per cent of Internet users using these mobile devices away from the home or workplace. The bottom line figure here is that 45 per cent of Internet users used a mobile phone to connect to the Internet. Placemarker #2.

Social networking proved to be the most popular activity among 16 to 24 year old Internet users in 2011, with 91 per cent saying they took part in social networking on websites such as Facebook or Twitter. However, the figure that I particularly like is that almost one fifth (18 per cent) of Internet users aged 65 and over indicated that they participated in social networking. This is another great statistic coming up and it should hopefully blow your socks off; those people aged 65 and over who purchased films/music, 34 per cent downloaded the product compared to 20 per cent in 2010. There was also an increase among the oldest age group downloading books or reading material, at 23 per cent compared to 15 per cent in 2010. We're not just dealing with a younger digital generation - the internet and social media is entirely pervasive. Placemarker #3

A more worrying statistic shows that one in five Internet users (21 per cent) said that their current Internet or computer skills were not sufficient to protect their personal data. A similar proportion (19 per cent) said that their skills were not sufficient to prevent a computer virus. Placemarker #4

There's also another really interesting piece of information over at Digital Buzz on the growth of social media. US figures are broadly in line with the UK results - internet usage is up in all categories. Facebook has a huge 64% market share of social media sites visited (Facebook has 310m unique visitors every day), and 1 in 4 Americans watch a YouTube video every single day. 53% of employees research potential job candidates on social networks. 3,500 images are added to Flickr every minute.

We've also had a lot of articles recently which are looking at the ineptitude of people who are searching the net. (Harsh, but I don't mean it in a particularly perjorative way - they're simply not very good at it!) Another interesting article is 'Teaching Search' which makes the point that 90% of users don't know how to use CTRL-F. (G'wan - did you just try it out to see what would happen?) Another report illustrated that students equated the position of results in a Google search with authority.

So, where does that leave us? Let's start with schools. Clearly there is a need - at the earliest possible age, to start children using computers - not just with the purely mechanical 'this is how you create a word document', but by exposing them to as much technology and resources as possible. There's a really useful article that's worth reading: 10 Internet Technologies Educators Should Be Informed About. I urge you go and have a read of it, but to spoil the surprise and keep you reading my post first, these include things such as video and podcasting resources, presentation tools, mindmapping, pinboard and social media resources. None of this stuff is going away; just the opposite - all of this stuff is just life - it's not a 'digital life' it just IS. And then we get (and excuse my intemperate language) the complete moron that is Russell Hobby, National Association of Head Teachers’ General Secretary who makes the insane and quite frankly laughable statement that “Facebook is becoming a bigger fear for schools than Ofsted”. Another report in a study by the National Literacy Trust, mentioned in the Telegraph says "schoolchildren are significantly more likely to be exposed to mobile phones and computers in the home than novels, according to researchers." So if we have children who are using these resources at home, and in an environment where their parents often admit that they are not competent in using the net (my placemarker #4) it's no wonder that they're not reading books, and no amount of forcing is going to make that happen. Rather - and this is a radical idea for the likes of Mr Hobby I'm sure, is that schools need to embrace, not shy away from Facebook and mobile phone technology and all the rest. And what better place to learn and to come to grips with it, than the school library, backed up by an effective librarian. And yes, I know this is a pipe dream, but we have to start from somewhere. Even more so, when we see reports that show that more librarians mean higher reading scores. If librarians can have that effect with reading, just think what they can help to do to prepare students for university and the rest of their lives? If we don't do it at that early age, we're going to continue with a situation where "although many people who come to the library associate the library with librarians, as well as associating libraries with information, they don’t associate information with librarians." (From a fascinating blog post by A Searching Librarian.) In order to overcome this perception, we have to go to where the conversations are.

WE have to go THEM. I'm sorry to labour the point, but I think it's necessary. Using social media isn't fun, it's not a fad, it's not a waste of time it is exactly where librarians need to be. We need to be highly visible on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and the rest. We need to be found by students (and members of the public as well - this isn't just about academic librarians) where they are. That's increasingly less likely to be in the library. It astonishes me when I still have librarians telling me that it's wrong for libraries and librarians to be on Facebook, because in some way that I totally fail to understand it's 'invading students space' (yes, that is a direct quote). It's too easy to assume that because students are using Google, Facebook and so on they know what they're doing. I would question that assumption, and the rest of us need to as well.

