delicious

With the help of plug-ins, you can extend the functionality of your Wordpress blog far beyond what's available to you when you add it to your server.

One of the best ways to get the most out of your blogs is through social plug-ins. These simple plug-ins can be added to your blog to help you connect socially with both your readers and their friends. They offer a fine way to build traffic to your site.

Add to Facebook If you want to make it easy for readers to syndicate your content to Facebook, Add to Facebook is the plug-in for you.

The plug-in provides a simple option at the bottom of each post, called "Share on Facebook." When the reader clicks on that link, they're immediately delivered to their Facebook page, showing a thumbnail of the image in your blog post, as well as the beginning of your post. If Facebook followers click on that link, they'll be delivered to your page. It's a neat utility. And it's a great way to share content through social channels.

Digg Digg Although its name might suggest that Digg Digg is a way to get readers to share your content with the popular social news site, it's much more than that.

Digg Digg allows you to add voting buttons to your blog. You can add a TweetMeme retweet button, a Yahoo Buzz button, and a "Submit to Reddit" option, along with your Digg button. The plug-in also allows you to decide where to place those buttons. You can choose the top, bottom, left, or right of your post.… Read more

Pinboard is Maciej Ceglowski's Delicious competitor. Sort of. It's a one-man show, a feature-light but fast site for saving bookmarks and seeing what other people are saving, too, if you wish. It's easy to use, thanks to a collection of functional bookmarklets that do various things (I like the "read later" one). TechCrunch has a glowing review.

Unlike most tools in the category, Pinboard is not free. There's a one-time fee for getting access to the service, and the fee is going up. For every person that signs on, the fee rises a tenth … Read more

Radio Shack, as we mentioned yesterday, is changing to The Shack. But a good restaurant in Connecticut is also called The Shack and has pie. Radio Shack does not have pie. They lose. We also talk about Google dropping search share and the rumored new PS3.

Buzz Out Loud interviews Aneesh Chopra, Obama's Chief Technology Officer http://www.cnet.com/8301-19709_1-10302978-10.html

Google search share drops as Bing gains momentum http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/bing-continues-to-chip-away-at-googles-search-share.ars

Misunderstandings abound … Read more

Delicious, the social-bookmarking service owned by Yahoo, has unveiled home page changes that are intended to do a better job of showcasing links that are currently popular. Although Delicious isn't sharing the exact details of its algorithm, it apparently includes using the number of Twitter messages related to a given item.

Writing on the Delicious blog, Vik Singh, an architect at Yahoo, writes that "For this new Fresh homepage, our system displays recently bookmarked links and tweeted messages focused mostly on technology, web, politics, and media. Underneath the hood, Fresh factors several features into the ranking like related … Read more

Delicious Monster's Library for iPhone app--introduced as a companion to the company's popular Mac Delicious Library 2 application--was removed from the iTunes App Store on Tuesday due to conflicts with Amazon's Product Advertising API License agreement terms.

The announcement came from Delicious Monster CEO Wil Shipley, who relayed the bad news via Twitter. Apparently, the company was forced to remove the app because it uses Amazon application programming interfaces (APIs), thus giving it access to information stored in Amazon's database. Amazon prohibits this type of use in section 4e of the terms governing the use of … Read more

Yahoo has made a new variety of data available through its BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) program, giving those using the search results access to what's going on at its Delicious site for storing and sharing Web address bookmarks.

BOSS lets others incorporate Yahoo search results onto their own sites, processing them and blending them with other data if desired and sharing resulting revenue with Yahoo from larger-scale partnerships. With the Delicious data, developers get access to information such as how many times a particular Web site has been bookmarked at Delicious, what tags people labeled it with, … Read more

If you're looking for a really simple way to feed your Delicious account and keep track of all the links you've shared over Twitter, Tweecious is a fantastic tool for the lazy. This new Firefox add-on turns links you've included in Twitter messages into bookmarks for your Delicious library, and even tags everything for you.

