tail -f findings.out

Co-worker and fellow informational transmogrifer Trevor Rosen told me about a Firefox plugin called Read It Later a while back. For some reason, I didn’t really start using it for a while. After having watched the demo video for the latest version out for Firefox 3, I have to say this is one awesome plugin!

Here’s the scenario. You are on a laptop at work, and come across an article you want to read at some point, but don’t have time at that moment. You don’t want to bookmark it (it’s not that important), just somehow stuff it away for later. Emailing yourself the link is a little too much effort as well. The better solution: Read It Later. As shown in the video, you can:

• mark one page for later reading via a menu
• switch modes and click on any links on the current page you wish to mark for later reading
• save all your current tabs for later reading
• mark a page in your list as read
• sync your list to any number of machines
• search and tag your list, as well as order by name and date
• download your list for off-line reading
• send a list item to a wide range of social bookmarking services

This is simply perfect for me, as I might come across a number of things each day that I want to read at some point, whether it be on my work laptop, my home PC, my second home PC, or my home laptop.

This tweak is a little more involved than most I put up, but it is totally worth it. When done, you can fire off any custom web search from Launchy!

Here are the steps (I assume you have Launchy installed and know what a keyword bookmark is):

Continue Reading “Web Productivity Winning Duo: Launchy + keyword bookmarks”

First, I just want to say, that keyword bookmarks are definitely the coolest thing since sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. If you have never used one, get ready!

Go into Organize Bookmarks, create a new one (can be hidden in a new folder, you don’t need to view and click on these, as you will see). Try out the following:

Now, you can open a tab and type “wiki all your base” to get that informative Wikipedia article. The general principle: You have some site with things you regularly want, and then are available via sensible URLs. You can copy a representative one and change your search term to “%s” which will insert in that variable whatever you type after the keyword! I like to add these for Amazon, Wikipedia, YouTube, and more. It’s quicker and easier than using the specific engine in your Google Searchbar. And you can add these for all sorts of things that don’t have engines for the Searchbar, and even add things that don’t even have searches on their sites!

Here are others I like:

Continue Reading “Keyword bookmarks: Just better”