Organizing your links

There are billions and billions of links on the Internet.  How do you know to find what you need, then come back to it when you need it?  This is where bookmarks come into play. 

Using bookmarks

Bookmarks are used to record a link to a web site that you have previous visited so that you can come back to it later:

Bookmark

(v) To mark a document or a specific place in a document for later retrieval. Nearly all Web browsers support a book-marking feature that lets you save the address (URL) of a Web page so that you can easily re-visit the page at a later time. (src: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/b/bookmark.html)

 So this is great right?  Not really.  Here are some of the disadvantages to bookmarks:

  1. Without any organization, bookmarks are store in the LILO (Last in Last Out) format, meaning a new address is just added to the bottom of the list.  Over time you list of bookmarks can grow to be very large.  You need to keep them organized.
  2. Bookmarks will only be stored on the computer that you create it on, therefore they may not be available to you when you are out on the rode or away from your computer.
  3. When you save a bookmark, it is saved using the title of the current web page.  If the web page has the same title on several pages, then you cannot save multiple pages from the same web site. 

So, what steps can you use to make using bookmarks a benefit to a technician?

  1. Organize your bookmarks in folders.  When saving a bookmark, create an associate folder for the subject matter that you are researching.  This way you can add multiple links, and your favorites will be organized.
  2. If you need to make you links portable, you have a couple of options:
    1. Use a thumb drive, and back up your favorite’s folder.
    2. Save you links in a folder instead of in bookmarks.  You can use the drag-and-drop method in windows to save a URL.  Then you can organize your links in folders on your hard drive, and backup that folder.
    3. Create a web blog on the Internet.  You can post all of your links in that your blog, then have access to them from anywhere you can connect to the Internet.
  3. When you save a bookmark, rename it.  You can rename the link to something you will recognize easier in the future.