Once you've logged into both accounts to provision Tweecious with access, it simply keeps an eye on what you've posted in Twitter and will send it over to Delicious. This also works retroactively, so you can have it slurp up … Read more

If you're a Firefox user, chances are you've been using add-ons to extend its functionality. But if you haven't, or if you're looking for new add-ons, I've found 20 for you to try. But since installing all 20 will probably slow your browser to a crawl, I've broken them into four categories. I have grouped the add-ons into "packs" for business professionals, shoppers, social-network fanatics, and students.

Xmarks (download): If you're running a business and want everyone in the office to have the same resources available to them, Xmarks is the way to do it. Simply download it into your browser, create an account, and install it on all the browsers in the office. Once configured, every Xmarks instance connected to that account will be automatically updated whenever a user adds a bookmark. In other words, if one employee adds Webware to their bookmarks, every other person in the office who's running Xmarks will have it installed, as well.

Jigsaw Contact and Company Search: Most business professionals need to have easy access to a company's contact information. If you're one of those people, consider using the Jigsaw Contact and Company Search. Jigsaw, a global online business directory, features millions of contacts and company profiles that can be searched by title, geography, and business.

Stock Pilot (download): Sometimes going to Google Finance is too time consuming to get quick public company info. Try using Stock Pilot instead. The add-on allows you to switch between financial sites to research a particular stock. It also boasts RSS alerts to update you when news breaks about a company you're tracking. Ready access to SEC filings makes it a handy tool for anyone who wants to see a company's quarterly or annual financial data.

TripSync: Once you install the TripSync travel manager add-on, you'll be blown away by its functionality. You can book and hold reservations to places across the world, receive travel alerts, and place your itineraries on Outlook and Google Calendar. TripSync is designed specifically for the business professional, so it's a bit more useful than using a site like Expedia.

WOT (download): WOT, short for Web of Trust, is designed to ensure security and privacy are maintained while you're browsing. Once installed, the add-on warns you about risky Web sites. It also alerts you to sites that deliver malware or send spam. The add-on shows you safety ratings on over 21 million sites.

1 Stop travel and retail shopping engine: If you want to find the best deals across the U.S., Europe, or Canada, the 1 Stop travel and retail shopping engine add-on is a good place to start. While you're browsing, it allows you to search for flights on more than 40 airlines. It also lets you search for deals on more than 20 sites, including Amazon, eBay, and Wal-Mart. Once you start searching in the add-on, it finds the desired page and automatically opens it in a separate tab.

Buy it online (download): If you've ever been on a Web site and found a product you'd like to buy, but were forced to go to Amazon.com to search for it, you'll be happy to know that there's an add-on designed specifically for you. Dubbed "Buy it online," the add-on adds another option when you right-click on a product title on any Web page. If you click the "Buy it online!" button, you'll be shown a listing of all the stores on the Web that are currently selling the product. All the retailers listed are well-known and trustworthy.

eBayBuddy (download): If you're obsessed with eBay, there's a great add-on you might want to consider. Dubbed eBayBuddy, the tool is available in the right-click menu in Firefox and allows you to have full access to eBay's site map, search, and more. It's a great way to quickly and easily find products on eBay without being forced to deal with the site itself.

KeepCash Coupon Notifier (download): As someone who frequents coupon sites and goes to a retailer's page with the discount ready to be used, I found KeepCash Coupon Notifier to be an extremely useful add-on. Whenever you go to a retail site, it automatically searches its database to find any coupons currently available for the site you're on. If there are, it will list them for you to be used while you're shopping.

PriceAdvance (download): When you run PriceAdvance and surf to a retail site to research a product, the add-on will tell you its price on a handful of other prominent sites across the Web. For instance, if you're on Amazon looking to buy an Xbox 360, the site will automatically search for other retailers selling the console and display their pricing, so you can be sure that you're getting the best price.… Read more

Yahoo said on Friday that it will discontinue its MyWeb service on March 18 and is encouraging people to use other Yahoo bookmarking services.

"As we have continued to innovate with the 2.0 release of Delicious and the upgraded Yahoo Bookmarks, we saw that MyWeb users' needs are being served by our newer products," the company said in a posting on its Yahoo Search Blog.

The company has been de-emphasizing the service since at least October 2006 when it started sending MyWeb users to Delicious and offering them the option of using Yahoo Bookmarks.

Yahoo launched MyWeb … Read more