I’d been hearing about del.icio.us for years, but never really saw the point of using it. I have bookmarks built into my browser, and if I switch jobs or computers, I can just export/import the bookmarks file. What’s the point of “social bookmarking”? Plus, the URL is really annoying. I can never remember if it’s de.lic.io.us or deli.cio.us or what. And the user interface isn’t really all that user friendly and lack of widespread adoption keeps it from being as great as it could be.

That said, I’ve started using the site a lot more at my current job, mostly for sharing links with a small group of coworkers, and the site is growing on me. There’s one particularly awesome feature that I’d like to share with you, but before I do, consider this a warning: This can be addictive.

It’s the del.icio.us randomizer. It’s the online equivalent of channel surfing a billion-channel TV. Here’s what you do to hook it up:

- In your browser, go to Bookmarks, then Organize Bookmarks

- Click New Bookmark

- Where it says Location, paste this URL: http://del.icio.us/recent?random&min=10

To use the randomizer, just click on your new bookmark. Each time you click, you’ll be taken to a new recently-added-to-del.icio.us link. Some of the links get a bit techie-heavy (lots of stuff about Ubuntu, CSS and Ruby on Rails), but I’ve found a lot of great stuff using it.