Library clips

Mark Gould has a great post which has picked up on a thread in one of the LinkedIn forums on the "Pulling" and "Pushing" of information. Mark’s post also covers some blog discussion on the difference between sharing and communication, which I may add to in another post.

Nick Milton says in a blog post:

"…there is no point in creating a culture of sharing, if you have no culture of re-use. Pull is a far more powerful driver for Knowledge Management than Push, and I would always look to create a culture of knowledge seeking before creating a culture of knowledge sharing."

Firstly, we don’t create a knowledge sharing culture, we help create conditions so this happens!

I agree that the organisation needs to be open to helping others. Our best kind of Communities of Practice at work are the "Support" type. People ask questions, and others respond, discussion ensues, and usually the person who asked the question can take something away and move on…great sense-making via people to get things done at work. Plus everyone else on the thread got to learn for free.

In the future our CoPs at work will be complemented by a social network, which amplifies sense-making even more.

This perspective also reminds me of Nancy Dixon’s article "Does your organisation have an asking problem"

But I don’t entirely agree with Nicks statement, as it’s too black and white.

Plus when someone shares something it may not result in a direct action for me, but it may make something more clear for me, or give me a better outlook on something…this is an implicit type of value (even though I’m not actioning what I have learnt into something explicit).

Both "Push" and "Pull" are important!

As I mentioned, "Pull" to respond and help is crucial for people to do their work, but also "Push" allows an organisation to share what they are doing, their experiences, process…so we can be smarter and more capable people, and so the organisation can be more adaptable, agile and resilient.

Yes, response to questions are great, but we also need "Push"…in the future I may not need to ask the question if it’s already been shared kindly elsewhere. This happens a lot in our tips and tricks blogs at work.

Or put another way, when I need to make a decision in the future, some of those past blog post/comment fragments may come together to aid me in my decision.

This may happen unconsiously…I have subscribed to those people that "Pushed" those blog posts, perhaps conversed with them to make sense of them personally, and now I have absorbed them, and they become building blocks that come together when I make decisions.

As for blogging…even though it’s "Push", it also creates "Pull"…as people ask questions in the comments, and converse via trackbacks.

When "Push" is done with socially interactive tools, you get knowledge creation that keeps going, you get a worthwhileness as people can actually probe and internalise this shared information into personal knowledge. Now that’s KM!

A company that doesn’t have continual dialogue is stale and will not innovate, or have an edge.

Supply as stockpile or flow

Nick says:

"…sharing (“push”) is done at the expense of seeking (“pull”). The risk is you create supply, with no demand."

I guess this is a way to look at it from a market point-of-view, where modern marketing was the answer to deal with over supply. In the context of this post, it’s about motivating people to seek available information.

This is true if sharing is based on conscription, or not within an ecosystem…this is the non-interactive document-centric warehousing approach.

But what about blogging experiences and asking questions in a social network…this has more of an equilibrium, or yin and yang of share and seek.

What has been shared, quickly induces dialogue and at that point does it’s job of KM. People connecting, re-contextualising, learning…this is "Pull", because of "Push".

Hmmm, "the risk is you create supply, with no demand."
Google doesn’t know what I’m gonna ask today, but when I do I am led to a place where there is an answer, or where I can connect and interact with others to put that information into my context.

Or better still, I’m not gonna ask today as I remember someone blogging about it in the past, so I know what to do.

So the question here is not whether "push" is efficient or not, it’s they way the information is pushed.

Conscription to a database lacks motivation, context, is static, etc…see my post on KM in context.

Whereas pushing via a blog may induce more knowledge creation, it’s not static at all. I blog about an experience:

• people learn about it as they are subscribed
• others leave comments
• a conversation ensues
• this enables people to clarify, probe, re-frame
• so this information object (the blog post), creates some type of personal knowledge for people as they have been able to sense-make via conversations

When you "Push" via a social tool people can interact with that information object so it may become personal knowledge to them.
The fact I push a blog post, has allowed opportunity for knowledge creation n-fold.

If we only shared in response to "Pull", then we would never be innovative or grow…we wouldn’t have an edge. In life there is stuff we don’t know about, and when we hear about this stuff it excites us and becomes usable (today or tomorrow), we like these gifts. Without this we hear a lot of “if only you had told me that when I was doing that task”…” we didn’t know you guys were using that method, that seems more efficient and effective”

Push is not a servant to Pull

Nick says:

"Knowledge Push is inefficient and wasteful if there is no Pull, whether the push is done through blogs…"

I really don’t understand this comment. It’s seems too perfect and engineered, if not impossible.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to control "Push" in order for people to just push what’s needed…for how do we know what we need…we are living in times where we need to adapt and be resilient to a fast paced constantly changing environment.