Librarians have, in my personal opinion a duty to their users - be they schoolchildren, graduates, members of the public or CEOs - to offer a professional and knowledgeable service. This means that we have to have excellent skillsets and knowledge of a variety of search engines. We need to have ourselves and our libraries on Facebook. We need to be able to direct users to our RSS feeds, our Delicious accounts and our blogs. We need to use all of the tools that are available to help people who don't come into the library. The library needs to provide access to the net - not simply because it's the net, but that's where the information and the knowledge is (more and more so than in books) because that's what we deal with - knowledge, in any and every format. We have to offer to teach those people who can't, won't or who are too scared to use the net. (Placeholder number one there - see, I haven't forgotten all of those). I'm sure we've all had the joy of watching people learning to read, and the same delight and enjoyment can be achieved from helping people do a really good search on the net - and God help us perhaps without using Google!

I know that you're getting tired of this, but I'm going to say it again - we have to be actively involved in social media. Use Facebook to find information - go to Flickr to grab good images, use YouTube to find good quality instructional material - and create it yourself! Spend time accessing the internet via a mobile phone, borrow an iPad and explore - even if you have to go to an Apple store to do it, and see how other libraries and museums are using apps. Reach out to the elderly who can't get into the library, but who are perfectly able to connect from other places.

The biggest barrier to all of this of course is your middle and senior management. Doesn't matter if it's a head teacher or the CEO, it's all the same. I put together a '25 barriers' presentation a while ago looking at some of the misconceptions of social media access, and what you can do to overcome it. Do not be put off when the answer comes back that you can't do it. That answer will often have come from advice from the IT or PR departments - and it is not in their interest to encourage social media use. In fact, I'm going to go so far as to say that in many cases, they are the ones that are the really big obstacles - middle and senior management just do as they're told. We need to move away from the idea that social media means 'social' as in friends and leisure time, and move the conversation around to the idea that social means talking to our user groups in a way and in a place that is effective and efficient as well as cost effective. I know that for a lot of people it's really hard (and I hate doing it as well), but I think librarians need to become more militant, perhaps more egotistical but above all, more confident that they/we actually DO know better than IT. We CAN manipulate the message better than the PR people. Because we use information - it's our job for heavens sake, and that information, that knowledge - in whatever format it comes is our stock in trade.

Don't let ANYONE tell you different.

Updating my Web 2.0 lists

I've been busy over the last few days going through my lists of Web 2.0 resources and updating them. This means that I've checked to see that the links still work, deleting those that don't, and going through my Web 2.0 weblog, checking the newer resources are still active and then adding them into the appropriate pages. I now have a listing of over 1,400 applications/resources which I've tried to annotate briefly to give you a taster. You can visit these pages by clicking on my 'Web 2.0 applications' menu bar option on my website, or you can go and visit specific pages as outlined below.

Web 2.0 tools for Calendars and Meetings. 47 links

Collaborative work, such as databases, drawings, mindmapping, survey software and general resources. 47 links

General office work and presentations. 49 links

Project Management, screen sharing and screen recording. 41 links.

Spreadsheets and writing documents. 33 links

Web 2.0 tools for communication: bulletin boards, forums, chatbox software, instant messaging (IM) and video conferencing. 57 links.

Miscellaneous communication tools, creating your own networks, social networks for mothers, Q&A services and post it type resources. 71 links.

Tools for sharing files, copying files. 65 links

Discovery resources. Books, films, games, recipes and music. 56 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with education, teaching, helping to pupils to learn. 32 links

Web 2.0 tools to help with  email, disposable addresses, newsletter creation. 43 links.

Humorous material. It doesn't all have to be serious. There are some fun resources that you can have a laugh with. 48 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help create images, such as icons, fonts and buttons. Mainly for use with websites. 20 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with miscellaneous resources, file formats, widgets, wishlists, computer related material. 61 links.

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with multimedia, audo, visual, and podcasting. 77 links

Web 2.0 tools for flickr photographs; utilities, games, search engines, other resources. 52 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with photographs, hosting photos, manipulating images, printing, book creation. 116 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with RSS: Creating feeds, RSS readers, news aggregators, submitting feeds, tags, and tagging. 49 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with screencasting, recording screen movements, and to record desktop activity. 15 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with shopping, bill paying, coupons, price comparison. 26 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with home pages and start pages. 39 links

Web 2.0 tools for  file storage, file backup. 59 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with watching television online. 22 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with time management, notetaking, read later apps, to do lists. 49 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with webpage annotation. 18 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with bookmarks and bookmarking webpages. 75 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with webpage widgets and resources, URL shortening services, webpage watching services. maps, polls and screenshots. 69 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with website creation, domain checking, website passwords, website analysis. 45 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications to help with wiki creation and comparing wikis. 16 links

