As we all have read Delicious is on the Sunset list for Yahoo. While they say they are not shutting it down, but instead looking for a buyer I would be looking for a backup solution. I would also recommend that you always have a backup plan because nothing is forever, especially in the dot net world. I have been using Delicious for a long time for bookmarking my technology information for easy look up in a pinch. I don’t want to be stranded when I need something from a post I read during a service call. With that in mind I have been trying Evernote and Diigo for about a week now and have come to some conclusions.

Evernote

“Evernote makes it easy to remember things big and small from your notable life using your computer, phone, and the web.” – Evernote Help Documentation It does do that and is widely used on all platforms. Let’s see, it can:

1. Type a text note.
2. Clip a web page.
3. Snap a photo.
4. Grab a screenshot.

It does one thing very well and that is create notes. You can put anything into a note, but they are notes, you can’t save a link to go back to. Instead you have to copy and paste it into a note. That is exactly how they import the Delicious bookmarks, as a bunch of links in one note, not individual bookmarks. That is kind of a pain for ease of searching when I am doing a job and want just one post. While I can get the one note with all the bookmarks in it, I don’t know what the title of the post might be so I can’t search the note for it. I have also been using it to import other notes for my consulting business and have found it very useful in that respect. It is also very good if I want to clip a piece of a web page into a note and tag it. It is very convenient on my iPhone for new notes or seeing notes from my PC. It also has the great advantage that it integrates with Outlook.

Diigo

Diigo is also free, looks and feels a lot like Delicious, except that in version 5 they have added notes. You can also add images to Diigo. You can search tags and has a very good Delicious import function, although it did take almost 48 hours to import my 594 bookmarks. While I believe that was because of the rush of people moving from Delicious in an effort to preserve their bookmarking, I feel that shows that they are not a fully developed service. So what does Diigo do:

1. Save a bookmark and tag it.
2. Type a text note.
3. Save an image.
4. Search for individual bookmarks.

After the import of my bookmarks it shows not tags, but they are there and you can search using your old Delicious tags. As you add new bookmarks and tag them your tags show up, but only the new tags. Not a big deal since I can search for my bookmarks no matter what. Diigo has an Android app, an iPhone app and a toolbar for IE and Firefox. I looked at the iPhone app, but it is an offline reader and not ready for prime time.

Overall Ratings

I like both Evernote and Diigo, but for different reasons. Strictly as a replacement for Delicious, I give Diigo the nod over Evernote. It is a true bookmarking service like Delicious with some extras. Personally, I will be using both because I love the pure note features of Evernote, that they integrate with Outlook and their iPhone app is much better. Evernote is more suited to my consulting work and will be used a lot to organize details in the future. The integration is very important for me and is something that I can use as a recommendation to clients as a service they could use in their businesses. Diigo is well worth it for me to start using to bookmark sites for use as I have been with Delicious. I have stopped using Delicious and have migrated to Diigo exclusively for bookmarking. I will be continually exporting my bookmarks for backup and watching what happens to Delicious. I use the bookmarking feature in my consulting, but also use it in my work with the school district. You can’t carry around all the knowledge you have learned in your lifetime, so it is extremely convenient to have a service like Diigo around.