Are you still struggling to bookmark sites and articles for later reference? I’ve tried several bookmarking services and like different things about each. They usually allow archiving, categorizing in some way, and sharing in social networks.
Here’s a quick rundown of 4.5 of them.
1. Delicious – A first mover and once the darling of bookmarking sites (anyone remember delicio.us?), Delicious let you store links to pages and sites using their handy bookmarklet that you could then tag with keywords to help you find them later on a search.
After some ownership woes (Yahoo bought them, dumped them, then they were acquired by AVOS Systems), they’ve rebounded with the help of a very loyal user base and some new features including “Stacks” which let you categorize your bookmarks and view them in a magazine-style format which seems to mirror Scoop.it. (View my Delicious profile.)
2. Scoop.it - One of the early “curation” sites, Scoop.it lets you “bookmark” articles and posts under Topics, then presents them in a magazine-style format.
You can manage as many Topics as you’d like and use the Scoop.it bookmarklet to easily save content to each topic, usually with an image and description, both of which you can modify before posting. Scoop.it also feeds you articles and posts from a variety of news and content sources that you can choose to add to your Topics, i.e. curate. (View my Scoop.it profile)
3. Pearltrees – In a word: Elegant. I have yet to find another web-based service that moves and reacts like Pearltress while still being useful. Each post, article or page is a “pearl” and the “pearler” is the Pearltrees bookmarklet.
You can move your pearls around, drag and drop, nest, expand, and the service also “intervenes” to better organize and present your pearls (you can revert to your original structure at any time). If you are extremely visual, this is the site for you, but it does take some getting used to and some diligence to stay organized. (View my Pearltree profile.)
4. Evernote – Evernote is less about sharing (although you can still share from it) and more about capturing, storing and finding later. People rave about Evernote which lets you save text, image and audio notes. But like any archiving tool, it is only as good as you are meaning if you use it consistently and keep things organized, it is amazing. Evernote’s search is pretty powerful, and I’m still blown away by how the service recognizes text within images which is helpful when you photograph a business card, sign or whiteboard. I am still barely scratching the surface of Evernote but it offers more ways to “bookmark” than the others and even recommends additional tools to enhance the Evernote experience.
4.5 Pinboard – Functional and popular amongst self-proclaimed geeks, this service charges a one-time fee of $9.63 and lets you organize and cache pages on the Web. I have been meaning to try it but haven’t yet. Still, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it because it gets great reviews and is another viable option for bookmarking.
So many tools, so little time… I will get around to trying it sometime. And who knows…it might change my bookmarking habits forever! Remember: even if you find the best tool for bookmarking, you still have to make it a habit.
How do you bookmark the pages and sites you find and manage those bookmarks?
