I’m a Richardson, RU?

I love both Safari and Firefox (for the Mac, of course). What’s crazy is that I find myself often going back and forth for months on end sometimes just wanting to use Safari and other times (like now) wanting to use Firefox. I also have to use a PC at times (either via VirtualPC or RDC to a couple other development boxes). So with all these different computers and browsers bookmark sharing is a big deal.

On the Mac via Safari isn’t a big deal since I’ve a .mac account and all the computers can sync via .mac for my bookmarks, but that’s only through Safari (hence, I’ve still the PC issues).

Firefox is a little better because I can use an extension like BookMark Synchronizer which allows me to share bookmarks via Firefox on all the browsers and across platforms. Only problem is that I’m finding the Synchronizer doesn’t like certain characters (like exclamation points) and it has a quirky problem of not always syncing and duplicating values across the bookmark file.

The other problem is that is that I’ve been using gmail for all of my e-mail needs. And I love the way I can tag messages with multiple different labels … and I’d like to do that with e-mail. I like to "label" my bookmarks in multiple categories. Yea, I’m complex like that! Well, enter del.icio.us.

Del.icio.us also me the convenience of sharing all my bookmarks across multiple browsers, and platforms, using a fairly reliable online, trusted mechanism of storage. Firefox allows del.icio.us integration using this new extension. You can integrate with Safari using this plugin. Even the new Flock browser allows integrated del.icio.us integration. I’ve been really all anti-del.icio.us for the longest time … seemed like a cute fad (and I was too stuborn to just check it out–shame, shame), but after trying it out I’m really pleased.

You can even do really cool things like displaying your bookmarks in web pages for others to see (if you really want to). There is an extensive community network that allows you to view other folks bookmarks. And you can group your bookmarks into "bundles"; kinda like dynamic groupings comprised of multiple tags. The only *negative* some folks may have is that everything is public, i.e., the marks are available as references for everyone else but they can’t tell it’s "you".

It may not be the end all for everything bookmark-related everyone is looking for, but when it comes to me I thing del.icio.us deserves a 4.5 out of 5 octothorps. (# # # # +)

UPDATE: Oh, and one more thing. If you need to add your existing firefox bookmarks into del.cio.us, check out the del.icio.us loader. It allows you to import all your firefox bookmarks into delicious while adding all the tags you wish. Also, check out this link for bunches of info on getting your del.icio.us experience on the up!