We can’t control what business topics and experiences people blog about, they blog on their own terms, we are lucky that they share at all…so we have to be happy.
We cannot conscript people to blog only when it’s 100% usable now and will be re-used immediately…we are dealing with people here, not robots…people don’t like the big brother feel…people blog because there is an intrinsic motivation, not because they are told to.

Otherwise this is going back to old KM conscripting methods, but only with new tools…it’s useless anyway as it goes against the ethos of these new tools.

It’s about engagement, not knowledge sharing

People blog because connecting and dialogue is what we are about, we are social creatures…it fills this need.

Blogs smash silos, nurture transparency and flatter organisational conversations. People can be heard and have impact….your bosses boss, or a boss in another team can hear what you have to say…see my post, we are more than our job title describes. Blogs are great for talent retention, and being recognised…these are all intrinsic motivators.

Therefore it’s more than just knowledge sharing, it’s about people connecting and being fulfilled at work…therefore you cannot control the "Push".

When people "Push", we are always learning, and building capacity…next time when we are in a decision-making situation we may draw on those blog posts that floated past our radar.
The more "Push" the more smarter we become, and the more capable and quicker the organisation is able to respond to change.

Andrew Gent’s post on learning and capacity seems to fit in here:

"So just as the goal of college is to teach capabilities, not specific skills; the goal of KM is to facilitate knowledge development and transfer, not solely to apply knowledge to the product pipeline."

"Push" is good, but mostly when it’s social pushing like blogging.

Clarification on blogging as Just-in-Case

In the LinkedIn thread I refered to blogging as Just-in-Time, rather than Just-in-Case, and Nick picked me up on this saying that it was Just-in-Case/Storing/Push. He also acknowledges that it’s different to past KM sharing methods, alluding to its inbuilt intrinsic motivation, and that it can be interacted with (a dynamic, living, manifesting object).

He is partially correct, maybe "Just-in-Time" wasn’t the correct word, but I don’t think "Just-in-Case" is either. I meant to refer to the immediacy of blogging…an event happens, or is happening and we can blog with great recall right now. Let’s worry later about whether this can be formalised or distilled into something more proper. What’s important right now is we can use blogs to capture something as it happens, then have some dialogue. Later on the result of all this can be woven back into good practice.

Thanks to Mark Gould for a pithy insight:

"I don’t blog here, nor do I encourage the same kind of activity at work because someone might find the content useful in the future. I do it, and encourage it, because the activity itself is useful in this moment. It is neither just-in-case nor just-in-time: it just is."

To refer back to an earlier part of this post, it’s the feeling of connection you have at work and with your peers, and the feeling of sense-making and expression. The effectiveness of the KM concept of "Push" and "Pull" comes second.

Mark also refers to Patrick Lambe where he alludes to sharing is bigger than itself, the more you participate, the more you are connected. To me this means whether all sharing is useful or not right now doesn’t matter as it’s the aggregation of sharing and participation that gets you connected. And being connected is everything:

"We do have an evolved mechanism for achieving such deep knowledge results: this is the performance you can expect from a well-networked person who can sustain relatively close relationships with friends, colleagues and peers, and can perform as well as request deep knowledge services of this kind."

Mark also differentiates the re-use aspect in reference to types of knowledge:

"My suspicion is that organisations that rely especially highly on personal, unique, knowledge (or intellectual capital) should be a lot more relaxed about this than Nick suggests. His view may be more relevant in organisations where repetitive processes generate much more value."
 

Nick makes a good point:

"The people who blog (and I include myself in this) are the ones who want to be heard, and that’s not always the same as “the ones who need to be heard”. Knowledge often resides in the quietest people."

I don’t know the answer to this other than facilitating conditions and guidance for quiet people to feel safe and comfortable. Knowledge sharing is a voluntary act, just as opening your mouth and speaking is.

KM in action

At work we have a Tips and Tricks blog for the Document Management team.

When I was working on that team I was trouble shooting a problem for someone, and as a result came up with a tip on how to browse the system via email.

I thought I’d better write this down somewhere so I don’t forget (memory management), and to also share it with others…so I blogged it.

This generated conversation, as to why this was the case.

