Tag: bookmarks

So much for “release early” eh? I finally, after a few requests, got around to putting up the code I used to sync my del.icio.us bookmarks with Scuttle. (See: Why Scuttle is neat.)

Go ahead and grab delisync and please make it better, because while it sort-of works, it also sort-of sucks… And I’d like a better version.

This code assumes you have a local Scuttle install, if not, change the code. (You should be able to point it at Scuttle.org or any Scuttle install where you have an account.) Also, you will have to hardcode your username/password’s for del.icio.us and Scuttle…

All of this magic is really possible because Scuttle supports (most of) the del.icio.us API, so in theory you could do things in reverse, or upside down, or 3 ways from Tuesday, whatever that means. If only all of the “social bookmark” sites had API’s… (At least one other has told me they are “working on it” or something like that…)

Let me know how it goes. I’m not completely against improving it, but I think others may be better suited than me to do so… It’s GPL‘d so have at it.

(See Also: Scuttle at Sourceforge.)

Remember del.icio.us? Of course you do! You probably use it daily… Don’t we all?

Heck, long ago I even proclaimed that del.icio.us is neat. gosh, I even wrote some nasty code named dir.licio.us, and some people even used it. dir.licio.us was a hack, and it’s got some problems, but with many things, it’s just a proof of concept to me. (Note: It’s a massive memory hog since it builds a lot of large hashes in memory while running.)

So what does this all have to do with Scuttle? See, Scuttle is neat. It’s bascially a GPL‘d del.icio.us clone written in PHP using MySQL. There is also de.lirio.us, which uses Rubric, which is written in Perl. Now, I’m a perl guy and installing Rubric was a royal PITA for me, so I gave up on it quickly. Scuttle on the other hand, was dead simple. (Grab the 0.5.0 version from cvs though.)

You could use either the del.icio.us or Scuttle web sites, where you get to leverage the social aspect of these apps, but are at the mercy of things you don’t control, or you could install Scuttle on your own server and control it, but lose the social aspect… What do to? Behold! Scuttle supports the del.icio.us API! This opens up a world of possibilities…

• Use del.icio.us as your primary source, and Scuttle (the site or your own install) as a backup.
• Use Scuttle as your primary source, and write code to sync everything to del.icio.us (except the entries marked as ‘private’ which Scuttle supports but del.icio.us does not.
• Install Scuttle inside the firewall for others in your workgroup to use.
• Hack up Scuttle to do crazy things, slap it on a server and try to build a Web 2.0 business around it.

Ok, that last one is (sort of ) a joke, but the point is, for most of the complaints I’ve heard about del.icio.us, you can probably solve them with some combination of all of these things. del.icio.us servers down, or too slow, or doesn’t support private bookmarks? Scuttle not social enough, not enough users, lacking features? Fix, fix, fix…. (Need more ideas? See How to Make Delicious Not Suck.)

Code? Yes, I have some code… Right now my code pulls the entries from my del.icio.us account and syncs them to my Scuttle account, as well as a local install of Scuttle. I should get around to cleaning it up and releasing it, I just want to run it for a bit first to see if it behaves well…

Open-source, and just as important, open API‘s make it all possible. It’s exciting stuff!