22. Bookmark manager organizes
faves
By Mark Alberstat
If you enjoy cruising around the net, jumping from one spot to another
never sure of what you might come across next, you probably have a string
of bookmarks longer than the list of patches for Windows XP.
I bookmark any page that I think may be of interest and that I might want
to go back to sometime later. The list tucked under my Favorites
directory has more than 50 sites and it grows weekly. The bookmark
management tools built into Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape
Navigator are ok but there are some third-party applications that do an
even better job.
Bookmark management tools allow you to annotate your bookmarks, search
them by keywords or phrases, categorize them and easily add news ones.
These tools can be broken down into two basic categories. The first are
programs that you load on your machine and are add-ons to your web
browser, or are programs that you use to find, sort and categorize your
hundreds of bookmarks. The second type are online managers. These are
sites, which you can store you bookmarks at and go to from any computer on
the net, thus making your collection of bookmarks extremely portable.
One of the more popular shareware pieces in this category is Linkman.
With this software, you can store thousands of URLs in its searchable
database. You view and manage the bookmarks in an easy-to-use interface,
and can easily import and export your list of favourite sites from most
browsers. This software can be downloaded at most shareware sites and is
free and open to use for 30 days. After that you either ante up $30.00
(US) or the save and export commands are disabled, making further use of
the software pretty much useless if you want to add new URLs to your
database. This software claims to work on all versions of Windows; I
tested it on a Windows 2000 machine and it worked just fine.
For Mac OS X users there is a powerful program called URL Manager 2002.
This program lets you store all of your bookmarks from virtually any Mac
browser but also includes Explorer, Netscape and Opera as importable
source formats. Like Linkman. URL Manager stores your links in its own
database. With this you can browse, print reports, create custom queries,
web pages, or even ASCII files.
If neither of these programs suit your needs, there are lots more out
there for downloading, and most of them allow some free-use time period.
The online-side of bookmark managers has grown over the past two years,
much like the online image sharing sites, which have a few similar
features.
With most of the bookmark sites, you create an account the first time on
the site. The site's scripts may read your current browser's bookmark
file or you create a series of bookmarks on your own and these are then
stored there. Next time you logon to the site, your bookmarks are
available to you, no matter where you are in the world. Some of the more
sophisticated sites, like BaBoo (which hosts The Mousepad's
public bookmarks),
allow you to make your bookmarks public and you may,
therefore, share them with a friend, your family or the world.
http://murl.com/splash -
bookmarking website
http://www.url-manager.com -
bookmarking software
http://www.baboo.com - bookmarking
website
http://www.lights.com/pickalink/bookmarks
- a round-up page of bookmark software
http://www.bookmarksplus.com -
a pay-for bookmarking website
http://www.net-sharing.com/bookmark/
- bookmarking software
http://www.urlorg.com/ -
bookmarking software
The Mousepad runs every two weeks. It's a service of Chebucto Community
Net, a community-owned Internet provider. If you have a question about
computing, email mousepad@chebucto.ns.ca. If we use your question in
a column, we'll send you a free mousepad.
Originally published 23 November 2003