The fact that I blogged it both offered a tip, and also initiated a discussion.

Subscribers to the blog were thankful of my post as they too had come across this issue.

Subscribers to this blog sometimes use tips straight away, and sometimes it’s good to know for the future, and sometimes it creates conversation that leads somewhere else.

Subscribers of the blog are happy to subscribe to these small fragments (blog posts).

If I were to give them a months worth of posts they would not have the time to read them, but they have time to digest fragments as they happen.

In this scenario I’m pushing a blog post as it happened, as it turned out it was of great help to others, and created new discussion paths.

Forget "Push or "Pull", connecting is key

I cannot predict if my "Push" will be "Pulled", that’s just how it is.

And this is what I think Mark Gould referred to when he wrote:

"The key thing in all of this, for me, is that whether we talk of knowledge sharing, transfer, or management, it only has value if it can result in action: new knowledge generation; new products; ideas; thoughts. But I think that action is more likely if we are open-minded about where it might arise. If we try and  predict where it may be, and from which interactions it might come, I think it  is most probable that no useful action and value will result in the long term."

As quoted by Patrick Lambe earlier, this is only the half of it. The more you share the more you are connecting and building relationships and trust, and this is mighty important. And the third element is that I’m a satisfied and engaged knowledge worker in a connected and networked environment.

Jack Vinson has also picked up on this conversation. I like the comment by Jamie Hatch:

"…making sure that knowledge is not just ‘captured’ but that we do something with it"

I think there is more chance of this happening when the capturing is not considered capturing, but rather people sense-making and sharing/communicating…and when this is done with the right tools, that are within a networked environment. To me "Push and Pull" are more relationship based than isolated concepts, I can’t approach one without the other creeping in.

Jack points to a great post from Ross Dawson, who reviews another post by Nick Bilton which gives a nice tone to the focus of this post.

It refers to serendipity and network filtering…as I do my work, since you are subscribed to me, I’m filtering information for you, and vice versa. Everyone is getting mutual benefit from everyone else. We all become more capable and smarter people.

Ross Dawson uses some terms that used to seem futuristic, but are becoming more common place: collective intelligence, global brain.

Forget "Push or "Pull", context is key

David Weinberger, Valis Krebs, Patrick Lambe and Steve Barth talk about not "Push" (sharing) or "Pull" (seeking), but more about making the infomation make sense at a personal level:

David Weinberger says:

"But the real problem with the information being provided to us in our businesses is that, for all the facts and ideas, we still have no idea what we’re talking about. We don’t understand what’s going on in our business, our market, and our world.

In fact, it’d be right to say that we already *know* way too much. KM isn’t about helping us to know more. It’s about helping us to understand. Knowledge without understanding is like, well, information.”

So, how do we understand things? From the first accidental wiener roast on a prehistoric savannah, we’ve understood things by telling stories. It’s through stories that we understand how the world works"

Valdis Krebs says:

"The new advantage is context — how internal and external content is interpreted, combined, made sense of, and converted to end product. Creating competitive context requires social capital, the ability to find, utilize and combine the skills, knowledge and experience of others."

Patrick Lambe says:

“the internalisation problem is how the represented knowledge can be re-contextualised so that it makes sense within the recipients own world view”

Steve Barth talks about indigenous knowledge, and focusing on relationships and context rather then knowledge commodification:

"…more focus on studying the connections between elements of the natural environment and the human community than on discrete things themselves. As such, the focus on relationships rather than reification is more in line with complexity and systems theories than taxonomical or hierarchical approaches of traditional science. It’s a direct contrast, too, to the (fictional) objectivity of scientific observation and experimentation."

"Incorporating indigenous knowledge into development efforts leverages a number of its strengths. It demonstrates respect for those involved by focusing on their needs, resources, responsibilities and experience; it facilitates local adaptation of technologies and techniques instead of forcing untailored adoption; it supplements—rather than supplants—local theory and practice; and it improves the collective awareness and sense-making necessary to make adjustments as a project proceeds."

"…neo-indigenistas" (his term for those who would save indigenous knowledge by removing it from the wild) are being hypocritical when they advocate for gathering it into civilized central repositories. Disconnecting knowledge from its source, in terms of people and places, will remove from that knowledge the very context which infuses it with life. Because indigenous knowledge is continuously generated and renewed in the living practices of people, archiving in isolation from practice removes its ongoing relevance…."

