Posts Tagged With: bookmarks
· February 14, 2008 at 6:47 am · Personal, Resources
A few weeks back on Firefox Facts I shared with all my technique for saving links to read later. The general idea is to create a “temp” folder in my browser - keep it on my bookmarks bar and then drag URLs into it as I need to. I think I have found a system that beats that hands down.
I have been using Instapaper for the past few days and I love it. No goofy Web 2.0 useless and mind-numbing features I don’t want or need. I just hit one bookmarklet that says, “read later” and it is saved for me. Later on when I have time to read just login to Instapaper.com and you are good to go from anywhere.
If you have any questions out the service, the FAQ is pretty in depth and also I want to toss a big thanks to the creator too.
· December 31, 2007 at 6:09 am · Software Help
Tired of not having your bookmarks when you move to a new machine, or go visit your friends, relatives of people you don’t really like but they have a nice PC that you love to play with? Wouldn’t it be nice to fit all your bookmarks on a USB thumb drive so that you could take them with you no matter where you go?
TrayURL is a tiny program that will get that job done for you.
Totally portable, this application is simple to master and will not take long to learn at all. Here are some of the features of TrayURL I am sure you will love:
- 100% “Portable”. Does not depend on any system files (ie. DLLs, OCXs, etc) nor does it reply on the system registry. Everything is in the program directory.
- Compatible with Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/NT/2K/XP/Vista.
- Runs with most browsers and your USB flash drive.
- Runs from the system tray for convenient access.
- Support for web site logins and passwords with handy “Paster” utility.
- Import and export utilities.
- Multi-user support with multiple configuration files.
- Up to 50 categories.
- Up to 80 bookmarks per category.
On the negative side, some people have complained about not having an import option which does kind of suck. I would use this more as a way to carry around important bookmarks I need to have on hand - and not every bookmark from my browser. If you got a new thumb drive for Christmas and your looking for something to use it for, this program should be a must have.
Carry TrayURL around like you would your wallet or car keys, and never be without your favorite bookmarks.
· November 7, 2007 at 9:00 am · Web Development, Web Hosting
There is another digg clone from the hosting world to look at today. HostingBookmarks.com is the first though to focus more towards hosting news and help rather than hosting deals.
I’d like to see them ditch the “this was made with Pligg” stuff - kind of makes a bad first impression. Funny enough though, when you register and login it goes away from public view so maybe it is something they are just not seeing. To be a success it looks like this web site just needs more members.
Submitting a link couldn’t be easier - so that is one positive. Here is an example link I submitted for testing purposes:
http://www.hostingbookmarks.com/WebHostingHelp/The_Web_Hosting_Show/
Overall with a little bigger of a user base and a few tweaks to the interface here and there, Hosting Bookmarks could be an awesome service and tools for finding out what is going on inside the hosting world.
So with Hosting Bookmarks in the mix, that makes three social hosting tools out there to date:
What will be next? I am still sort of surprised that none of the bigger hosting players have jumped into this mix - but then again it is still early in the game.
· August 31, 2007 at 9:04 am · Writing Advice
It seems like these days when I go check out my feed reader to do some reading from my favorite news sources and blogs - there are a lot of posts you can spot that were written just for the sake of trying to bait the social bookmarking and ranking sites for popularity’s sake.
I am not sure this is the best writing practice. Why? Well after you get success with it once, you try it again and again. After a while, all you have left are a lot of wasted hours that you could have spent doing something more creative.
Sure it seems like a lot of these links that you see on digg, delicious, and others seem to come with a pre-packaged and sure fire way to make it to the top. There is a lot to be said for creativity as well though. Just because you wrote one “top 50 Firefox extensions you can use under water” post does not mean that every top 50 post you write will be just as popular.
You also need to worry about offending your current audience as well. New readers are grand, but if you can’t keep them they might start to look elsewhere. Take for example Mashable.com.
I used to really love reading Pete’s web site but the last few weeks it has been nothing but top ten, twenty and thirty lists. I am sure he’s gotten a lot of incoming links from the social bookmarking places but as a reader - I am bored, and I am sure I am not alone.
So don’t write to become popular - become popular because of what you write.
· August 8, 2007 at 7:04 am · Online Tools
If I ever lost my bookmarks I would be totally lost.
From projects to cool sites to those darn dancing badgers - I need my bookmarks to survive. With that in mind, I have been backing up my bookmarks early and often using these steps and I thought I would share them with you. When it is all said and done you too will be able to use del.icio.us to backup your bookmarks.
There are only two steps you have to take to backup your bookmarks from your browser to Del.icio.us:
Step One: Export from Browser - The first thing you need to do is export your bookmarks from your browser. I use Firefox, so we will stick with that for now. In the Firefox menu bar click on “Bookmarks” and then “Manage Bookmarks” to pull up your bookmark manager.
Once inside of there, go to “File” then “Export…” and save the “bookmarks.html” to your desktop.
Step Two: Upload to the Web - Login to the del.icio.us web site and then click on the “Settings” link at the top. Under the “Bookmarks” section click on the link for “import/upload”. The rest of the steps from here are easy to follow. Read the instructions and upload your “bookmark.html” file you backed up earlier.
As a tag, I usually use “bookmarkbackup” but you are free to use whatever you wish. Just make sure it is unique so you don’t get them mixed up with your other saved items if you use del.icio.us for multiple reasons.
There you have it. Now your bookmarks should be saved and you don’t need to worry - just in case the worst might happen to your browser, computer and/or house. Del.icio.us to the rescue again!
· May 2, 2007 at 8:00 am · Online Tools
For some unknown reason, Google Browser Sync decided to go wacky on me yesterday. Kept getting disconnected and 502 error codes. The browser sync had never done me wrong before - but I can’t afford not to be connected between my machines. So I set out for a long search to try to find an alternative and a replacement.
Meet the contenders…
Foxmarks - There is no tool out there that does everything GBS does, but the main thing I need is bookmark syncing. Foxmarks did do the work - only problem was it was confusing to setup. I wasn’t sure if I was uploading or downloading, syncing or unsyncing. I’m sure if I spent time with it - it might have made sense, but if I can’t figure it out in five minutes - I’m probably not going to use it.
Online Bookmark Manager - This is another Firefox extension solution with a free hosted space. I would say if folks like the idea behind Foxmarks but want a different route to go, OBM is worth a shot. Still didn’t do what I needed it to do though.
Bookmarks Synchronizer - This is a Firefox extension that let you connect to an FTP/WebDAV server and synchronize your bookmarks that are stored in an XML file. Nice, but still did not cut the cake for me. This is yet another solution like Foxmarks and OBM - but no free hosting for the backups.
If not these, who did you go with for bookmark syncing?
All of these were good solutions, but I decided to give the del.icio.us Bookmarks extension a shot. I moved all my PC bookmarks over to del.icio.us and I have to say I like it thus far.
All the “secret” bookmarks I have set to hide from the public - and it was easy enough to setup on both my desktop PC and my notebook computer. This extension totally replaces your standard bookmarking and replaces it with del.icio.us.
The whole thing is very fast as well - they much cache some of the results, because I can hardly even notice this is “integrated with the Web” at all.
