Library & Literary Miscellany

On the sidebar of this page, you can see my most recent del.icio.us bookmarks. While that’s all well and good, it may also seem a bit random, since the links are displayed without tags and without context. This randomness is solved somewhat by actually visiting my del.icio.us site and clicking a tag to view all of the sites that have been bookmarked as fitting under a particular category.

Well, that also is all well and good, but what if all of these bookmarked websites could be made searchable (for presumably, they were bookmarked in the first place due to their containing content of some value)? In other words, what do you get when you cross a social bookmarking tool with a custom search engine? Answer: deliGoo. With deliGoo (deliGoo being a mashup of del.icio.us and Google Custom Search), del.icio.us goes beyond simple tagging/categorizing.

deliGoo allows users to search for specific content within a specific user’s del.icio.us bookmarks or within a specific del.icio.us tag. Users can either search on deliGoo’s search site or install deliGoo as an add-on for Firefox 2.0+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+. So how does this wonderful tool operate? Just enter a username, tag, and search term, then click Goo!.

In other (more-detailed) words, deliGoo works by dynamically building a Google Custom Search engine with the sites specified. Entering a username and tag to be searched is actually optional (but does save time). If you don’t enter a username, the search would proceed over all the sites tagged by selected tag. If you don’t enter a tag, the search would be proceed over all the bookmarks of selected user. If you find yourself getting too many results, then it may be time to narrow the search by entering a username or by choosing a narrower tag to search (that’s the librarian in me talking…don’t get me started on the merits of using search limits and Boolean operators ).

So the specification of the sites to be searched is the “deli” aspect, what of the “Goo”? Once you click Goo!, deliGoo analyzes the sites that have been specified and the “Goo” custom search aspect of deliGoo kicks into high (albeit somewhat slow-seeming) gear. The custom search engine searches the contents of every site for a match to your search query. Using deliGoo can be particularly handy if you are trying to find a web page that you remember bookmarking but you cannot remember what tags you used to bookmark it or how long ago you bookmarked it.

Due to its customized nature, deliGoo may take some time (particularly if you do not enter a username). In the time you wait for your results, you may choose to become annoyed or you may choose to be amazed at the way deliGoo is basically building a custom search engine from scratch. Possibly in the future, deliGoo might allow users to sign up and create custom searches that will be remembered. As it currently stands, deliGoo users must wait for Google to index the specified sites each time.

For now, deliGoo remains a useful way to find that website you bookmarked oh so long ago with those tags that are oh so far away from your memory bank. Where tags may fail, deliGoo does not (or at least that’s the intent).

So, in sum, you can use deliGoo either by installing the toolbar button so as to have it ever-present, ready, and waiting to be used at your leisure or by navigating to deliGoo’s own searching site (same end, just different means). Of course, you could always just bookmark deliGoo in your del.icio.us bookmarks !

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