Freelance Business Writing

I am an obsessive bookmarker. I live in perpetual fear of losing the link to some snippet of information that, however tangentially related to my current project, could prove useful in future. You should see my list of Favorites. While I have made good use of the folder option, and continue to do so, my Favorites list could be considered excessively long.

At last count I had 49 folders in my Favorites, with many of those containing subfolders. In addition to these categorized items, I have quite a lengthy list of others that did not seem to fit anywhere, so I left them to languish in a kind of non-category, all listed together in no particular order. This system actually works fairly well for me, although I recognize that more judicious use of the Delete key is probably in order.

So what is my point? If you are doing any kind of writing for your business, be it a blog or an article or even a Web page, try to keep a list of references. You never know when you might need them again. Maybe you’ll feel the need to elaborate on a point in a future article. Maybe someone will ask you where you got your information. Or maybe there’s a piece of information that you think would be a great starting point for a future article.

There are a couple of ways to manage your bookmarks. You can use your browser or a bookmarking site.  

In Internet Explorer bookmarks are called Favorites. In Firefox and Netscape they are called Bookmarks. If you are not familiar with folders, I suggest you take the time to learn. Just like the folders in Windows Explorer, bookmark folders allow you to set up your own categories and save Web pages within them. This makes it easier to find your favourites at a later time. 

As an aside, I feel the need to offer my non-expert’s two cents’ worth about the capabilities of each browser in this area. In the interest of full disclosure, I will also tell you that I am highly predisposed to hating anything Microsoft does. I use their products grudgingly because they are the standard for most businesses.   

All of that being said, the reality is that while each browser may have its strong points, when it comes to managing bookmarks, Netscape is far superior to the others. The standard Firefox bookmark manager looks a lot like Netscape, but doesn’t offer the easy drag-and-drop interface that Netscape has. (Note that anything with Firefox is subject to change since there are always new add-ons available.) And Internet Explorer’s clunky interface comes nowhere near either of the other two. All of the browsers allow you to bookmark groups of tabs – a very cool feature for anyone who does a lot of Internet research, like me. But for simple management and organizing your bookmarks, Netscape wins hands down.  

Adding a bookmark in any of the browsers is straightforward: from the page you are on, click the Bookmarks or Favorites menu option and then choose the “Add” or “Bookmark” option. To add a folder, choose the “Organize” or “Manage” option. With Netscape and Firefox you get an interface that looks a lot like your Windows Explorer, so it should be fairly easy to figure it out.  

If you want to access your bookmarks from any computer anywhere, a social bookmarking site like delicious is a great option. Create an account and you can start saving your bookmarks. You can do so by using the “Save a new bookmark” option on Delicious, and then copying and pasting the URL (Web site address). Or you can download the Delicious toolbar and whenever you are on a site of interest, just click the Tag button. It’s that easy.  

When you save a bookmark on Delicious, you can give it tags, or categories. That makes it easy for you to keep track of where your bookmarks are, and it opens up possibilities for networking with other people who share your interests.