Deliverance from Favorites and Bookmarks: How I Overcame a Crippling Addiction
Dec. 22, 2011
Internet Explorer offers Favorites. Firefox offers Bookmarks. They do the same thing. With the two clicks of your mouse, you can save a link to a Web article. With a little extra work, you can re-name it. It's there forever . . . or until you lose your hard disk.
You can also create folders for topics. You can place a link into a folder. You then need to remember the link and the folder -- not just the link.
You do this, week after week, month after month. The list grows. You may or may not remember to alphabetize the list. Or you may not know how.
At some point, you may have over 3,000 links. I did.
You cannot search the links with a keyword. Whatever information is available a link click away does not appear on your hard disk. You must remember where a link is in the list.
Then, as links get old, some of them die. You click a link. The page is empty. You don't recall what was on that now-missing page. You know it was important enough to save the link.
It takes time to go through them one by one in order to cull them.
Like a pile of papers on your desk, the list grows. You know where this is heading -- to a digital version of this:
There is a solution. It's called Evernote: www.Evernote.com.
Evernote is a digital filing cabinet in cyberspace. You can save images, web pages, text, and your own notes. You can create key words for future searching. When you post a document, the program saves the link automatically. Best of all, it's free.
There is a little icon that sits on your web browser. Its image: the head of an elephant. The program never forgets. Click it, and it saves whatever is on the screen. Or you can save only the link.
Highlight text, and it saves the text. Every word is indexed and can be searched for.
Then you click another elephant icon on the task bar under your screen. You can then re-title the extracted document. You can add key words. Or you can create a folder for it.
If a link dies, and you saved all or some of the text, you still have this information.
You will never have to use Favorites or Bookmarks again.
I have cleared out Bookmarks. Next on my list: ten years of Favorites.
For instructional videos, go here: //www.garynorth.com/public/department154.cfm