KM made simple

Finishing off. I’m a real fan of the simple KM perspective by Gia Lyons, Richard Dennison. They allude to "Push and Pull" as part of the same symbiotic strategy.

Gia Lyons says:

"The whole point of social software, from the perspective of retaining corporate wisdom, is to make a wisdom holder’s surface knowledge available to a general population, so that other people can do the following:

Be aware that this knowledge exists in the organization, and who has it. This is a huge pre-cursor to effective collaboration – knowing people exist, and knowing what they know. In social network science terms, the goal is to increase your organizational network’s density, which means more awareness / connections between more people, and to reduce distance, which means fewer network “nodes” between two people, based on trusted relationships – you can’t call Kevin Bacon directly, for example, until you ask a guy you know who knows his agent to get you an appointment.

Determine with whom they should collaborate, if they even need to. The irony of social software is that many may never need to collaborate with you if you share your surface knowledge. And an added benefit is that if you ever do need to collaborate with that person, you’ve accelerated that effort beyond the “dumb question” stage. You can get to the really good stuff faster.

Begin a trusted relationship with someone. This is done by “talking” to them in a forum, a blog, commenting on their document, etc., in hopes that in the future, you can boldly call them and ask for their tacit wisdom."

Richard Dennison says:

"If we could achieve three things, I think we will have made more progress in the field of KM than we’ve ever managed before. Those things are:

• expose in the network who people are and what they are interested in/working on/thinking about …
• provide a way to search through the above and then offer a simple mechanism to connect like-minded people together in networks a
• automatically expose the activities of individuals to those in their networks through activity streams.
  
  That’s it … simples!

Well … possibly not as simple as it sounds … but achievable at least."

In the end I partially agree with Nick saying that "Pull" is important otherwise what’s the use of sharing. But like conversation you just don’t know what’s gonna happen, what’s important is that you are having it, the opportunities, and the chance to probe for clarity…and that you feel connected and engaged. Within a networked environment the Pushing and Pulling of raw fragments as they happen, as opposed to a database full of static documents, is synergised. I think of it more as conversation, and conversation is work and knowledge creation.

A little while ago I posted on how Communities of Practice (CoPs) can act as a sense-making model for KM. Here’s a direct link to the model.

NOTE: I used CoPs as a model as that’s what we are doing at work, but obviously this is a similar concept when dealing with social networks.

Also note the premise is that we can mimic and amplify online, what we do offline, and that’s network with people to get things done. Which means the contents of this post is more focused on the online element of KM. But it is to be said that offline knowledge sharing techniques are not to be neglected eg. Openspace, AI, AAR, Peer Assist, AAR, World cafe, etc…

The big difference here to past KM efforts is that it’s focus is on interactions, conversations and context (Just-in-time), rather than codifying and warehousing objects and then people seeking those objects (Just-in-case).

It may come across that asking and answering questions is the only component of the Just-in-time model. But I would also include people sharing news, reviews, status, experiences in blogs in this model.

That is, unlike the codification model (Just-in-case), I am sharing raw experiences. I’m not trying to codify according to an agenda, rather I’m just sharing a fragment of experience as it happens. Quickly get it down before it’s forgotten or loses relevancy (who cares if it’s unpolished). 
I do it because I have an intrinsic motivation, and audience…it’s engaging. Others can leave comment feedback and we have a conversation, and all of a sudden this has led us to another place, perhaps not even related to the original blog post.. Participation and visibility is everything. Who knows where, what you say, will take you…this is the beauty of conversation and life…unexpected, emergence, novel, etc…

When this grows to a network of bloggers, the give and take scenario increases the engagement.

To re-iterate, this is not the same as codification…the act of blogging does more than document…it builds relationships, spurs conversations, creates opportunities, emergence, etc…all this feeds back into a natural model of knowledge sharing.

The more people are blogging, the more it becomes known who to go to for information, or who you can be refered to, or who can point you to where information lives. And then be able to re-frame into your context via conversation. This is true sense-making…we are no longer alone with "search".

And thanks to email and RSS you can subscribe to these digestable fragments as they happen.

Why do I use the term digestable?

I’m not going to spend time reading a manual or a long report that often if I don’t have to; due to attention scarcity, or I don’t have time to scan lots of stuff to find the good bits. But if someone blogs daily fragments from, or about, that report, then I will read it…and I will do the same with something else.
So by posting and networking we share the load and get to know or filter more information. Clay Shirky is often quoted that information overload is looking at the glass half empty, and that it’s more about filter failure, which is the glass half full, as we can do something about it.