Web 2.0 tools and applications that list web 2 directories and reviews. 10 links

It's obviously not a complete listing - that simply wouldn't be possible, and I can only afford the time to update it once a year, so do please use this in conjunction with the weblog. If you see anything that should be there but which isn't, or anything else you want to comment on, please email me or leave a comment below. I hope you find the lists useful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freeze The Web

Take a snapshot of any webpage, and watch it change This is a nice simple idea. Just give the resource the URL of a page and it will take a snapshot of it for you. You can then view the page and see how it changes over time. They'll send you an email to alert you to any changes. It's a little bit like the Wayback Machine aka Internet Archive but tailored to individuals. It's very new and still in beta, so open to change and development. Not sure that I would want to be emailed all the time - if I did a snapshot of say, a Google search for my name, that page will regularly change, and I don't want to be forever getting emails. I'd rather go back and revisit the link myself on my terms. Second concern is that when I looked through the list of frozen pages there were a few pornographic ones in the list. That they're porn isn't an issue for me - that I don't have an option to block them is. This makes the tool one that I instantly would feel unhappy using on a course or with children for example.

Hopefully these are issues that can be addressed as the resource develops, since it could be a nice little tool.

28 delicious alternatives to Delicious

Well, we've all seen the news that the single most insane idea of the year award can go to Yahoo who are apparently going to be closing Delicious. Quite why they're not prepared to ask people to pay for access, or even to offer it to someone like the Library of Congress to take over defeats me, but clearly straightforward thinking isn't their forte else they wouldn't be taking this stupid step in the first place. So, if you want to choose a different bookmarking resource, what options are available to you? The good news is that there's quite a lot.

A1 Webmarks. I don't personally like the look and feel of this service, but that might just be me.

Bibsonomy does what you'd expect from a social bookmarking service. It has an RSS option, tagging, share bookmarks and see what others have saved.

Blinklist is nice looking, but you can't import stuff, so is of limited value to refugees.

Bookmarks2 is a 'simple and not social bookmarking service' according to the site. Save a link with a mouse click, access from any computer, register for free, tag bookmarks, but it doesn't look like you can share what you've found.

Brainify is academic social bookmarking and networking for college and university students. The emphasis is on academia, so is probably of little use for many of us, but if you're in that area, take a quick look.

Buddymarks stores your bookmarks online, imports current bookmarks, easily add new ones, share them, use tags and categories.

Connotea has been around for a very long time now and is designed for the academic community. I'd be inclined to use this over Brainify if I was an academic.

Diigo If you're going to be going anywhere, it's probably here. It's got a good reputation, took over FURL, allows you to save tweeted links, has a groups feature, works with smartphones, lets you highlight parts of pages, sends you emails to see what your groups are up to. It's the obvious post Delicious choice for most.

Evernote is a general cut, paste and save tool, and you may already use it. If you do, consider it as an option to Delicious

Faves seems reasonably complete. Save your bookmarks with the toolbar, follow groups of people and topics, let others follow you.

Favilous has reasonable functionality - you can choose your own categories, see what pages are being bookmarked, use a bookmarklet, see who has bookmarked pages and when, see how popular a bookmark is, follow specific people, tweets the link to your twitter account, and creating pending bookmarks. It's also free. If you're looking for a slightly off the wall alternative to Delicious this would be a good bet.

Google Bookmarks. If you've got a Google account you've probably used this without realising it. Just click on the link and see. But - do you want to give Google even more power over your life than it already has?

Historio.us is free for 300 sites and about $20 per year after that. That will probably turn a lot of people off, but it's got some good functionality, so take a quick look before instantly turning it down.

Lincut is very basic, supports most browsers except IE (doh!), has a bookmarklet, but no RSS feeds or easy sharing option. I'm not encouraged by the poorly worded content and I wouldn't personally consider using it.

Linkagogo is another social bookmarking product. It is quite feature rich - syncs with the browser, has a turbo mode, reminds you of bookmarks it's time to visit again, lets you create folders, import/export, verify if bookmarks are still valid, de-dupes and so on. It's a really nice looking tool.

Mr Wong has over 7 million monthly users. Make bookmarks publically available or keep them private. Search for subjects on tags. It's designed as a social bookmarking system and it's free.

