Information Research Weblog

Last week's Guardian Technology supplement contained an item on the emergence of a couple of 'social bookmarking' sites in the information technology area. The article suggested that Digg and Reddit might well take over the prime spot in IT news sites from Slashdot and pointed to the differences: Slashdot contributions are subject to editorial review, while those in the other two are the result of users votes on what is interesting.

Whatever the pros and cons of that debate, there is no doubt that Digg and Reddit are wonderful places to visit if you want to waste some time, discovering interesting but probably completely useless bits of information. I think I could live without the photo essay on an Argentinian family, for example, but it is a fascinating set of pictures! And for the truly weird, try the 1990 Nintendo catalogue.

There is useful stuff, of course, but you may only come across it by chance if a sufficient number of members of the site have rated it so that it comes high on the list—I'm not going to wade through pages on the off-chance of finding something useful. For example, I discovered that Gmail is finally going to make a 'Delete' button available

I had to stop, however: I just don't have that kind of browse time available!