Delicious: Sometime You Don't Want to Tweet It Out

And the winner is...Delicious 2012!

Like many users, I am on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin all day long. In that time, I read many well-written and intriguing articles. My usual response to my article lust is to "Share, Retweet, Share, Retweet, Repin!!!" (Say that ten times fast).
Lately, I have realized that when I find an article, I am not looking for a social response. What I really want is a way to save the information as a resource in usable, searchable folders, so when I have a specific question, I have a library of information at my fingertips--all in one place, no matter where the original information was found. I know I could use Pinterest to do this, but I really feel that Pinterest's value is in design and visuals, not in article collection. When I thought of my ideal tool I came up with some prerequisites: 

• Easy. I want a button in my toolbar. (no copy, paste, save as pdf--I could do that on my computer, but it's too time consuming) 
• It must live in "the cloud" so I have access to it everywhere
• I wanted to bundle the topics for later access

After a bit of research, I was down to a few different options. Pinboard (a ten dollar one-time fee for this service which calls itself "social bookmarking for introverts"), Evernote which I am already using to take text-based notes, or Delicious which I used in good ole 2005. 
Since I am a fan of using tools I already have, I tried Evernote. It worked well to give me a basic screenshot of my desired article or the url, but I just felt there was something better out there. Since Pinboard was a fee-based service, I decided to visit my old friend, Delicious, and man, it has evolved since 2005!
With some easy set up (much like Pinterest), I now had a "Save on Delicious" button in my browser. I quickly created a couple of "stacks" and added an article. When I went back to the link, I could see an image, the linkable url, and a long summary. 
Perfect. 
Apparently, finding the right tool for the job sometimes means revisiting a website from the past...

Twitter for Professional Development

Have you ever worked for an organization in which staff members pass professional journals from one person to the next? I have. By the time the journal got to me, I had already read the relevant articles--they had been tweeted and retweeted by followers on Twitter. Yes, I'll admit it. I would love to use Twitter to follow #meme all day, but instead it's an easy way to keep track of trends in the industry. 
For many of you, this post is like, "duh!" of course! But for others who have heard the words Tweet, Kardashian, or Lindsay Lohan in the same sentence far too often, Twitter seems like a guilty pleasure. Believe me, it can be (uh, #topchef)! But for other things, just by following a few industry microbloggers (tweeters!), I have learned a lot. I have created an overview video below for those of you who have created a Twitter account, but have no idea what to do next.
UPDATE:
I originally created a video tutorial, but I have been practicing my imovie skills, and I am excited to revise the video. I will repost it as soon as possible!