Delicious for IPhone

As a serious Delicious addict, I am always on the lookout for a new iPhone app to organize and sort through my substantial bookmarks from the bookmarking service. Unfortunately, Delicious from www.iTunesFriend.com is not that application.

(Image Caption: Tag, You're It: Tapping a saved link or tag in Delicious makes this dialog pop up each time. It's a maddening step to repeat.)

While at first glance the $5 app appears to offer a convenient means to browse, edit, and add new Delicious.com bookmarks, some serious flaws with the application make these tasks frustrating to accomplish. In my testing, viewing bookmarks by tag only works for bookmarks tagged within the app--the application's "My Tags" feature simply will not display bookmarks which were tagged by other means. Searching bookmarks would be useful, but since the app only searches tags, this feature is also seriously limited by the bug mentioned above.

These flaws are not the only problems with Delicious. Some buttons have misleading labels: for example, the Safari button actually opens the app's built-in rudimentary browser, rather than the phone's Safari application. While the built-in browser has some notable omissions--like an address bar--it does include a decent add button and means to add tags and notes to a bookmark.

Tapping a saved link or tag pops up a dialog which asks users if they would like to delete the item, edit it, or visit it; repeating this step for even a few links quickly becomes maddening.

Ultimately these problems, combined with the unreliable tags functionality, means iPhone owners should skip this app until the developer starts rolling out substantial updates.

Delicious is compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 2.2.1 software update.

[Kate Dohe is a freelance writer and mobile UI designer based in San Diego. She holds a Masters degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Hawaii.]

This story, "Delicious for IPhone" was originally published by Macworld.