Mybookmarks is a resource that I've used myself. Import bookmarks, export them, make them public, but poor on help and FAQ material. It has however been around for a long time.

Netvibes isn't a bookmarking resource, but you can make it into one. It has a very useful bookmark option that allows you to import bookmarks, and you can tag them and make them quickly available. If you're using the public pages you can also let other people see them. It's not one click addition though, and does need a bit of cut and paste. However, if you're into home/start pages, it might be worth while considering moving everything across to Netvibes.

Oneview calls itself a social bookmarking resource but is currently 'unavailable for a few minutes', and this is so not the time to be unavailable we can give this one a miss as well.

Online Favourites is a basic service which allows you to store your bookmarks online and access from anywhere. If you're not after much, this may well be all that you need.

Pinboard is a paid option, costing more depending how many users it has. Currently it costs just over $8 but this will increase I'm sure. There is a good 'buzz' about it so it's worth poking around in.

Skloog is primarily a basic home/start page option, but you can add bookmarks to different sites and create different tabs. It's not close to a direct replacement to Delicious, but if you've only got a few bookmarks (limit is 2,000), and you're not bothered about sharing them, this would work.

Startaid does what you expect by now. Share favourites with friends, post comments about sites.

Squidoo allows you to create pages of content, with appropriate subsections and using their bookmarklet tool add content in as you need to. I like this and use it myself. You can see any example with my Twitter for librarians page. You can share content and have an RSS feed set up. It's more of a published page to which you add your own content, but it's an interesting alternative.

Wozaik is 'the new generation of bookmarks' and allows you to cut portions of websites to visualise them all in the same space. It does have a bookmarklet that you can use, but I can't see any way of sharing bookmarks or creating RSS feeds.

XMarks used to be called Foxmarks and until recently was slated for closure, but has been saved. You load it into your browser, and it cross syncs for you. I find it great for keeping bookmarks synced across machines, browsers and laptops. It's not a Delicious tool though as it's not cloud based.

Zootool is getting good coverage but they've been badly hit by the Delicious news and are currently offline, which is very unfortunate for them. I've not played around with it myself, so can't give much of an opinion. The emphasis however is apparently on saving visual content.

If you want more options, try the social bookmark option at Delicious to see what other people have saved. Ironic and rather sad, but useful. For even more, there's a listing of 115 social news and bookmark sites that have been reviewed at Social Media Trader, but this is a list that's 3 years old, so you'll find a few of them don't work any more.

How do you save your existing Delicious bookmarks? It's actually very easy, but rather than explain it myself, Lifehacker has done an excellent job, so I'll point you to 'How to export your bookmarks and import them into your favourite browser'.

So, in summary, where do you go from here? It's an idea to back up what you've got. It's also worth crossing your fingers and hoping that someone takes the service over, but it's got to be tempting for someone to do this. However, look at what else you're using. If you use Netvibes, Evernote, or Diigo, just transfer everything across. If you're keen on the social aspect, choose one of those tools. If you're not bothered, any of the above will probably do it for you - just find one that you like. If pushed to point you in one direction though, it would be Diigo.

Edited to add: Well, it would appear now that Delicious isn't part of Yahoo's burnt earth plans and they're looking to offload it somewhere. They're currently whining on about how the press caused problems when all of the problems were of their own making. Danny Sullivan has written a great piece that totally destroys the Yahoo Monkeys in charge. It's worth reading if for no other reason than to show that even companies you might expect to work well with social media are painfully clueless and inept.

Google maps and protesters

There's a really excellent example of the way in which Google Maps can be used quickly and effectively. The student #fees protest created an excellent map which clearly indicates the position of different police elements and those of protesters:

There's a whole bunch of issues that come out of this. Firstly, a reliance on Google, rather than any alternative. Google - by not doing anything about this use - is complicit in the protest, and I wonder just how much pressure it would take to get them to withdraw use or block this particular map? How quickly would protesters be able to re-create this somewhere else?

Another issue is that it wouldn't be difficult to create a private version of something like this, with limited access, so we've then got social media resources supporting protest, which is pushing the social media envelope even closer towards anarchy (I don't actually have a problem with this at all, and I often make the point that Web2 stuff is anarchic). Because Twitter is so easy to use, so fast and effective at getting information out there I predict that the use of it is going to absolutely skyrocket with students and younger people who have until now not used it a great deal. How long will it take for the government to catch up with this I wonder?

Can anyone still be in doubt about the use of social media? How long will people still try and brush off Twitter as useless celebrity gossip?