Taking Diigo Beyond the Bookmark

The response to my initial Diigo post has been overwhelming. So many people immediately saw the benefit of using Diigo’s service.

Since I had the pleasure of introducing Diigo to so many folks I wanted to follow up with a few out-of-the-box ideas to make your life mo’ betta.

Books to Read List

Every reader I know has a list somewhere of the books they intend to read. Personally, I’ve tried web reading lists, text files, and spreadsheets but Diigo is by far the best way I’ve discovered to create a book list. Here’s how:

• Search for the book you want to read on Amazon.com
• Bookmark the page, highlight the front cover image and ISBN number
• Tag the book as “Reading List” or “To Read”, whatever you like
• Add tags for Fiction, Non-Fiction (optionally you could add tags that relate to the subject matter)
• Create a list called “Booklist” and add all the books to that list.

Now all your books are categorized and you can generate a report that includes pictures of the cover and ISBN number. If you are part of a bookclub invite the others into a group to share notes and recommendations.

House Hunting

Last year we bought a home and during the process my wife and I probably emailed 100+ links to one another. Each time we found a home we liked on a realtor site we’d shoot off an email. It was impossible to keep track of the ones we liked (and why). Here’s how I’d do it now:

• Bookmark a home, highlight the photos
• tag link with # of bedrooms/baths, price range, and location
• capture opinions in the comments
• add to a “Potential Homes” list

10 seconds per page and you can build a report with photos, comments, and sort the options by tags. If only I’d thought of this last year.

Writers

Any writer knows the value of good research and with Diigo the process just got easier. Here’s a couple of ideas:

• tag items based on chapter, subject
• tag items for a bibliography
• jot a few notes to give context or your thoughts at the time
• highlight the section you intend to use and save the time of reviewing the entire page

Diigo becomes even more essential in a collaboration project. The Forrester team used Delicious during their research for the book Groundswell and I bet they could have used Diigo features like highlighting, comments, groups, and conversations.

Web/Graphic Designers

The internet is the ultimate showcase and the designers I follow on twitter are always sharing great examples of web design, themes, logos, and typography. Why not create an inspiration library?

• tag by type of design – website, logo, font
• tag by style – minimalist, color pattern, clean, modern, retro

Educators

Diigo is huge in the education community. They even offer special premium Educator Accounts with specific features.

Excerpt from Diigo Education FAQ:

Diigo’s features allow teachers to highlight critical features within text and images and write comments directly on the web pages, to collect and organize series of web pages and web sites into coherent and thematic sets, and to facilitate online conversations within the context of the materials themselves.

I can’t do justice to all that Diigo offers teachers so I’ll share the links to get started

• Diigo in Education? Official F.A.Q. by Diigo
• Diigo in Education Group
• More Diigo Groups on Education
• Apply for Educator Account

Food Lovers

The times they are a changing. My m other has a shelf full of cookbooks, my wife has a folder full of links. I’m not discouraging the greatness of a cookbook but many of us food lovers have found our greatest recipes online. Add a 2 cups of Diigo and we get our own web based cookbook.

• tag recipes as appetizers, entrees, or desserts
• tag as vegetarian, diet, gluten free, or my favorite “enough-calories-to-make-Paula-Deen-blush”
  • disclosure: the above link leads to my wife food blog MakeLifeDelicious.com, it’s the greatest food blog on earth #unbiased
• tag by ingredients
• highlight cooking times and pics

Information Technology

I can leave out my fellow I.T. professionals. Most good admins and engineers have a set of bookmarks that is their tech library. Here’s how to improve it:

• tag as tutorial, demo, or how-to
• tag by tech vendor Microsoft, Symantec, Cisco, etc…
• tag by type – knowledge base article, forum post, blog post, white paper
• highlight the important part so you don’t have to read the entire page

Takeaways

Regardless of your profession we live in a information age and you are only as good as the information you have.

• Highlighting, tagging, and lists are an easy and effective way to organize anything online
• You library is worthless without lists, reports, and searching

How do you use Diigo?

Link on.

Related posts:

1. Turning links into a library with Diigo
2. Social Bookmarking – The land time forgot
3. Organizing my digital life for 2010

Tagged as: Bookmarks, Diigo, Productivity