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It's called "tagging," and it's an increasingly popular way to help people remember, categorize and organize Web sites.

Most of us bookmark Web sites we want to visit again, but they're easy to lose when switching computers or browsers. And it's not always easy to remember how we arrived at sites using search engines. Tagging allows users to slap a category on a Web site (say "Iraq" or "baseball"), store the tages and share those sites with others. The most popular way to tag information is to use a service called del.icio.us. The popular photo-sharing site Flickr uses tags to organize images.

Clay Shirky calls tagging the most important new Internet technology to emerge in the last year. Shirky, an adjunct professor at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, says tagging is emerging as a flexible and refined way to organize information.

Jon's daily tech news links:

Reuters: AOL to offer Net phone service

Wired News: fixed gear bikes an urban fixture

Sploid: A tabloid-style blog compendium

New York Times: Printing documents on the road

New York Times: New Panasonic batteries may squish Energizer Bunny