I have been wondering if there is a better way to do bookmarking. I do two types right now.

1. Chrome Bookmark Bar:
I use this for quick access to sites I use regularly like keyword tools, stock photo sites, forums like this one, etc. I have folders and subfolders and the bookmarks in a hierarchal structure.

2. Evernote:
I use the "clip to Evernote" tool on my computer and mobile devices to save articles to read later and to save web sites and other content into my personal knowledge database.

Years ago, I played with Stumbleupon and Digg, but they didn't seem as fast as just using the bookmarks toolbar.

But lately I am wondering if I am missing something by not using another system. I noticed Pearltrees mentioned in another thread and it looks intriguing, but I think it would be slower than what I am doing now although the visual aspect is appealing.

I know there are some benefits in social sharing and social discovery using some of the other bookmarking service but are these worth giving up the speed of just using the bookmark toolbar?

What bookmark tool do you all use and what made you choose it?

Thanks

Garland "Captain Time"

Bookmarking can mean many things. If you mean capturing web addresses I use two:
1. Linkstash; http://www.xrayz.co.uk/linkstash/ . This is my main storage program. The main reasons I like it are: 1) it finds bookmarks on the fly by just typing in the words or URL. Keywords, descriptions, whatever all work well. 2) Easy cleanup with the "dead link check" and duplicate check. There's more about it on the web site.
2. Roboform; I use its bookmarking primarily for temporary holding and transferring of sites between devices.

Steve

About six months ago I started using Linkman Pro - it is the fastest, most comprehensive bookmarking tool I have found.

http://www.outertech.com/en/bookmark-manager

Daly

I tiried Linkstash a number of years ago, but finally settled on Diigo. I have modest needs for bookmarking, but Diigo works for me, as it runs as an extension in Chrome at home, a bookmarklet in IE at work, and in the Safari toolbar on my iPad.

--Ken

Bookmarking is also a problem area for me. I use the bookmarks toolbar in Firefox and several Protopage tabs for my most frequently used bookmarks. Then I also have some less frequently used bookmarks in Firefox's bookmarks' menu.

I capture important web page content (which includes bookmarks) with Surfulater. I use the free version of Linkman to capture URLs that are not important but I need to revisit them (e.g. to do research for shopping and then going back to do the purchase).

I drag and drop project-specific links into ConnectedText topics. I also have some bookmarks in Instapaper on my iOS devices, but it never occurs to me to access those on my PC for some reason (out of sight, out of mind...).

It's a bit of a mess and I wouldn't mind a cross-platform system for consolidating all of the above (with the exception of Surfulater and CT stuff). I guess I'd need a good way of differentiating between different degrees of importance, and hide the less important stuff from view, but make it easy to call it up.

I use https://pinboard.in/ after I quit delicious. It's a fast social bookmarking tool without any ads or other stuff which could slow down the bookmarking process.
It's not for free but 10.19 USD is not very expensive for a one-time fee. The "author" of Pinboard is very active and go-getting with a quick response time, if there are any questions or problems (my experience).

Regards
Armin

Like Garland, I use mainly the Chrome bookmark bar and Evernote.

The main advantage of the Chrome bar is that it's extremely quick and easy to use -- and always visible. (And of course it syncs very smoothly across several computers and devices.)

In Evernote, on the other hand, I can annotate and tag the bookmarks to my heart's content.

So my rule of thumb is this: if I think I will use a bookmark fairly often, I record it in Chrome; if I want to keep it for just occasional reference purposes, I put it in Evernote.

I confess that I also have a ton of old bookmarks in the Chrome "Other bookmarks" folder, but that now strikes me as an uneasy compromise. I have to dig around quite a bit to find something there. One of these days, when I find time, I will try to shift the "Other bookmarks" into Evernote, where they really belong.

Bill

Like Steve, I use Linkstash as my main 'classic' bookmarker. It is light, fast and browser-agnostic. The latter is particularly important for me as over the years my main browser has been Opera, then Firefox, then Chrome, and I often switch between several during work sessions. Linkstash has always been their faithful companion and, as a result, my bookmarks represent one of my longest lasting databases within a single program. Linkstash will happily run even under Linux with Wine.

