The eOK .network

The first line on SE roundtable’s blog post today about bookmarking reads:

Traditional bookmarking seems obsolete. Adding a bookmark to your browser, to many, is a practice that has been since seemingly replaced by newer methods — social bookmarking sites, if you will.

I am a long-time del.icio.us user and absolutely love social bookmarking, but to make a statement as the one above is rather myopic in my opinion. There are very few technologies today that can claim obsolescence and replacement of a previous generation–especially one which relies heavily on a user’s practice habits.

My take is that traditional and the many other kinds of bookmarking methods are far from obsolete simply because they are constantly useful in their own way. This is how I practice my bookmarking and I have to say social bookmarking can’t replace them all:

Social Bookmarking: The main reason I use del.icio.us is to have these bookmarks shared with friends and the public who are interested in my finds. Although bookmarks on such systems can be made private, it fails as a quick access platform like the bookmarks bar on a web browser. Having to do a search or click the right tag in the cloud each time I want to do my online banking is just insane.

Widget Bookmarking: Some others call them bookmarklets. These Javascript enablers I often place on my browser’s bookmark bar for no other reason than quick access. Ones I often use are “Subscribe to Feed”, “Share on Tumblr”, “Add to del.icio.us”, etc.

Traditional Bookmarking: Maybe it is fair to say that traditional bookmarks within the browser’s sidebar or menu item have evolved into private bookmarks. I tend to organise my bookmarks in folders such as a one for “The eOK .network” which contains a link to my blog, my blogger dashboard, blogrolling admin page, Winksite, ClickTale, etc. These are things I don’t need and want to share, but yet don’t click too often either. Just a good way to know where they are.

Resource Bookmarking: You can also think of these as BCP bookmarks for those URLs you can’t possibly do without. I have the most essential sites such as webmail (for work), online services for clients, VPN, Citrix, etc, on my iGoogle page. In the case of a disaster or if I am overseas without my computer, I can access these quickly from any other machine. These are a mixture of private and quick access bookmarks, but highly essential to keep service quality at its best.