Recently, I posted a blog entry briefly describing my management of data on the Web. Among other things this entry briefly described my experience with online bookmarking sevices.
First of all, I think term "bookmarking" is a little bit overloaded. Indeed, I bookmark only those sites and pages I use very often: Corporate Intranet site and some specific pages in it, query to the issue tracking system web forntend to see problem reports and change requests I am responsible for, couple of sites I tack with Firefox Live Bookmarks and several bookmarklets. I file all other URLs to Furl.
In my opinion, services like Furl and del.icio.us are not really for bookmarks. They keep what I call "Personal Web" or "Web history" - set of pages I liked enough to save just in case I will need to return to them later or to recommend to friends.
I tried several "bookmarking" services and created a comparison table for three most popular/featureful in my opinion.
| Features |
Furl.net |
Yahoo! My Search |
del.icio.us |
Filangy |
| Save content copy |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
| Multiple categories(tags) |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
| Search meta info |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Search content |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
| Private bookmarks |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
| Public bookmarks |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
| Possibility to get local copy |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
| "Those who filed this also filed..." |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
| Rate items |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
| Bookmarklets |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
| Firefox plugin |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
| Overall usability |
5 of 5 |
3 of 5 |
5 of 5 |
4 of 5 |
I chose Furl over the others because (in order of importance to me):
- It saves the content - many web pages may not exist or will be moved when you return to them after a year or so. There are also some online magazines and journals that give you an access to their fresh content but you have to pay to access an archive.
- It allows to file both private and public links. And I do need both under a single account. One catch is that you have to be careful to mark items as appropriate!
- Ability to search BOTH content and metainformation
- Ability to back up the whole thing to the local drive
- Multiple categories. Sometimes I add one special category named "TO READ" to mark items which I have not read yet. (Update: but that was before I found "Mark read" checkbox)
Posted in Software | Web frolov's blog | add new comment
Submitted by frolov on Thu, 2005-01-20 11:52.
