Manage Your Bookmarks Online

Throughout my day, I receive hundreds of links, from friends, email, RSS, or just browsing. While I may not want to save all of them, I like to keep track of interesting articles that could lead to good blog posts, teach me something new, or keep me updated on changes in technology.

I also bounce from computer to computer throughout my day. I'll be on my Mac, then the PC, then on my Blackberry, at any given time. This computer merry-go-round sounds insane to some, but it's becoming more frequent as people try to stay connected wherever they go. It also means that tying bookmarks to a browser is just not going to work. Neither would a desktop client.

So how am I going to keep track of all these links?

Web-based bookmark managers allow anyone to create an account and start saving links to a Website. This means that links can be accessed from any Internet-enabled computer, and many mobile phones.

Most online bookmark managers encourage organization using tags instead of folders, operating on the searching technique that is the basis of the Internet. Also, the majority of these bookmarking tools encourage users to share.

Social bookmarking occurs when people save their bookmarks to an online manager, and then allow others to view their bookmarks and recommend new bookmarks.

Here are three popular online bookmarking sites:

If you're a Google user, Google Bookmarks might be your choice. You can easily bookmark sites directly from the Bookmarks page, with a bookmarklet that goes into your browser toolbar, with the iGoogle gadget, by clicking the stars on the Google Toolbar (a browser extension for Firefox or Internet Explorer), or in your Web History. By default, your bookmarks are private.

Save, tag and share bookmarks with one of the most popular social bookmarking sites: Delicious. Delicious gives you one Web site that assists users in discovering new content as well as keeping track of old favorites. You can bookmark any site, recommend bookmarks for friends, and use Subscription and Network features to build a social network around link-sharing or just to track tags or users. See what the most popular tags or sites are and how other people are tagging the same site. Delicious also has some cool extensions for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Delicious is a part of the Yahoo! network, so you can sign in with the same email address and password.

MyBookmarks is another free site where you can store bookmarks. Import favorites from Internet Explorer, Netscape, and AOL. You can annotate and organize your bookmarks, and even export them back to your browser. If you make your bookmarks public, you can add contantly updating bookmarks to your Web site.

Don't feel like you need to pick one of these. There are many different sites with different features and systems, which may appeal to you more. Look into other social sites like Digg and Twitter for bookmarking.

If you're not into sharing your links, all of these services will allow you to bookmark privately. Just remember, you can get a lot more out of the social Web.