(no subject)

[athelind]

I just deleted most of my Web bookmarks.

Some of them probably date back ten years. I had scores, if not hundreds of the damned things. I knew a lot of them were probably broken, but going through and finding which ones were still was an impossible task. I sort my bookmarks by folders, and the stuff I check regularly was all in neatly-labled folders at the top of my list (kept there with "AAA" prefixes: "AAA Blogs", "AAA Comics", "AAA News", et cetera).

The older folders, I didn't check so often. In fact, I'd say I hadn't touched the bulk of them in two or three years.

Today, I realized that it was generally faster and easier to Google on any given topic than to hunt through my bookmarks, even if the Google search took me to a page that was somewhere in that long list. In fact, my first reflex upon thinking "I remember seeing a page that..." is to Google.

Given the speed of my connection and the convenience of the Search Toolbar in Firefox, that huge collection of links was just plain defunct.

So why keep'em?

kerflush!!

Ahhh, if only it were so easy to part with physical clutter that way.

Comments

[kfops.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that there was an automated way to validate any bookmarks that you had built right in but... uhm. Well, it looks like somewhere between Netscape 4.61 and Firefox it disappeared!

That's too bad, 'cause it was a really handy feature!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

What I might not have made clear was that I wasn't even looking at the ones that WEREN'T dead anymore. It's just faster to say, "Hey, what was that Atomic Rockets link?" and fire up a search engine than it is to say, "... and where did I put it?"

[kfops.livejournal.com]

Ah!

I use bookmarks very differently. After I've seen I site I tend to forget about it completely. Bookmarks are more like a "oh hey, I had forgotten about this cool link!" collection.

I only go to about 4 sites regularly, and I just made those buttons on Firefox.

But I totally see your point about search engines.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Oh, that was my original M.O., too. But after a decade of doing that, the signal-to-noise ratio got way too low.

[taral.livejournal.com]

I moved all mine to http://del.icio.us/ and I use Firefox live bookmarks to access them. :)

[athelind.livejournal.com]

...I don't see the point.

I'm not trying to be dismissive; I'm just not getting it.

[rooth.livejournal.com]

I think with 'live bookmarks' you can have the same bookmarks at any computer you use. Even, arguably, airport terminals and the like, because your bookmarks are effectively on-line. That's pretty handy, if you use bookmarks a lot, but you also expose your interests to the party that's storing them. I've been hesitant to try any of those, 'cause of privacy concerns. Not that I have naughty things in my bookmarks >.>, but I might have passwords embedded in URLs, or simply just having groupings and collections of certain vendor sites can be used to pretty accurately characterize my interests, and expose me to Yet More Spam.

[taral.livejournal.com]

Well, the situation's not exactly analogous. I did it because I have more than one machine and was tired of having a bookmark on one but not on the other.

But it does provide the ability for me to quickly find a bookmark in a way that big folder hierarchies never did.

[rooth.livejournal.com]

LOL! That sounds like a good plan, I should look into doing that. I was going to lint all my bookmarks, and nuke the broken ones to cut down the clutter a bunch, but .. you're right, why keep them when I can just regoogle?

And I concur on the physical clutter thing. I'd throw *ALL* of it away in a heartbeat, if it didn't take so much effort. ;)

(okay, I'd keep the costume and furry stuff .. but almost everything currently in boxes I haven't looked at in 5+ years anyway, so what's the point of keeping it?).

[wy.livejournal.com]

I might do the same. My bookmarks are definately in the same shape. :P

However, I do have some bookmarks of things that just aren't googlable. Imagine that.