Remember the first time you discovered the Web? Whether it was eight years ago or eight months ago, you are likely to have spent a lot of time in the first few weeks surfing around, discovering new sites, adding them to your bookmarks (on Netscape) or favorites (on Explorer). Perhaps you told yourself you would surf every day, finding new, fun and useful sites. But it’s unlikely you were able to keep on surfing. Real life would have stepped in, and you were left with dozens (hundreds?) of bookmarks in an unending, unorganized list. Most of those sites were perhaps never visited a second or third time.
So one of my main tips from my “Smarter Surfing: Better Use of your Web Time” workshops is to blow up your bookmarks. What I mean is redo your bookmarks and rearrange them so that the links you find most useful will be easier to, well, use.
You can do that in Explorer by selecting “Favorites” in the top menu bar, then choosing “Organize Favorites.” In Netscape, select “Bookmark” and then choose “Manage Bookmarks.” You can then arrange folders by topics, beats, etc. (a good explanation is available from TechTV).
Another tip is to drag each link you use often to the “links bar” in Explorer, so that you can access it more easily. To get to the links bar, go to “View” in the top menu bar, then “Toolbars,” then “links.”
There are more sophisticated solutions, especially for those who want to access the same bookmarks on several different computers. For example, journalists who use a set of bookmarks at the office, might want to be able to access them from home as well. There are several ways to have bookmarks that travel with you.
USING YOUR POYNTER.ORG PERSONAL PAGE: If you have set up your free personal page, you can use it to build a traveling bookmarks page (to see mine or Poynter Online editor Bill Mitchell’s, scroll down to “My Favorite Links”). If you haven’t signed up for your free page yet, this is another reason to do so.
ONLINE BOOKMARK SERVICES: Use a free online bookmark service, which allows you to create an account and upload bookmarks and then update and access them from any Web browser. Many of these will let you even share a “public folder” with others. One way to use this: a business editor in a newsroom, might create a “public folder” with constantly updated bookmarks for her reporters. If you don’t wish to share you bookmarks, of course, you can password-protect your list. Examples of such services: ikeepbookmarks.com, MyBookmarks.com, savethis.com, Yahoo! Bookmarks (great if you already have a Yahoo! account). Backflip.com is particularly good for those who have to visit a series of sites every morning. You can “tour” the sites with Backflip.
AN ONLINE NOTE TAKER: Services that allow you to share information with others, such as Microsoft Outlook and OnlineHomeBase.com can allow you to keep bookmarks online. In my Columbia classes, my students and I share bookmarks using OnlineHomeBase (see my January WebTip).
A PERSONAL WEB SITE: If you have set up a personal site online — either through a service like Homestead or Yahoo or through a so-called vanity domain name (see my March WebTip) — you can set up a page on which you constantly access your links.
Want to share a site you find useful? Please e-mail a SHORT tip, including your name, affiliation, city, and phone number (for verification only) to poynter@sree.net.
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Workshops, panels, seminars at SAJA’s annual convention in Manhattan, June 20-22. You don’t have to be South Asian to attend!
