One of the ways you can participate in the course outside of class is to tag relevant websites, news articles, and other online resources using the social bookmarking tool Delicious.Here’s a quick introduction:

What Is Delicious?

The idea behind Delicious (and other social bookmarking tools) is that instead of saving an interesting website as a bookmark or “favorite” in your Web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.), you save the website to your Delicious account. Then you can…

  • Access the bookmark from any Web browser and any computer (not just the Web browser you were using when you saved the site),
  • Make the bookmark publicly available so that others who are interested in the things that interest you can see it, and
  • Assign one or more “tags” to the bookmark to categorize it so you can more easily find it later.

Watch this three-minute video on social bookmarking via Delicious for a great introduction to this process. Seriously, watch the video.

Why Social Bookmarking?

Cryptography is a rich, active, and relevant field, and there’s no way we can cover every aspect of the field in a single course. Tagging resources related to cryptography on Delicious and sharing those resources with the class is useful for two reasons. One is that it helps you make connections between the content of this course and other interests of yours, both academic and personal. The other is that by sharing interesting cryptography resources with the course, you’re enriching the learning experience for all of us (including me) in the class. Both of those reasons merit including this activity in your course participation grade.

Also, keep in mind that you’ll want to identify a particular code or cipher not covered during class to discuss in your second essay, the expository paper. Keep an eye on the Delicious feed for potential paper topics. You may also find some of the resources tagged in Delicious useful in your final essay, the “Big Questions” paper, as you put together your arguments in that paper.

Getting Started

Getting started is pretty simple. Just follow these steps, most of which are illustrated in the video:

  1. Visit Delicious.com and sign up for a free account. Pick any user name you like that’s available. You’re welcome to use your actual name or to pick a pseudonym. If you pick a pseudonym, however, let me know what it is so I can give you credit for your contributions to Delicious.
  2. When you find an interesting cryptography site to share, you can copy the URL from the address bar in your Web browser, visit Delicious, click on “Save a New Bookmark,” and paste the URL into the appropriate place. You’ll then get a chance to add comments and tags to the bookmark.
  3. However, I recommend that you install one of the browser tools Delicious makes available. Once you install one of these tools in your Web browser, you’ll be able to save a website to Delicious just by clicking a button in your browser. When you do, a window will pop up letting you add comments and tags to your bookmark. This makes it much easier to save something to Delicious than the cut-and-paste approach. (And if you have a smart phone like an iPhone or Android, you can find apps that do the same thing. Search your app store for “Delicious” to find one.)
  4. However you use Delicious, be sure to tag your bookmarks with the keyword “fywscrypto” (without the quotes, of course). All bookmarks tagged with that keyword will show up on the Delicious page for the “fywscrypto” and, more importantly, on the sidebar of this blog. This will make it easier for all of us to see what we’ve all be tagging lately. (In case it didn’t occur to you: The “fyws” in “fywscrypto” stands for First-Year Writing Seminar.)
  5. You’re welcome to use other tags in addition to “fywscrypto.” Additional tags will just make it easier to find particular bookmarks later. See the Delicious feed for “fywscrypto” for some ideas, such as “bletchleypark,” “cybersecurity,” and “unsolved.”

If you have any questions about using Delicious, feel free to ask me.