Further to this, it’s a learning model. When questions are asked and answered, when experiences are shared, when we have conversations; we are all learning. We learn lots more than just the original document/post, we learn from the comments and conversations (the document/post has spurred this indirectly, all you have to do in life is say or act, and then will follow reactions…who knows where this leads).

This relates to a quote from Andrew Gent:

"If you see the goal of college being to get a job (your ROI), then there really is no need for English, history, languages, or even science — depending upon your target profession. However, if you see the goal of college as expanding your knowledge and broadening your character, not only will it have a strong indirect impact on your employability, but your opportunities will be far more flexible and adaptive to the business environment when you graduate.

So just as the goal of college is to teach capabilities, not specific skills; the goal of KM is to facilitate knowledge development and transfer, not solely to apply knowledge to the product pipeline."
 

Anyway…

This post is an extension of my former post. The former post had only 2 slides (the model). In this new slide set I have added some more slides which explain or describe the model and why it is the way it is. This is done not in a direct way, but more by sharing some understanding of some concepts, so the reader can then use that as a lens to look at the model. Even better, most of the concepts are explained by quotes from people I admire.

What comes across in the aggregation of quotes in this slide set is that "context" is a heavy part of KM. In fact it’s the crucial factor, as it makes what is shared usable.

In the future I’m going to extend this slide set once more to encompass my take of KM in general, and the present and future.

Here’s the slidedeck.

 

I just read over on mashable about the various ways to filter tweets; by keywords, by groups, by links, etc…

Under the keyword section they list filttr, but I got to tell you filttr does it all, not as sophisticated as peoplebrowsr, but it has the essential features. It’s oAuth enabled, post select updates to Facebook, Twitpic, file attachments, shortcuts, threaded replies, and has a mobile version. Below I have focused on the filtering features.

Features

• Filters tweets based on your past reading behaviour
• Manually black list and white list keywords
• Slider to curb noisy tweeps

eg. if a tweep is conference tweeting too much you can slide to receive less noise

• Link only tweets from your stream
• Create many keyword streams
• Create many group streams

But can’t share these as Sameer Patel would like, and which some others can do

• Create a combination of a keyword stream within a group, and also, that shows only tweets with links in them

eg. show me tweets with just links in them with the hashtag #e2conf within my group of people I follow called “enterprise”

• Automatically creates a group of tweeps that aren’t in a group

I’ve been using Filttr for most of this year, and I tell ya it helps me deal with my Twitter stream firehose, plus these guys are really responsive with implementing suggested features, either via Twitter, email or Uservoice.

If you have time you can read the regular stream, or perhaps just read link only tweets in the regular stream, but let’s face it I never, ever, ever have time to do this…

I don’t really create keyword search streams unless I’m researching or there is an event, and I haven’t used the sliders or black/white listing features yet.

But what I do use is the grouping feature (alias), and link-only tweets feature.

Just like an RSS Reader I have folder type streams.

These folders are groups that I organise my tweeps in…you can do a keyword search across a group if you like.

eg. I have a group called “enterprise2.0″
- this displays tweets from about 100 people I follow
- if I wanted I could overlay this with a keyword search eg “wiki”
- then later on I can take off the keyword search if I like

For every group, I have a link only group as well.

For example, if I don’t have time to read all tweets in my “enterprise2.0″ group, I’ll read the “enterprise2.0-linkonly” stream instead…this way I can just read tweets that have links in them.

The main groups I have are:

Regular stream-linkonly
Enterprise2.0
Enterprise2.0-linkonly
Enterprise2.0Essentials
Enterprise2.0Essentials-linkonly
Networks
Networks-linkonly
Communities
Communities-linkonly
Learning
Learning-linkonly
KM
KM-linkonly
Local
Local-linkonly
LocalEsssentials
LocalEssentials-linkonly
Vendor
Vendor-linkonly

Today I may only have 20 minutes to catch up on Twitter on my mobile on the train, so I may read:

Communities-linkonly
KM-linkonly
Networks-linkonly
Enterprise2.0Essentials-linkonly

I really like that I’m empowered to be able to do this. With the regular Twitter interface, my 20 minutes would not get me far, or satisfy me…

I got a follow-up email the other day from our vendor to see if I have used a new reporting package, and for some feedback. I really don’t have time now as I’m facilitating at the moment, but I will get round to metrics at some stage.

