Tips for smart web surfing

Thanks for the great suggestions regarding non-machine-specific bookmarks. I often find that I come across interesting links at work, but don't have the time to pursue them further until I get home.

To the OP: if you're a hard-core, hopeless Web-surfing junkie (not that I can identify with that), there's a neat little addon for Firefox called Webolodeon, which reminds you every five minutes that you really should be getting some work done. Merlin Mann has the details at this 43folders.com post.

Good luck!
 
Bookmarks

If I get online at work and come across sites I would like to explore, I start an email to my home address, then just copy links into that email. I can then do my surfing on my own time as I have the opportunity. I have also created shortcuts to sites on the desktop. If the desktop (at work or home) starts to get too cluttered, I either delete some of the shortcuts or take a few minutes to determine whether or not that site is really worth the time to do an in-depth exploration.

My bookmark folder at home is quite large, with a number of categories. I rename sites in my bookmarks so they will have meaning to me. Some of my categories have to do with my profession, home and garden sites, travel, photography, online classes, retirement issues (yes, I'm thinking about it), favorite blogs, GTD related sites, for example.

I periodically go through my bookmarks, as some sites have vanished and some no longer interest me. It is quite delightful to rediscover a great site that I haven't visited in a while.

Carolyn
 
TesTeq said:
I have html file on my desktop. Using simple text editor I put links to the interesting sites there and can carry it with me on the USB flash drive.
Click to expand...
Could use the same file and Palm Desktop's file link capability. That way you'll have an up-to-date bookmark file on your Palm.
 
re:

I utilize Maxthon (a tabbed browser) and when looking at search results, just drag a link I'm interested in with my mouse (which opens up a new tab window). I can then look at the new link at my leisure while I continue going down the list of search results. In this way my search results stay the same and i don't have to back click to get back it.
Also, have started using Clusty.com which is a tabbed search engine which can search multiple portal sites from one screen. Quite handy.
When doing searches, try to envision what your material looks like on a web page as a combination of words together not just the word itself.
For sites that I find essential, I keep them in a tabbed PIM, organized alphabetically by topic. Works lot better than bookmarks ever did.
 
Tips for smart web surfing

I will try this:

ListMixer is an easy way to track web pages that momentarily hold your interest. Think of ListMixer as a waiting room for bookmarks before they enter your permanent collection. If you decide a page in your Mix is worth keeping for good, we make it easy to add it to your favorite social bookmarking service — just hover your pointer over a link in your Mix, as shown here. To create and use your ListMixer account, all you need to do is add this bookmarklet to your browser bookmarks.
http://listmixer.com/

...

The best tool for me is the Firefox Extension Scrapbook.

ScrapBook is a Firefox extension, which helps you to save Web pages and manage the collection. Key features are lightness, speed, accuracy and multi-language support.
* Save snippet of Web page (even only a word or a number)
* Save Web page
* Save Web site (In-depth Capture)
* Organize the collection in the same way as Bookmarks
(or as a tree like Explorer)
* Highlighter, Eraser and various page editing features
(this is what I value most)
* Full text search and quick filtering search
* Text edit feature resembling Opera's Notes
It works like many other software, but this one is free and less than 300KB.
http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook/

I use it in many ways, all the time.
It is very simple yet so powerfull.

...
As for the multiple tabs, I try my best to have no more than six open tabs . If I have more than six, I try to close them.

Silvia
 
When I run across a website that I may want to revisit I use a little program to clip text from IE browser to document for later retrieval. I highlight some text, right-click and capture the text ,current date and url to the windows clipboard. I then append the clipping to my big searchable PIM file. example:

alsa
Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Illinois
Posts: 111

Tips for smart web surfing

I thought we could start a thread (maybe even a new thread -- I didn't find older threads like this) where we could share tips and experiences on how to be a smarter web surfer.
3/13/2006 -- Clipped From the web document : Forums - Tips for smart web surfing
http://www.davidco.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4102&page=1&pp=10

The opening paragraghs of most articles are very descriptive and rich with keywords to facilitate text searches at a later date.

Tom
 
Windows Notepad and file search facility.

