007 Web Tools

I have long advocated using more than one browser at a time and I will frequently have both IE7 and Firefox open, sometime with multiple windows and always with multiple tabs. But it does play havoc with my bookmarks (called Favorites in Internet Explorer). Here are some tips and suggestions for mastering bookmarks and for clipping elements from webpages you find interesting.

Creating and organizing bookmarks
Most browsers provide tools for creating folders, and for moving and renaming bookmarks. It’s a good habit to frequently clear out old bookmarks and rename ones that no longer make any sense to you.

Sharing bookmarks between browsers
IE, Firefox and Safari all have options for either importing or exporting bookmarks (or both) among themselves or to an external file. It might help the clutter to save all your bookmarks to an external file — name it Bookmarks 2007 — and then delete all but the most essential reminders from your current list. When you need to go back and locate a URL from 2007, simply open that file from the browser using the Open File… option.

(Mac OS X only) AllBookmarks adds a new item to your Mac OS X menu bar giving you quick access to all your bookmarks. All your Safari, Firefox and Flock bookmarks are shown and can be selected.

Synchronizing bookmarks on several computers (Firefox)
The Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer automatically synchronizes your bookmarks between two or more computers running Firefox. It also lets you access your bookmarks from any computer anytime via my.foxmarks.com. An easy-to-use wizard guides you through the quick startup process. Then Foxmarks works silently in the background to keep your bookmarks up-to-date on all your computers. Simple. Solid. Free. And ready to use.

Access your bookmarks from any computer online
Google Bookmarks is an online service that lets you save your favorite sites and attach labels and annotations. Unlike the bookmark feature from your browser, bookmarks are stored securely online, so they are accessible even if you’re using other computers. The most important features that set Google Bookmark apart from other services is that all your bookmarks are private (nobody else can see them) and fully searchable. You are no longer restricted to the title of the page, the description and the URL - you can search the entire page. A similar service is the new version of Yahoo Bookmarks.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website — the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders. You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved — which is made easy with tags.

Clipping and sharing highlights from a page
Clipmarks lets you clip specific pieces of web pages, then share what you clip with your friends on Facebook, MySpace or anywhere else. Unlike bookmarks that let you share a link to an entire page, the free clip button lets you capture and share the highlights from the page. Clips can also be saved privately, emailed or printed.

With Google Notebook, you can browse, clip, and organize information from across the web in a single online location that’s accessible from any computer. Planning a course? Researching a lecture? Just add clippings to your notebook. You won’t ever have to leave your browser window. You can also quickly clip Google search results by clicking on the Note this link at the bottom of any search result.

Rick and I are sharing a Google Notebook to experiment with its features. Feel free to join us. Just comment to this blog or contact either one of us. Try out some of the other tools descried above and let us know what you think.

Nary a week goes by that I don’t find a new Google trick to make my life easier. So many that I began bookmarking numerous sites that have sprung up singing it’s praises and deciphering esoteric little features heretofore unhyped. I will list several such sites near the end of this post but I wanted to take a few characters to point out some of my favorite tips.

To search for exact phrases, place quotation marks around the text string, e.g. “Illinois Weslseyan”

To include synonyms use a ~ (without a space) before the term e.g. Google ~tips

Notice that your Google results highlight not only Google tips, but also Google Tutorial, Google Secrets, Google Help, Google Guide, Google Advice, etc.

Another helpful tool hidden within Google Labs called Google Sets will help predict terms from a list of similar terms. You type in Moe, Larry and Curly and Google Sets expand the list to Curly Joe, Shemp and several items that may not even make sense to you. Of course, you could have looked up the Three Stooges in Wikipedia and arrived at the same place. Try it out a few times and let me know what you think.

If you’re looking specifically for a PDF file use the advanced search feature and designate PDF as the file format. You can use the language tools to specify searches on pages written in other language and Google will translate the page for you (more or less.)

In the coming weeks we will dissect the Google results page and show you how customize the results and add features to make it easier to organize and annotate to information that you find.

For revised and extended discussions of all the search options and features, peruse the following sites:

Google Tutors Google Search Manual and Google Guide

Google and the all the other also rans have made is quite a bit easier to find what we are looking for on the Internet. In a future post we will discuss some tips for enhancing your ability to use these great tools. Today I would like to point out some nice new tools for finding text on an individual web page. Most browsers provide a “Find in this page” or “Find on this page” function to search for text on a page and move to the next or previous occurrence of your keywords. The Google Toolbar (free download) offers a few additional tools that you might find helpful.

But first, let’s distinguish, for the purposes of this discussion, the difference between search text and find text:

Search text refer to the keywords you type into the Google Search box
Find text refer to the exact words you enter into the Find box

When the ‘Highlight” icon is enabled each word from your Google search text will be highlighted on the page (each word in a different highlight color.) When you enable ‘Word Find’, the toolbar will generate an individual button for each word in the search text and each click of the button will find the next occurrence of that word. If you are searching for a phrase, place quotation marks around the phrase, e.g. “Illinois Wesleyan”. Try it out and let me know what you think.

Click here for help with Google Toolbar features

When you want to find a word or series of words on a page, use the ‘Find on this page’ function to open a Find box. If you are using Firefox 2.0 or later (highly recommended) use the shortcut Ctrl-F to bring up the find box at the bottom of the screen just above the status bar. As soon as you begin typing Firefox will begin to locate words beginning with those letters and offer a next, previous, and highlight option for your current find text. If you’re still following this, you will realize that it is possible that both search text (from your Google Search) and find text (from the ‘Find on this page’ function) will be highlighted at the same time.

In a later post, we will discuss what to do with the text once you find it. Use the comment section of this blog to let me know what you do now…bookmark?…cut and paste into another document?

Note to Safari users:

Use the Edit> Find> Find command (Cmd-F) to open a Find banner at the top of the webpage. Use the arrow keys to move to the previous and next occurence of the find text. Click Done when you’re finished.