Tech Toys IBookmark ManagementbyRobert Fabian |
This is my inaugural column under the "Tech Toys" banner. I've always been fascinated by technology. This column gives me the opportunity to indulge myself in public. It also gives me the advantages that flow to a (sometimes) member of the fourth estate.
The Web has become the source of endless fascination, and endless frustration. Finding stuff is a growing problem. Even remembering what you have already found is a problem. Enter bookmarks. You bookmark interesting sites and then, when you have the urge, it's easy to go back to them.
That's the theory. But I've been surfing for a number of years and my bookmark file has grown to several thousand entries. It's organized into folders and subfolders, but still ... It takes time to load the file and it's hard to find a particular bookmark. Yet I'm reluctant to through away all that "valuable" information.
There is an interesting, free solution for the problem of an over-weight bookmark file. The Columbine Bookmark Merge solves the problem for Windows users. Columbine Bookmark Merge, or CBM, also solves other bookmark problems, including some that you may not have known you have.
CBM occupies an interesting place in the market. It's completely free, but the author, Gary Cramblitt, has dedicated the program to the memory of his father. He asks for contributions to his father's elementary school education fund at Towson State. During the day, Gary is a Senior Software Engineer at IIT Research. It shows - CBM has a professional feel about it.
CBM will read and write bookmark files from most versions of Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, and Mosaic. It displays, in adjacent panels, the bookmarks from a primary and a secondary bookmark file. Full drag-and-drop is supported between the panels. And there is a comfortable degree of integration between CBM and all four supported browsers.
With CBM, I use bookmarks in a different way. I now have a short list of my current "top 100" bookmarks. I also have an archive file of the several thousand bookmarks that I have collected over the years. Drag-and-drop allows me to easily cut bookmarks from my "top 100" and migrate them down to my archive file. My "top 100" stays at a reasonable size.
Before, the browser that contained my big bookmark file was my default choice. With CBM, I'm no longer forced to select a default browser. I push a button and can hot link between a bookmark and my choice of Opera, Netscape, and Internet Explorer (Mosaic is only of historical interest for me). I can also automatically bookmark, in CBM, the page that is active on the browser of my choice.
Columbine Bookmark Merge isn't a solution for the problem of world hunger. But it does provide a browser-independent solution for many bookmark problems. If you spend time surfing, it's worth a look.
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