I recently wrote about using del.icio.us in the RUBRIC project. My colleague Deidre Lowe wrote up all the steps she had to go through to set up del.icio.us and use blogines to track it.

I'm reproducing Deidre's instructions here with permission, as they're a lot better than my vague handwaving exhortations to go and sign up for del.icio.us and bloglines.

(She's using Internet Explorer on Windows, your mileage may vary if you are using a different browser.)

Purpose

: To explain how to use Bloglines and del.icio.us to monitor tagged information relevant to the RUBRIC project for the purposes of professional development.

Scope

: RUBRIC Project Team (and the rest of the world).

Step 1: Subscribe to Bloglines

1. Open a browser session

2. Navigate to http://bloglines.com

3. Click the option “Sign up now”

4. Complete the fields as prompted (eg email, Password)

5. Check your email for the confirmation email

6. Follow the instructions in the confirmation email

Step 2: Subscribe to del.icio.us

1. Remain in your browser session

2. Navigate to http://del.icio.us

3. Click on “Register”

4. Complete the fields as prompted (eg username, full name, password, email)

5. Type the letters as requested (this is to prevent spammers registering automatically)

6. Click the “register” button

7. Check your email for the confirmation email

8. Follow the instructions in the confirmation email

Step 3: Add menu options to Favourites for easy selection

1. Remain in your browser session

2. Navigate to http://del.icio.us/doc/about

3. Follow the instructions to install the “remember this” link into your Favourites

4. Follow the instructions to install the “my del.icio.us” link into your Favourites

5. Navigate to http://bloglines.com/help/easysub?tip=6

6. Follow the instructions to install the “sub with Bloglines” link to your Favourites

7. Check your “Links” button on the browser toolbar to see if the links have all been saved

Step 4: Subscribe to del.icio.us tag via Bloglines

1. Remain in your browser session

2. Go to http://del.icio.us/tag/destrubric

3. Click on your Links button and select “Sub with Bloglines”

4. Complete any additional information (such as notes) that you wish to add about the subscription

5. Click “subscribe”

Step 5: Use del.icio.us to add sites to the “destrubric” tag

1. Remain in your browser session

2. Navigate to a page that would be of broad interest to the RUBRIC team (or anyone else monitoring this del.icio.us tag)

3. Click on your Links button and select “remember this”

4. Add a brief description about the site in the “description” field (this may be prepopulated by metadata)

5. Add a note in the “extended” field explaining why you have tagged it

6. Enter the tag destrubric and any other appropriate tags into the “Tag” field

7. Click “Save”

Step 6: Monitor feeds via Bloglines

1. Remain in your browser session

2. Navigate to the page http://bloglines.com/myblogs

3. Click on the link del.icio.us/tag/destrubric

Step 7: Add other RSS feeds to Bloglines

1. Remain in your browser session

2. Navigate to a blog of interest [How about this one! PS]

3. Click on your Links button and select “Sub via Bloglines”

4. Complete any additional information

5. Click “subscribe”

Background Information

del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.

http://del.icio.us/doc/about