I'm going to experiment with adding tags to my posts, utilizing del.icio.us, and possibly utilizing Technorati in the future. I am mostly introducing this feature so that I can assign categories to my posts, something that Blogger cannot do at the moment. Although I've been toying with the idea of tags in general for some time, this post at Freshblog gave me the idea of using del.icio.us tags as a category work-around in Blogger.

As you can see at the end of this post, I've added a del.icio.us tag for "blogs" (among others). The del.icio.us tag links to my del.icio.us page for the tag "blogs," which lists all posts I've made with that tag, shows related tags I've used, and also allows you to look at posts from all users with that tag. Because of the tag syntax I used, this tag is also searchable in Technorati, so I added a Technorati search box in the right sidebar. Preceding a search term with "tag:" returns results which show who else is using that tag for posts, related tags, and flickr images with that tag. I thought about having Technorati tags along with del.icio.us tags in my posts, but I don't want to overclutter things just yet.

I probably won't get to tagging old posts, although I'll try if I have time (yeah, right). There is a pretty nice tool called del.icio.us loader that supposedly imports Firefox bookmarks into del.icio.us. I imagine you'd have to manually tag all of the entries after that, which would be a huge undertaking for the humongous bookmark file I currently have. Maybe I'll try a test bookmark page first. ;-) Many people have completely transitioned to del.icio.us for bookmark management, as it allows for easier synchronization. For now, I'm not totally sold on that idea because of my elaborate bookmark organizing scheme, but I'll have to think about that too.

I'll try to remember to add new categories to the right sidebar as I utilize new ones for easy access; hopefully that will be a useful way to track different categories of posts.

For more information about tagging, Technorati, and del.icio.us, here are some useful links:

• Us.ef.ul: A Beginner's Guide To The Next Big Thing
  
• MetaFilter Thread: "What's so cool about del.icio.us?"
  
• Absolutely del.icio.us - Complete Tool Collection
  
• Blogger categorizing with del.icio.us
  
• del.icio.us loader - import Firefox/Mozilla bookmarks into del.icio.us
  
• Greasemonkey - Technorati and del.icio.us tags - allows for easier tag entry in Blogger (I customized the scripts somewhat for myself)
  
• Using Technorati Tags
  
• Technorati Tags: An Introduction

Please let me know if you find this at all useful. As I continue to experiment, I'll be sure to let you know if I find any novel uses for tags/categories and/or more tools to better implement and manage them.

Update (11/17/05): As some of you may have noticed, the hand-coded category links in the right sidebar have been replaced by a Javascript tagroll provided by del.icio.us. I like it a lot better, as you can see the frequency of the category by the size and color of the font used. There are some other customizations you can make as well. Let me know what you think...