Too many links – too few hours
While I’m at the computer, many links come across my face – blogs, del.icio.us, emails, im’s, google’d ideas, etc. I now have several levels of bookmarking.
There is the primary, which is added to my actual browser toolbar in some categorized folder. This level is reserved for commonly used URLs: email, feed reader, company intranet, traffic, weather. Using FoxMarks syncs my browser bookmarks between the various computers I use.
The level right below this is my news reader. These links are sites that I’ve found myself coming back to, or finding a wealth of useful information the first time I happened across the site. These are usually geeky in nature, but sometimes belong to photographers, friends, authors, or just funny things.
The next level are my del.icio.us links, which are items I found interesting and may want to later look back on, or share with others. Surprisingly, I very rarely actually look back through my del.icio.us links, and often find myself creating a bookmark of a site only to find out I already had a bookmark – I think this has a name. Something like del’javu, the feeling that you’ve bookmarked this site already. These sites are articles, howto’s, interesting photo sets, etc. I have 1561 del.icio.us bookmarks.
After a del.icio.us link is the dark-area of bookmarking where links are quickly dropped on the “quick” access of my browser toolbar or in some Temp2 folder of huge number of these URLs. These links are found while browsing across sites. I haven’t yet gotten to consume or remember the information, and I don’t think it’s worth keeping forever, but I did want to read it at some point. I currently have 142 of these (eep!)
The last level of actual bookmarking is dropping a link to the desktop. This is a last-ditch spot where I put a link I want to immediately come back to, but I just have too many tabs open at the moment. Since I move between computers a lot, something left on the desktop for too long will be forgotten and probably deleted the next time I go on a binge of semi-obsessive-compulsive cleaning.
If you have any suggestions for better bookmarking, data storage/retrieval, I’m all for it. Keep in mind that I work on both Windows and Mac, and often move between computers – though I do have a primary desktop at home and laptop that I like to carry given the option.
Technorati Tags: advice, bookmarking, bookmarks, del.icio.us, firefox, foxmarks, help, browser
My name is
July 11th, 2006 at 7:46 am (#)
I also work on multiple OS. Do you use any bookmark synchronization tool? Such as Google’s or the other bookmark synchro tool for Firefox?
July 11th, 2006 at 10:33 pm (#)
If it’s just an article or a bit of random information that you might want to retrieve later, I just drop it in a text file. Lightweight and easy to search, I’ll copy multiple articles, dump them into a single file, and read 10-15 at a stretch. A bit analog, but it does the trick.
July 12th, 2006 at 7:03 am (#)
Alexandre: I use FoxMarks (http://foxcloud.com/) to sync my bookmarks – works well enough b/w Mac & PC
Will: Good suggestion. There are many neat utilities out there that are OS specific, if kept to a single computer. But I can probably put them up either on a private wiki page, or a text file that I email myself or something similar. Perhaps just a simple USB Keychain would do the trick too.
July 26th, 2006 at 6:41 pm (#)
Andrew, I have this problem as well and have been putting some thought twords a solution. Seems to be an ever increasing problem for me.
You stated:
“There are many neat utilities out there that are OS specific, if kept to a single computer.”
Curious what these “neat utilities” are. Also, since this post, have you come across any other solutions that have helped?