Day: August 13, 2004

I’m here to tell you why I think del.icio.us is neat.

Perception, baby! I go to del.icio.us and it’s simple. really simple. Too simple. Can it be this simple?

The del.icio.us About page has some disclaimer text:

This system is pre-pre-alpha; many features have yet to be added. Additionally, many, many bugs remain. Please be careful.

I reserve the right to take appropriate measures if you misbehave.

Is that it? It’s run by “some guy” and it’s “pre-pre-alpha” and it might go away at any second. That’s all ok though, really it is.

When I go to Furl (and even though it’s at .net and not .com) I see that it’s Copyright 2003-2004 Furl, LLC. So I start to wonder about the business model, and how they plan to move forward in the future, and if it’ll be free, or subscription based, or whatever… (See: Furl.net: Say farewell to Blogs and Bookmarks and get your Furl on for background info.) I know, Furl is not exactly the same as del.icio.us, but they share similar traits.

Ok, forget about Furl for a minute and go to Spurl. Hmmm, similar name (and another .net and not .com) and it looks really nice, and they have a privacy policy and terms of use that look ok, but they have this page about partners that mentions:

Spurl is building a group of strong partners to help us reach our goals.

Though what those goals are, I’m not quite sure.

I’ll admit, I have not dug deep into Furl or Spurl (are there others in this space I don’t know about?) but the beauty of del.icio.us is in it’s simplicity and it’s elegance, as well as it’s depth. On the surface it’s really not that complex. From a front end view, a good programmer could write a clone of it for personal use in a few days time. (Of course part of the value of del.icio.us is in the “social” aspect of it all.) As for the API, that might take a bit more time, and if you wrote your own version, you might not even bother with it. But the API is where the action is, it’s what allows you to easily backup everything you’ve put into the system at any time, and you should do this regularly in case it does disappear one day. (There are many links to backing up your del.icio.us data, or pulling it into your own site, do some searching…)

del.icio.us almost begs you to do cool things with the data, and people do… Ok, here’s a few random links:

Tux Racer: Arcade Edition

I really don’t go to arcades much, but was visiting some family from out of state and ended up at the Mineshaft and as we’re looking for games to play, I walk past one and see this penguin encased in plastic, pause, and say to myself “Hey, it’s Tux” and then a few seconds later realize it’s actually Tux Racer!

I’m not a big game player, but Tux Racer is a classic, and it’s available for Mac OS X as well as Linux and some other platforms. I remembered that there was supposed to be an arcade version coming at some point, and it looks like the folks at Roxor Games pulled it off.

Now here’s the funny part. I had just one game token, and I try to play it, but it requires two. Lo and behold, there’s a token sitting in the slot! So I play… Later, I convince Emma to play it, and then I find another token on the floor in front of the game! But wait… Later, when we’re almost ready to leave, I walk by and there’s a ticket hanging out of the front of the game!

Thank you, Tux Racer…