What do those icons mean?

[Syd]

I feel really stupid asking this question because I am sure I am meant to know, but I just don't, and my curiosity is getting the better of me. What do those new icons mean at the bottom of the posts? What does it mean to 'digg' a post or to 'furl' a post? Is there an explanation of the new icons somewhere?



Syd

[Britsdad]

Yea, I'm glad I wasn't the first one to ask
John

[mistermonday]

Furl (from File Uniform Resource Locators) is a free social bookmarking website (furl.net) that allows members to store searchable copies of webpages and share them with others. Every member receives 5 gigabytes of storage space.

Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo and IceRocket. As of March 2007, Technorati indexes over 70 million weblogs. The name Technorati is a portmanteau, pointing to the technological version of literati or intellectuals.
Technorati was founded by Dave Sifry and its headquarters are in San Francisco, California, USA. Tantek Çelik is the site's Chief Technologist.

Digg is a community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control.

The website del.icio.us (pronounced as "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site came online in late 2003 and was founded by Joshua Schachter, co-maintainer of Memepool. It is now part of Yahoo!.



Regards, Murray

[Syd]

Murray you're a star. Thanks for that interesting and detailed explanation. It follows then that you would first have to become a member of those sites before you could use these features?

Syd

[Doug Nelson]

Welcome to Web 2.0

Digg, del.icio.us, etc., are incredibly popular sites (literally some of the most popular sites in the world) that offer differing ways to find and share information. The icons are there not so much to encourage you to use those services (although I personally enjoy digg a lot), but to make it simpler for existing users of those services to bookmark and share information from RP they might feel is worth bookmarking and sharing.

You might have also noticed the new "permalink". That's for individual site owners (blogs, etc.) to do the same thing.

So if you were to post a tutorial or images or something else that someone else might find particularly useful or interesting, if they're a member of digg, etc., they'd click the appropriate icon and a bookmark would be added to their profile there. A blogger or other website owner could use the permalink for the same purpose. Then anyone else that shares the same interests could also access the links, and maybe they'd also find your post useful or interesting.

[Syd]

Originally Posted by Doug Nelson

Welcome to Web 2.0

Digg, del.icio.us, etc., are incredibly popular sites (literally some of the most popular sites in the world) that offer differing ways to find and share information.

Now I feel even more stupid for asking!
Syd

But thanks Doug, and I shall definitely go and check them out.

[Mchilly]

Great explanation there "mistermonday", you rock! I'm already member of this websites wink!

[Marthig]

You know what, I am not sure if I should say RP rocks, or Doug Nelson Rocks!! really since I became a member of RP I've learnt zillion things about art, retouching and also technical stuff. Had been curious about the delicious thingy for quite some time, and was not sure if the reply was going to keep me more in the dark. So now I am glad you Syd had the good sense to ask. Therefore Syd rocks too :clap:
P.S. Sorry forgot to add MisterMonday among the "rockers"