Careful what you wish for

I like to keep things simple. To that end, on a daily basis I get by with the help of a minimal group of web services, namely, Gmail and Google Reader. Delicious, however, creeps in every so often as a useful web-based bookmarking service, and to its credit, I rarely bookmark anything locally.

A few weeks ago, I lodged a complaint to my peers: I wish I could “star” any ol’ page in Google Reader. I often mark interesting posts or stuff I want to revisit later and it seems redundant to use Delicious in the same way for anything that isn’t a feed. Since Google exposes shared and starred posts as well, the social spread isn’t necessarily hampered. Smash them together.

Then I found it:

Notes is Google’s answer to my request. It lets you bookmark any web page as a Note, which can be tagged, shared or starred.. I believe there used to be a separate service of this sort (Notebook or something?), but it truly finds a nice home inside Reader. There’s even a requisite JavaScript bookmarklet for quick entry.

Yet… I’m still finding it hard to dump Delicious for a few reasons. First, Delicious makes sure tagging is front and center, while Google doesn’t provide an entry field inside the bookmarklet’s pop-up. Having to navigate afterwards to the Note inside Reader is an unacceptable barrier to well-organized tags. Second, Delicious makes sharing and discovery much, much easier. I can specifically send a bookmark to a fellow user and quickly click around to uncover more interesting sites and links. Google doesn’t really have an answer for this.

In a way, this is an example of the classical “macro vs. micro” problem. The all-in-one printer-scanner-copier pitted against three separate machines. Convenience versus specialization. Reader’s about feeds and may never do general purpose bookmarks as well as Delicious. Maybe it doesn’t need to.

Nonetheless, I’m left with some questions that reveal how deeply I crave tidiness and a well-defined tao for all things. To a fault perhaps. Do I cleave and share posts in Reader, pages in Delicious? Should I write something that syncs them? Should I re-bookmark everything as Notes and have done with it?

Or fuck it. Friendfeed manages to capture it all anyway.