And the run of Del.icio.us posts continues! Obviously, I’m fascinated by Del.icio.us. It’s subtilely and completely unintuitively powerful — a strange combination. Anyway, on to “extisp.icio.us”:1.

bq.. extispicious, a. [L. extispicium an inspection of the innards for divination; extra the entrails + specer to look at.] Relating to the inspection of entrails for prognostication.

p. Translated… extisp.icio.us allows you to create a 2D text “maps” of any Del.icio.us users’ tags weighted by frequency — more frequency equals large font size. Here’s a screen shot for my Del.icio.us “Zoinger”:2 account (I trimmed it a bit so it would fit).

“!/img/delicious_extispicious_tag_2D_display.png!”:6

_Click on image for “live” text map._

On “live” extisp.icio.us pages, the text is clickable. For example, _WordPress_ in the image above leads “here”:3.

extisp.icio.us can also create a mosaic of images from Yahoo!’s Image Search based on a users’ tags, but I didn’t find it that useful. “Check it out”:1 if you are interested.

I put a link in the _Search_ area of the sidebar to the ZoingerPosts extisp.icio.us “text map”:5. It might be useful in navigating archived posts. I’ve also updated the Del.icio.us “static page”:4 (which I am still working on… as I am all my static pages) to include extisp.icio.us.

[6(extisp.icio.us text map for Zoinger)]http://kevan.org/extispicious.cgi?name=zoinger

[5(extisp.icio.us text map for ZoingerPosts)]http://kevan.org/extispicious.cgi?name=zoingerposts

[4(Zoinger static page for Del.icio.us information)]http://www.zoinger.com/words/delicious/

[3(Zoinger's bookmarks containing the tag WordPress )]http://del.icio.us/zoinger/WordPress

[2(Del.icio.us Zoinger bookmarks)]http://del.icio.us/zoinger

[1(extisp.icio.us home page)]http://kevan.org/extispicious/name/sebpaquet

I’ve been thinking that Del.icio.us is a bit too “free form” — that is, it’s completely flat with no real hierarchy or structure. Yes, you can do “and” searches, but that’s not really structure (”this”:2 is an example of an “and” search). This has changed with the addition of a new “Experimental” feature called _tag bundles_.

It’s a bit hard to explain what _tag bundles_ are, so I thought I’d run you through the creation of one.

Making sure that you are logged into del.icio.us, click on the _Settings_ tab in the upper left hand corner (the _Settings_ tab will not display if you are not logged in). Under the normal settings controls, you’ll find the _Experimental_ features. Click on _tagged bundles_.

!/img/delicious_tag_bundles1.png!

From here, click the _create a new bundle_.

!/img/delicious_tag_bundles_3.png!

This is where the action is. This page is where you actually create the bundle by entering in a name for the bundle on the left (right above _submit a query_), while on the right you enter the tags you would like to bundle together. After filling out both fields, click on _submit a query_.

!/img/delicious_tag_bundles_4.png!

Here’s an example of a completed bundle that I created for the “ZoingerPosts”:4 Del.icio.us account (the Del.icio.us tagged post archive for this blog). I bundled all of my WordPress category tags together under the name _Categories_.

!/img/delicious_tag_bundles2.png!

Going back to the main Del.icio.us page under _Bookmarks_ reveals a new section in the “tags” area called _Categories_. Instant hierarchy and structure of sorts. Yippie!

!/img/delicious_tag_bundles_final.png!

Compare the above screenshot with this one which I made before creating the _Categories_ tag bundle.

!/img/delicious_tag_bundles_first.png!

The Del.icio.us user “Remy”:3 is a good one to check out for an example of someone making extensive use of this feature _*Update: 2005-04-26*_ — or check out Del.icio.us user “ubi.quito.us”:6.

I’ll be using this tagged bundles more in the future to organize things for the two Zoinger Del.icio.us accounts (i.e., “Zoinger”:5 for interesting bookmarks and “ZoingerPosts”:4 for archived posts).

[6(ubi.quito.us uses lots of tagged bundles)]http://del.icio.us/ubi.quito.us

[5(Zoinger Del.icio.us bookmarks)]http://del.icio.us/zoinger

[4(Zoinger's Del.icio.us tagged post archive)]http://del.icio.us/ZoingerPosts

[3(Remy's Del.icio.us bookmarks)]http://del.icio.us/Remy

[2(Searching Zoinger's del.icio.us site for blogging and Flash )]http://del.icio.us/zoinger/blogging+Flash

If you are using Del.icio.us, then you should be using the _Experimental Posting Tool_ bookmarklet you can find “here”:2. I wrote about it in an “old post”:1 talking about how handy it is. Since using the bookmarklet more, I’ve really grown to like some of it’s features.

Once the bookmarklet is added to your browser’s bookmarks, clicking on it pops up an add-to-del.icio.us window allowing you to bookmark the current page. What’s great about this is that it also displays all of your tags, some recommended tags and some popular tags.

Here’s an screenshot of the pop-up window for a computer shopping page I del.icio.us.ed (let’s just make it a verb and get it over with).

!/img/delicious_experimental_post_tool_popular_tags.png!

Notice the popular tag _comp.buys_ in the screenshot (this time there were no recommended tags). I guess that’s the “standard” tag for computer shopping pages. Neat.

The recommended tags and popular tags have helped me create my tagging schema. When I have questions on what the “right” tag to use is, I’ll refer to these two fields. I figure that using popular tags, when it makes sense, also helps users navigate my tags.

[1(Original post on the experimental posting tool)]http://www.zoinger.com/archives/2005/02/20/15.07.30/index.html

[2(Experimental posting tool page)]http://naeblis.cx/rtomayko/2005/01/12/experimental-delicious-thing-generator?username=pchere

I love using Del.icio.us because it’s sometimes unintuitive — a lot of the time. It’s like “Myst”:1 where you have to solve puzzles to learn how some of its features work — the “*Experimental*”:2 section.

[2(Del.icio.us Experimental screenshot)]/img/delicious_tag_bundles1.png

[1(Official Myst screenshot page)]http://www.riven.com/myst_screenshots.html

When you first install WordPress, the opening page it displays is called the _Dashboard_. Unfortunately, this page is pretty useless. In fact, it’s worse than useless, since it loads a bunch of RSS feeds from some seemingly random WordPress-power blogs (which can take quite a while). My original “fix” for this page was to never use it.

Fortunately, the folks over at the “Simple Thoughts”:1 blog hacked a fix for the Dashboard. The fixed Dashboard is actually useful giving you a list of your draft posts, recent posts, number of post and comments and some other stuff.

You can read all about the Dashboard hack “here”:2. Once again, I’ve updated the “_WordPress Customization_”:3 static page (also linked to in the sidebar) to include notes on this hack.

[1(Simple Thoughts blog homepage)]http://blog.taragana.com/
[3(Zoinger's WordPress Customization static page)]http://www.zoinger.com/words/wordpress-customization/
[2(Dashboard hack page)]http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/wordpress-15-hack-how-to-trim-the-fat-resource-hogging-dashboard-in-admin/