For sure I am a travel addict. I am also lucky to have studied, worked and lived in various places around the world. My current stop is Singapore which is an excellent base for discovering South East Asia, a region full of hidden gems, diverse cultures and natural beauties. But I am no touristy-site hopper: when I travel, I try to look for small things, easily overlooked corners and places that are off the beaten paths. Small towns and cities are my favourite. It is in such places that you will find the most authentic food, untainted by the need to internationalize and commercialize, identify the unique aspects in the local way of life, and of course, meet the most friendly people who make your experience unforgettable. And I would rather spend more time in less places so as to give myself enough time to have a feel for whatever places I go to.

Interestingly, the more I travel overseas, the more I realize how little I knew about my country (I come from Vietnam), hence the need to go home and discover. Have you ever felt the same way? These days I try to make use of my limited holidays to explore what Vietnam has to offer. A highlight of this blog will thus be my travel experience in Vietnam and I hope it will be useful to travellers like yourself.

Enjoy!

P.S. Check out my tripadvisor reviews at http://www.tripadvisor.com/members-reviews/youngnfree

From Delicious to Diigo

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Like everyone who does a lot of web search, I like to bookmark web links for future reference. For years, I've trusted Delicious's friendly social bookmarking service until the most recent change of ownership messed it up almost completely. Unfortunately, I maintained the Delicious account using an email address that I do not check very often, so when AVOS sent a notification email about the deadline to transfer existing bookmarks to another service, I was oblivious! But who would have ever thought a service as useful and as popular as Delicious would one day be discontinued like that.

In case anyone also faces the harsh reality of having missed AVOS's deadline, I will share my exodus journey from Delicious to Diigo, another bookmarking site.

1. Access the old Delicious servers to retrieve your bookmarks, as described at:
http://gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com/337468.html

To know how to edit host files on Mac OS X, refer to:
http://www.switchingtomac.com/tutorials/how-to-edit-the-hosts-file-in-os-x

As of Oct 30th 2011, it's still possible to access these servers. You will be prompted to log in with your Yahoo username and password. After this, you will arrive at a plain looking page.















2. Export bookmarks in .htm format by going to Settings. Under Bookmarks, select Export/Backup Bookmarks.











3. Import the htm list to Diigo. In Diigo, go to Tools (top right corner menu). Under Web Services, select Import bookmarks and browse to the .htm list.

Et voila, you have rescued all your Delicious bookmarks, together with tags, to Diigo!

What an unnecessary hassle and waste of time you might say. But hey, I am actually relishing the fact that with Diigo toolbar Add-on for Firefox, any bookmark I save from now on can be set as "private by default". Delicious never made this feature available to its users, despite numerous appeals.

















P.S: Prior to attempting the above method, I followed another advice at http://leo.gaggl.com/2011/10/export-delicious-bookmarks-in-xml. It gave me a .xml list of exported bookmarks which Diigo had troubles importing. Specifically it says "Oops. Something wrong. Please check the file size and format. Don't hesitate to contact us (with your diigo user name) if you still experience problems."