Want to plunge into a field? Here's how to figure out who the early adopters are and what you should be reading in order to get on the bleeding edge. <b>What are people paying attention to?</b> del.icio.us tells you what's the latest and greatest. Find out which tags match your interests and subscribe to them. <b>_Who_ are people paying attention to?</b> Click on the "... and 1487 other people" in del.icio.us link descriptions and you'll get a list of all the people who bookmarked something. Take a look at the people who first picked it up and you'll get a good idea of who to watch. Even better: use CollaborativeRank to automatically find the 'experts' on a certain tag: people who link to helpful/timely URLs early. For example, <nop>CollaborativeRank lists the following experts on "philippines": 1. eclair, 2. eastwestinvest, 3. MrShark, 4. alxklo, 5. schee. Check out their bookmarks and inboxes!

Keep an eye out for people who are cited again and again. For example, productivity posts by Steve Pavlina and Merlin Mann often ripple through the blogosphere as they get quoted and commented on. Also look for people who filter far more information and repost significant items. Add them to your newsfeed in order to get a news digest of all the other sites out there!

<b>How do _they_ get their news?</b> You've found your experts. How do they get _their_ news? Check their del.icio.us inboxes. If you can find their websites or e-mail addresses, send them a note asking how they get their news. Then hook into those sources, if you can. Keep going until you hit the people making the news in the first place! =)

That's how you can find the bleeding edge using del.cio.us.

Next in Networking for Geeks: How to Write Fan Mail. ;)

Breathing has been sub-optimal these past few days. It seems I run out of breath so quickly, and when I do breathe in, I don't get the feeling that I'm breathing all I can. When I try to breathe deeply enough, I get a little faint. I don't smoke. I don't slouch. I walk a lot, although I'm going to increase my amount of exercise soon. I need to get to the bottom of this, as it's not the first time it's happened...