I've also delved into 'social' bookmarking, but I would say that this is different terrain altogether, for me at least: here the aim is not just to maintain for one's own use, but also to jointly rate, discuss, exchange, learn etc. As a result, the links I've shared represent a much filtered subset of my full database, in an effort to find common topics with others in the various communities.

WSP wrote:

Like Garland, I use mainly the Chrome bookmark bar and Evernote.

The main advantage of the Chrome bar is that it's extremely quick and
easy to use -- and always visible. (And of course it syncs very smoothly
across several computers and devices.)

In Evernote, on the other hand, I can annotate and tag the bookmarks to
my heart's content.

So my rule of thumb is this: if I think I will use a bookmark fairly
often, I record it in Chrome; if I want to keep it for just occasional
reference purposes, I put it in Evernote.

I confess that I also have a ton of old bookmarks in the Chrome "Other
bookmarks" folder, but that now strikes me as an uneasy compromise. I
have to dig around quite a bit to find something there. One of these
days, when I find time, I will try to shift the "Other bookmarks" into
Evernote, where they really belong.

Bill

Thanks Bill for this.

I did play with Linkman lite and relogged into my old Diigo account. But to me the Chrome bookmarks look faster to get to the pages than Linkman or Diigo because they are always there at the top of the browser. I guess I would need a more compelling reason or need to change to one of the others. From a straight access perspective, the Chrome bookmarks seem the most direct.

I can certainly clean up my Chrome bookmarks a bit to make them more useful.

I guess my bookmarking doesn't come close to my CRIMPing - I use Delicious.

Why not use a 2-pane PIM that can handle links? Then, no matter what browser you use, you can open the links in it. Also, the left pane acts as a table of contents and the FIND function acts as an index.

Linkstash is exactly that--a 2-pane outline optimised for organising links. For personal use I find it ideal. But I can also understand the social sharing approach for which PIMs are far from ideal.

I find it harder to justify reliance upon a specific browser from my point of view. For several years I found Firefox worked fine, but after a certain point it simply didn't--and then I was really glad I didn't have to migrate my bookmarks.

Yes, this is the way I've gone, too. But for me, there's no point in a bookmarking app that isn't cross-platform. Increasingly, I gravitate to three apps:

Notebooks (by Alfons Schmid), which runs on iOS, MacOS and Windows.
Seamless Dropbox connectivity. Outstanding reproduction of web pages (I use it as a much more efficient, multilingual version of Surfulater). Excellent search function, although a bit slow over very large collections like mine!

As Noted, which runs on iOS and as a Google Chrome extension
Very neat layout, easy setup, perfectly designed for relatively short notes. Good search function.

Priorities, which runs on iOS and as a web service
Outstandingly simple but clever task management app, ideal for collaboration, excellent for saving notes and URLs as well as complex projects and todos. I've used every task management app under the sun, and have finally returned - definitively - to Priorities.

Hi.

I never thought of Notebooks (iOS, Mac, Windows) as a bookmark manager. Do you really use it for that purpose? Or more as an Evernote replacement?

Thanks, Franz

If I think about it, I suppose I use it more as an Evernote replacement (including Evernote's function as a URL repository!). Notebooks preserves the look and feel of web pages better than any other cross-platform editor I've ever found, so it's a great place to save snippets. It also supports Markdown. The nice thing is, Notebooks data is all saved as separate folders and HTML documents, so it's easy to view or search without necessarily having Notebooks at all.

For quick 'n' easy bookmarking, I increasingly use As Noted, however. I can easily copy As Noted notes into Notebooks in any case, either on the desktop or on my iPad.

Thanks. So I have to take a look at the Windows version of Notebooks (once the project I'm robotting in is finished).

Franz

MadaboutDana wrote:

Priorities, which runs on iOS and as a web service
Outstandingly simple but clever task management app, ideal for
collaboration, excellent for saving notes and URLs as well as complex
projects and todos. I've used every task management app under the sun,
and have finally returned - definitively - to Priorities.

Bill,

Can you say any more about this app/web service? Is there something in particular that you like about it? I am assuming that it is stable and syncs well. Is it actively supported?

--Ken

Ken wrote:

Can you say any more about this app/web service? Is there something in
particular that you like about it? I am assuming that it is stable and
syncs well. Is it actively supported?

And (as I am sure you've already had direct contact with the developers) is there an Android version planned?

