Tagging, Tag Clouds, etc.

I've noticed tags and tag clouds for a long time, and generally I haven't been a fan of them. The Cloud concept is cool to be sure, but the tags seem so undiciplined. I became a librarian relatively late in life, and I remember how easy it was for me to "grok" the concept of a controlled vocabulary, and what a revelation that was for me. Now we seem to be moving away from it.

However, that said, this lesson has called to my attention some really good reasons to do it, and I've incorporated tags into my posts on the "New on the Intranet" blog that I maintain. It allows easier access to past posts than scanning through the headlines, and that will only become more important as time passes.

I also found a site that allowed me to display Blogger labels in a cloud instead of a list.

I've had a del.icio.us account for some time, and basically I used it to port my bookmarks from one computer to another. I haven't shared my account, and haven't done much with tagging in del.icio.us, but I can now see how helpful it would be to do so. I'll share once I get things organized a little better. The whole "social" aspect is wierd to me. I get privacy easier than I get sharing...