Bookmarks

There are three reasons why I don’t like using web browsers for storing my bookmarks. First, browsers make it hard for me to access my bookmarks from my phone or a friend’s computer; second, I find the browsers’ interface for managing bookmarks unwieldy and confusing; and third, I switch between browsers very often, which means I inadvertently have my bookmarks spread out between Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera Mobile and the Android Browser. Web-based bookmarking services are accessible via any Internet-connected computer, have user interfaces that are in line with my personal preferences and are browser agnostic. They alleviate pretty much all the issues I have with browser-based bookmarking.

After thinking about it for longer than I should have, I built my own little bookmarking tool yesterday evening and deployed it to my VPS. It’s a part of Can ‘O Beans and lives behind this humble bookmarks page. It lets me add bookmarks to my collection, assign descriptions and tags to them, and search through my collection by tag or hostname. Next up on my TODO list is a Chrome extension. Also in the works is a better search, an RSS feed, an import/export feature and several UI tweaks.

Building this little tool must have taken me about three hours. Time well spent, I’d say.