Things that make me love the internet again

April 26th, 2008

You know, I get bored with online tricks and toys. In 1995 I was impressed with having all the world’s information at my fingertips, but now… meh. The world’s information has lost its charm.

Something has rekindled my love of online living lately though, and it’s all related to Firefox. I am using the very niftiest of extensions with it. They make me feel like my own grandma, so filled am I with wonder and amazement at their handiness. Chief among these is:

Foxmarks – This extension for firefox synchronizes your bookmarks across multiple computers. As many computers as you want, whatever platform you desire, as long as you’re running Firefox on said system. I don’t think you can possibly recognize how essential that is until you experience it.

For instance – I am at work. I bookmark a great site. I add it to my Bookmarks toolbar even, that’s how much I love it and need it near me always. Later that afternoon I walk across the office and log into the Mac… it’s there. I go home and log in at home… it’s there. I am at the coffeeshop working on my laptop… it’s there. I don’t have to do anything, I don’t have to manually sync, I don’t have to use an online service like del.icio.us, I don’t have to think about it. It’s just so mindlessly convenient and right. The way things should work. Likewise if I delete a link, or remove some duplicate or redundant ones. I only have to do it once. Lovely.

Google Notebook, specifically the Firefox browser extension for it. This is a clipping service type-o’-deal, so that when I want to save a snippet of HTML I will need later, or a snippet of info from a page, or a link that I don’t want to bookmark but want to visit later that day, or the name of a plant I want to buy, I can just highlight it, click “Clip” and there it will be later! If I want to capture snippets of conversational inanity such as:

“Marketing, it’s not a science. I mean, there’s only so much you can do with it.”

“The actual numbers aren’t as important as the fact that we have capacity”

for a book about retarded people that I am planning to write when I have a minute, or maybe just note down the amount of times per day that my new boss calls me “Sharon”, I can do that with no problem. And all that information is available to me on any system I regularly use.

I can also visit my Notebook from any browser on any computer, and share it with others if I want to, but it’s the browser extension that I really love. It lives down in the bottom right-hand corner of my screen being all handy and shit. See?: