With Elfster, using pen & paper to exchange Secret Santa names is now a thing of the past.

Using it is as easy as 1-2-3 …

1) Create a Secret Santa group
2) Invite the Friends, Family or Colleagues to join the group
3) Elfster will then pick and choose names at random, sending everyone their assigned Secret Santa

Creating a Secret Santa group allows you to specify a deadline when everyone needs to sign up and offers reminder services to those who have yet to accept the invite (see pic below). There is also an integrated facebook invitation option.

Once the group is created, a main page displays all your information and those invited.

When getting the invite, the person has the option to accept or decline the invitation. Once accepted, he will be given an individual page with the options to include his wishlist items. People who accept invitations become “Santas” with a Santa cap icon by their name. Those who decline are labeled “Scrooges” getting a lump of coal by theirs. Funny!

The wishlist area allows you to add a “wish list” and a “do not want wishlist”. That saves you from getting unwanted items or items you already have.

The beauty about Elfster is that you are not limited to creating one exchange, multiple exchanges can be made with the ability to interchange/ share contact information. Other features include search options (from Amazon) for that particular item you want and a random browse option for those who don’t know what they want.

Online equivalents include SecretSanta.com, amgoinginvisible.com, TopsecretSanta.com and Drawnames.com - none of which matches up to the features included here.

When it comes to fun, organizing and simplifying an exchange, you shouldn’t look any further than Elfster. Using this tool will definitely save time and better yet, the dread of pestering people to hand in their wish list for the exchange. It’s a pity I found out about this so late… nevertheless, I look forward to using it with the family next year.

Wantz.it is a simple app yet mighty useful. It’s a tool that makes the creation of wish lists easy and fun - living online proof that less is always more.

The idea comes from the fact that everyone needs a wish list, but there isn’t a simple way to create and compile the links from different websites into a single list. Amazon has a good wish list capability, so does Thinkgeek but those sites only cater to their own products. No one has actually thought of creating something to easily combine all of it together — until now that is. Wantz.it takes the concept of combined wish lists and brings it to another level, piggy backing off Del.icio.us.

You’ll need a Del.icio.us account first before signing up with Wantz.it. From then on, when you are saving a link to Del.icio.us, tag it with the word “dowant”.

Your item will then automatically appear in a personalized page that’s assigned to you when you first signed up. Take a look at my wish list page here.

Here’s another good feature, someone who is potentially going to buy the item on your list can “reserve” it. That essentially marks the item on the list as a purchased item (to avoid anyone else trying to buy it). In order to “reserve” that item, Wantz.it will prompt the user with a personalized question about the wish list owner.

I love the simplicity and the fact that I already use Del.icio.us for all my bookmarking needs is a plus. Being able to put all that I want in one place is a good thing as it could be distributed and shared real easily.

So the next time J or my relatives asks me to give them a wish list, I’ll just point them to this site… no second guessing what to buy me and I can sneak in the occasional “hey, if you don’t know what to get for me, here’s my wishlist”.

The only negative - it only works with Del.icio.us. I think more people will use it if it had the capability to *read* from other social bookmarking sites as well.

Wantz.it is created by Christian Verschaeren. It’s still in the beta development stage (isn’t everything nowadays) with Facebook apps and blog widgets in the works.

I use Del.icio.us extensively to bookmark all my sites so that I can access it anywhere. Realized lately that I have not been using it efficiently at all. I found this out the hard way when I recently wanted to search for a bookmark (I knew I saved) but couldn’t find it — a classic sign that I was not using it properly. When you are spending more than 2-3 minutes trying to search for a bookmark and you can’t find it, there is definitely a problem.

Looking at the way I use delicious, I found that

1) I was under tagging i.e. not placing tags on some of the links I saved

2) I was over tagging i.e. placing too many tags on links without any regard to whether there was a previous tag that it could be categorized under

Contrary to many beliefs, I think placing too many tags on a link can hinder you as it creates more clutter and makes it harder to categorize. My reasoning is, I’d rather have 50 detailed specific tags rather than 1000 that I have to sift through.

3) I was not classifying the tags properly i.e. tags should have been more detailed and precise than general

4) I was not categorizing my tags and not taking advantage of the “bundle tags” option (found in the “settings” area when logged in)

5) there were a lot of repetitious and misspelled tags that could be deleted or combined with another tag e.g. “web services”, “service”, “services”, “managment”, “engineerng”

Hindsight is always 20/20 and I could have saved myself a lot of clutter and disorganization if I meticulously adhered to some tagging rules instead of *tagging blindly*.

So the result of my past actions? 630 links and bookmarks that are improperly categorized and tagged. When I wanted to search for something, the whole bookmarking system worked against me than for me.

In addition to retagging links, I have decided to utilize the “bundle tag” option too and created main categories i.e. as a high level tag that governs all mini tags. Also came up with a rule of thumb that when tagging something — it should not have more than 2-3 tags.

As an example, I’ve created a main category (or tag bundle) called “business” and changed all tagged links to reflect a more detailed subcategory header like “web designers”, “advertising”, “marketing”, “printers”, “voip”. I am trying to stray away from tagging a link with multiple *minor* related tags as one can certainly go overboard with tagging a link.

Therefore, for a link like Jooce, I’ll tag it as “ajax”, “utilities” and “tools”, bundle it under “Web2″ and resist adding tags like “os”, “desktop”, “socialnetworking”, “social_networking”, “collaboration” etc. although it is related.

So instead of looking like this (with unbundled tags) …

… I intend to make it look like this, with main headers (bundled tags) which govern the sub/ mini tags.

My main objective is to make Del.icio.us work for me and to be able to find links/ bookmarks faster (instead of digging through a barrage of links). That should be what tags/ tagging is all about — somehow I have lost that along the way.

This reorganization will probably be a constant work in progress but when it is all done, I’ll be able to use Del.icio.us to its full potential.

I’m sure the way I did it is one of the many different ways you can organize tags.

How do you organize your Del.icio.us tags?