Organise your Del.icio.us Bookmarks with LocalDeli

I am a huge user of del.icio.us (to the point where I keep virtually no links in my browser bookmarks) and as I bookmark more and more links, the problem arises over how best to organise them all and even more importantly, how to find a specific link again in the future. The whole concept of “tagging” is still rather new to me and so I am concerned that once I put a link on my del.icio.us page, it will disappear forever down the deep black hole of the internet. I am currently organising my tags into bundles and so I can see for myself first-hand what a mammoth task it is to keep links and tags in such an order that they can be easily found again.

So today I want to share a free program which I have been using on and off for quite a while now and it has proven to be very useful in finding the links I am looking for. It’s called LocalDeli and it is a small desktop application which directly links to your del.icio.us account and updates itself as you add new links.

After installing, you just enter your del.icio.us username and password in the boxes provided and then click the “update” button in the bottom left-hand corner. Your links all then get pulled up into the box with the title of the link on the left and the tags you gave that link on the right.

Now, when you want to look for a specific link, just drop the search box down (using the little magnifying glass to the right of the search box). You can then filter your search by tag, description or both. Searches are conducted in “real-time” so as you type in the search box, results are filtered down immediately. The more you type in the search box, the more specific results are returned right away. Results are quick and highly accurate.

When you have found the link you’re looking for, just double-click on it and the link will open in your default internet browser.

I want to stress though that LocalDeli does NOT allow you to add links to del.icio.us. All it does is allow you to search the links you already have stored in your account. If you are looking for plug-ins and tools to add links to your del.icio.us account, then head on over to some official tools such as bookmarklets or Firefox users can use the brilliant extension tools. Internet Explorer users can use these tools.

If you would prefer not to use a desktop app like LocalDeli, another possibility is a script that basically takes over your del.icio.us page. For a while, I used Direc.tor which works along the same principles as LocalDeli, except it sits on your del.icio.us page and everytime you go to your page, you are re-directed to the Direc.tor interface. It works using a javascript bookmarklet and again it searches in real-time as you type. One advantage of Direc.tor over LocalDeli is that it breaks down the tabs a lot more specifically so you can easily find what you are looking for. However, I got tired of my del.icio.us page being hi-jacked all the time and I missed the simple del.icio.us page design, so I switched back.

Another great del.icio.us software tool is Fresh Del.icio.us which checks your account to see which links are dead. Despite some pretty silly spelling mistakes on the interface (the inventor’s native language must not be English), this tool has still been very informative as it has told me some links which were now dead and I was subsequently able to clean up my del.icio.us account a little.

Here are some other tools and tips for using del.icio.us :

• If you use Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension, you can find some great scripts for Del.icio.us.
• Are you too lazy to fill in all the tags fields on Delicious? Then why not let Lazy Sheep do it?
• Do you want even more delicious tools? Then here’s a huge stack from Quick Online Tips

(By) Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer, editor and blogger. Visit his blog at BetterThanTherapy.net