To tell you the truth, this reporting thing is going to be a whole new component to our CoPs, which means I will have to dedicate some good time to learning about it, practicing, and then putting some stuff together to inform CoP facilitators, and then to support them.

I’m so busy at the moment that I keep putting it off. I would be prepared to spend 15 minutes a day on it, but I’m one of those people who once they start, really dive into something; the momentum, continuity and freshness helps me retain and not forget where I’m up to, or how things work again.

Then I thought, blog fragments.

I asked the vendor if she could possibly use her blog to do a weekly post on reporting. Maybe what’s already available, and what’s involved. And then start getting into the new package…perhaps posting once a week to showcase a report and what questions it answers

eg. If your boss is asking for numbers, but you don’t have the time for this stuff just try this quick and easy report on distinct logins, that will buy you time for now.

eg. The boss may ask for penetration metrics eg. The difference in number between members of CoPs and all employess

eg. If your boss wants a more explicit step up, try this report that tells him how many subscribers there are across all blogs and forums

eg. The boss may want some activity metrics eg. the number of blog and forum posts

eg. What about some engagement, try this report on the number of blog/forum posts a month compared to comments/replies. What about the difference between members and contributors, or compare the number of contributors to previous months.

This would really spoon feed me, and help workaround my attitude, and attention scarcity.

There’s no way I’m going to read a paper or dive into a whole new area right now as I’m too busy, but if someone feeds me little fragments where I can learn in bits and pieces, well then I will pay some attention.

Plus I can always comment on the blog posts to get some clarification and context.

Since we are talking about metrics, here’s what Agnes Kolkiewicz emailed me back, I thought it was interesting:

“As I’m sure you know, adoption and success go hand in hand…so I usually encourage the use of metrics not just to measure ROI, but also to measure progress along the way, as then you have data to fall back on at a later date to say this is how the system improved over time. Measuring things along also helps identify “peak times” in participation so that community facilitators can try and perhaps recreate the event that caused the peak at a later date.”

“I’ll post something tomorrow and will aim at a minimum of one post a week.. your email was a good motivation!”

I replied:

“thx Agnes…you are right…kind of like measuring the heartbeat, the rhythm”

Let’s finish off with a quote by Dave Snowden on the theme of this post:

“The basic idea is simple: Small things are more adaptable than big things, and they are frequently more interesting and more able to gain our attention. People will spend more time surfing the Web and using the fragmented material of an RSS feed than reading documents. It’s easier to write a blog than a book. Fine granularity material can combine in novel and different ways more easily than formal documents.”

FeedVis - Still in private beta, with also an offer of the source code to run it on your server, FeedVis is a a tag cloud generator based on a bunch of feeds that you import via an OPML. The cloud is based on frequency and popularity. This should just be a feature of Google Reader, and probably is in Feedly (also see mini). I remember good old Feeds2.0 had a tag cluster. [via RWW]

embedit.in - embed doc and image files or URLs into your blog posts as flash boxes - doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pdf, wpd, odt, ods, odp, png, jpg, gif, tiff, bmp, eps, ai, txt, rtf, csv, html. Limit is 20 meg. If you already have a web page with links to lots of documents, use embedit.in sitewide to convert them in one go. See their tips. I’d rather not embed it in this post, but here’s a URL to an example of embedding a URL. [via nw]

Webinmail - if all you have is an email connection, yet you want to surf the web, then email this service with the URL you want in the subject field, and they will email you back the page…you can even email a search query. [via DI]

Innercircle.cc - create an email distribution list. Also see posterous group blog/email lists

Smub.it - ever read a webpage on your phone and want to bookmark it in delicious, share it on Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed, email it, etc… I do all the time, but my phone doesn’t have bookmarklets (do phones have these). Anyway, what you can do now is prepend the URL you want to bookmark/share with “smub.it/”. It’s kind of like ShareThis, but done manually by altering the URL.

eg.
- if you came across this URL on your phone
http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/surf-the-web-via-email/5624/

- you go to the address bar, and prepend it with “smub.it/”
smub.it/http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/surf-the-web-via-email/5624/

- then it takes you to a page of icons for delicious, facebook, twitter, friendfeed, email, etc…click on one of these and your away.

Problem with my phone is I can’t choose an icon to click, darn….

Anyway, you can also manage your bookmarks at smub.it, and use a smub bookmarklet or toolbar

It’s also a URL shortener, where you can customise your URL’s
ie enter your ID and a keyword. For example the link in the example above could be
smub.it/johntropea/surfemail

[via BrightHub]