Tom R said:
When I run across a website that I may want to revisit I use a little program to clip text from IE browser to document for later retrieval. I highlight some text, right-click and capture the text ,current date and url to the windows clipboard. I then append the clipping to my big searchable PIM file.
Click to expand...
You can do it using Windows Notepad - text format is readable on all platforms. You can find everything using operating system's file search facility.
 
silvia225 said:
I will try this:

ListMixer is an easy way to track web pages that momentarily hold your interest. Think of ListMixer as a waiting room for bookmarks before they enter your permanent collection. If you decide a page in your Mix is worth keeping for good, we make it easy to add it to your favorite social bookmarking service — just hover your pointer over a link in your Mix, as shown here. To create and use your ListMixer account, all you need to do is add this bookmarklet to your browser bookmarks.
http://listmixer.com/

...

The best tool for me is the Firefox Extension Scrapbook.

ScrapBook is a Firefox extension, which helps you to save Web pages and manage the collection. Key features are lightness, speed, accuracy and multi-language support.
* Save snippet of Web page (even only a word or a number)
* Save Web page
* Save Web site (In-depth Capture)
* Organize the collection in the same way as Bookmarks
(or as a tree like Explorer)
* Highlighter, Eraser and various page editing features
(this is what I value most)
* Full text search and quick filtering search
* Text edit feature resembling Opera's Notes
It works like many other software, but this one is free and less than 300KB.
http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook/

I use it in many ways, all the time.
It is very simple yet so powerfull.

...
As for the multiple tabs, I try my best to have no more than six open tabs . If I have more than six, I try to close them.

Silvia
Click to expand...

Thank you for the ListMaker suggestion. I have been trying it out in the last few hours, and so far I like it a lot.

My strategy in the last few months has been to simply leave all open tabs with something I want to read later using a software product called Saft for the Safari browser that saves all tabs each time you close and restart the browser. However convenient it might be, it takes a while for all tabs to load again every time I restart the browser. Plus, it's distracting. (I like a clean desk and a clean browser, especially at the start of each day).

So, this suggestion to use ListMaker is something I am willing to explore more. So far the results are only positive.
 
Opera lets you save all open tabs as a named session, then lets you choose what session to start when you bring it back up. So I can create a session full of articles on a given topic, and ignore it until I'm ready to return to the topic.

Katherine
 
why dont you guys just use deli.ici.ousousd or whatever the website is?
 
I keep an electronic "idea jar"

Here's what I do. Periodically (maybe too often) I check my streaming inboxes, primarily RSS feeds in Bloglines, and open interesting-looking ones in tabs (Firefox: middle-click on the link). I very quickly scan to decide if each is worth time. These generally get printed out ("Tree"TD) and put in my Read/Review folder. I then read them and mark them up to note ideas, actions, questions, future blog topics, etc.

The real issue then becomes - where do you put this? I use a plain text file plus WikiWord conventions to annotate them, a kind of semantic bookmark manager. There are other tools that do this as well, but I like text, linking/associations, and rapid capture (completion of WikiWords is a hard requirement for me).

The marked-up entries get reviewed opportunistically, usually via their tags. For example, if I have a client with questions about decision making, I can quickly find all relevant entries. Ditto when I need a topic for a blog post.

Hope this helps!

P.S. Two related posts: Pickle jars, text files, and creative idea capture and My Big-Arse Text File - a Poor Man's Wiki+Blog+PIM.
 
I check my RSS feeds every night (roughly), and if I see a useful article, will open it in a web browser tab. Once I'm done with all the RSS feeds, I'll close the RSS reader and read the articles in my web browser. If any of the articles are useful in the long-term, I'll print them out and put them in my tickler to re-read later.
 
Brent said:
I check my RSS feeds every night (roughly), and if I see a useful article, will open it in a web browser tab. Once I'm done with all the RSS feeds, I'll close the RSS reader and read the articles in my web browser. If any of the articles are useful in the long-term, I'll print them out and put them in my tickler to re-read later.
Click to expand...

Well, this is a good general principle, however, not everything is RSS-formatted on the internet, and some content would be hard to format this way.

So far, this listmixer extension is great (I am using it with Safari)
 
toread.cc

I have recently encountered http://toread.cc, which is a service for easily sending web pages to your email inbox via a button in the quick links bar of your browser.

The advantage of this approach is that a single inbox is used for both emails and web bookmarks. Also, if your email software is part of your trusted system, then you already should have some method of treating incoming reading material. The downside is that the inbox may become littered with too many bookmark emails.
 
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