The web browser was originally designed as a thin, user-agnostic client, but it quickly became a full-fledged application in its own right, which goes against the idea of Office 2.0 for which all data is stored online.

Several things make a web browser user specific, among them browsing history, cookies and bookmarks. Security concerns make the first two difficult issues to tackle, but nothing says that the third one could not be addressed.

Here comes the concept of social bookmarking, where bookmarks are shared with others and organized not only by alphabetical order, but also by user popularity or frequency of use. del.icio.us is one such social bookmarking tool that I found very easy to use and nicely integrated with other services. Bookmarks are organized by tags and tags can be grouped into bundles, easing the mental transition from a hierarchical way of organizing bookmarks into folders and sub-folders. I am now using del.icio.us to keep track of the growing list of best-in-class services that make my personal Office 2.0. This list will be constantly updated with candidate services that address specific needs or replace inferior alternatives used before.

Beyond social bookmarking, the concept of social annotation is gaining some traction, allowing users to share annotations made to sections of a bookmarked site. The most promising social annotation tool I found is Diigo, and I will cover it as soon as I get an invitation to join the early adopter group. A very detailed review has been provided by Brian Benzinger on Solution Watch. Finally, I am looking at Simpy, which is the first to offer a REST API, opening the door to some exciting integration projects.