Delicious!!!

I was sent one of my favorite magazines of all time, Smithsonian, a special edition that held many young innovators around my age. I know there are many articles about genius children who well surpass the rest of us in graduating from high school and college early, but this wasn't about that. This was a full issue, jam packed with people who are smart, sure, but also focused on their goals, dreams, and really doing something to change the world as we know it. I love that. They could have been average at school (likely not) but basically all of them have solid intellectual chops and chose to take their chosen interest and make it into something better than it was, to innovate their chosen field. There were great dancers, musicians, activists, scientists, and then came my favorite, a book mark guy.

A book mark guy? I had flipped past his page in the magazine, and finally came back to it, wondering how a guy who bookmarks web pages rated a page in an issue jam packed with world changing work done by serious world changers. Bookmarks? I mean, I can tag my favorites through my web browser. Is that what it is, and more importantly, how is that special?
I went onto his site, adorably called del.icio.us that is a website that has you bookmark all your favorite sites (and until I began tagging my sites using his software, I had five sites I would visit regularly, now you can't get me away from my computer) and share them with your friends. You don't have to share, but what if you run into a great site and want your friend to see it? It seems simple, very simple, but now I'm sitting at my computer reading web pages I found that are fascinating, funny, and I would have never found them without del.icio.us, which is user driven and you can find websites about anything. Also, your name isn't revealed as the person who tagged a certain site, people just know you're one of the many who looked at a good site and the higher the bookmark count, the more likely I'm going to enjoy what others have bookmarked. What's great is that, not unlike blogger, you can look at other people's interests or online tutorials they put up just about anything that fascinates you and chances are, people might see your bookmark for your cool page, and bookmark it too. It feels like a swap meet for endless volumes of information, which is totally my thing. There were other websites that were bookmarked with a catchy, funky one-word title (all the sites are given a one-word title by whoever added it to the site) and there's something for everyone.

Oddly enough I found a site via del.icio.us where you can type in your recipes that you want to make and the program will create your grocery list accordingly. http://www.grocerylistgenerator.com/. So far this week (My first 4 day weekend, and it feels like I don't work at all…nice) I've learned about everything from writing stores, to new uses for my ipod, to reading the blog of a Jewish dude who's just too funny to believe. I never would have come upon these sites and blogs if I hadn't read about the guy in my magazine. It's about sharing web pages, seeing the popular sites, trying to understand different philosophies and learning all kindsa stuff. I love learning all kindsa stuff. It's not that I can tag web pages, because I could do that with my 'favorites' on my browser, it's that I can look to see what popular sites the collective that use del.icio.us are looking at and discover new and interesting things to read, watch, and learn.

I also feel a little more a part of the online community as opposed to being some chick who only has five horoscope sites and checks her bank balance every so often. The man who started this tagging site now works for Google, a company that hires huge super-smarties to steal their brilliant ideas. I'm all for that, so check out my bookmarks at http://del.icio.us/Hunnydu72 and feel free to share your own.