How well you know me, Alexander! Yes, I have been in touch with the developers, and no, they have no immediate plans for an Android version.

At first, I thought that was a killer - as you know, I use an Android mobile, and not having direct access to Priorities on Android was a bummer. But...

Priorities is regularly updated, and has been honed and refined until both the app and the web (browser) version are extremely fast and efficient. So it runs very well in my Galaxy Note's web browser - I keep a Chrome tab permanently open for my-priorities.com.

In any case, Priorities has an interesting trick up its sleeve - it automatically enters tasks into the iOS Calendar app. If (like me) you synchronise your iCloud Calendars with your Android mobile, this means Priorities tasks show up in your Calendar in any case.

The synchronisation is extremely efficient - I use the web browser version on my desktop, and as soon as I enter something it's updated and synchronised; I can look at it on my iPad a couple of seconds later.

Sharing 'Pages' (as the various groups/categories/folders are called in Priorities) is very easy indeed, especially with other users who have Priorities. My wife and fellow business director use the app now, and it's revolutionised our coordination!

It has three levels: the topmost level (pages), which contain projects which can be broken down into tasks. Projects are very flexible - they can be left as individual tasks in their own right, or you can enter any number of subtasks. Setting deadlines, alerts and so on is very easy; the app can be set up to enter default values (e.g. 'tomorrow' and '11.00 a.m.'). You can add lengthy notes to each task as well.

The huge strength of Priorities is its very simple prioritisation system. No more complicated 'Not urgent', 'Normal', 'Urgent' priority settings; no more complicated 'Today', 'Tomorrow', 'Next seven days' deadline settings. Priorities will automatically star a task (or an entire project, it's up to you) at a time you set: either on the day it's due, or at a set interval prior to its deadline. But you can also set stars yourself (meaning you don't HAVE to set deadlines etc.), whereupon the task/project will appear in your main priorities list in any case. It's very simple, but also very flexible.

I've played with all kinds of systems (ToDo Pro, 2Do, Pocket Informant Pro, SlickTasks, Toodledo, Todoist, Remember the Milk and many more I can't even remember). Many of them have multiplatform clients - which is great. But they're all, ultimately, quite complex to use, with lots of settings to fiddle about with (always a deadly temptation for a CRIMPer like myself). You can easily get caught up in the process of creating the 'Ultimate GTD' system (or whatever), and find yourself neglecting your tasks - a bit silly!

If you want to know more about Priorities, you can find details on the Hand Carved Code website: http://handcarvedcode.com/apps/priorities/

Or in the Apple Apps Store: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/priorities/id417600877?mt=8

The app itself is very cheap (GBP 1.99, not sure what that is in USD, but I suppose it's about USD 3.00 or 3.50). Best of all, that includes the web sync account! To date, no additional subscription required!

The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a way to create a web account without the iOS app http://handcarvedcode.com/support/priorities/ so I can't even test it...

True - but come on, a couple of quid? To test it out? You know you want to!

You should know me better than that! of course a couple of quid would never stop a CRIMPer worth their name. it's just that I don't own an iOS device. And that's where I draw the line. ..

Quite right - sorry. But hey, you can get a nice little 4th generation iPod for a mere £120 on Amazon nowadays; that could kick off a whole new world of iOS CRIMPing...

Another nice feature of Priorities (aside from the free synchronisation) is the fact that you can e-mail yourself tasks. This is another factor that makes up for inadequacies in the Android interface. The app sets up a separate page as an Inbox, and anything you e-mail to my-priorities.com appears in the Inbox. No need to use clever structures or fields - the subject line of your e-mail is used as the title of the new Task/Project, and the body of the e-mail appears in the notes. You can send large e-mails this way, although attachments are not supported (in fact, my experiments suggest they'll cause the e-mail to fail).

MadaboutDana wrote:

you can get a nice little 4th generation
iPod for a mere £120 on Amazon nowadays

I also swear by the 4th gen. iPod. It's got the best form factor of any handheld device I've seen for basic productivity stuff like to-dos, calendar, email, passwords, calculator, note-taking, outlining etc.

Obviously if you need a phone or want to read ebooks and browse a lot, than something bigger would be more suitable. But it fits perfectly in the hand and the shirt front pocket, and people often ask me in lifts where I got such a skinny phone from :)