Online Social Bookmarking
There are now alternatives to the bookmarking options we explain in Chapter 6. Free (i.e., advertiser supported) online bookmarking services are available to anyone with an Internet connection. These services provide the opportunity to:
- accumulate a large number of annotated bookmarks on a commercial server
- access these bookmarks from any machine with Internet access, and
- share these resources with others.
To give you some exposure to online social bookmarking, we will briefly describe the basic capabilities of FURL. Web addresses for similar services are provided at the bottom of this page.
FURL accounts are free, but require users to apply. Once an account has been established, all FURL functions are executed from within a standard web browser. The individual creating FURL resources should download and add a special FURL button (technically a bookmarklet) to his/her browser. This modification of the browser is important. The basic idea in this approach to bookmarking is to make use of the web in a normal way (searching, following links, etc.). When a web page is encountered that contains information the user may want to access at a later date, the user selects the "FURL It" button and a dialog box appears providing the opportunity to add several types of information to the FURL "bookmark" before it is saved.
If the material appearing above existed as a web page and "Furl It" was selected, the following dialog box would appear.
Some of the information appearing within the fields of this dialog box were automatically taken from the web page (e.g., the title, URL). The material appearing as a clipping appears here because the content had been selected on the web page when "Furl It" was selected. Other information was manually entered into the fields of the dialog box (e.g., keywords, comments).
When saved, the following entry is generated in the archives of the user's FURL account.
Like annotated bookmarks saved on your personal computer, FURL archives can be searched and reorganized. The search and organization features associated with FURL are far superior to corresponding features available when generating a bookmark collection on your own computer.
What does FURL store?
FURL stores a copy of the original web page. In fact, if that page is removed from the web, it will continue to exist in the archives of a FURL account.
Social Bookmarking
The use of the term "social" implies that bookmark collections can be shared with others. You will note above that information stored in FURL can be marked as "private" or left unlabeled. Unlabeled information can be accessed by others. The basic idea is generate a rich collection of well organized resources and then to share these resources with others who may benefit.
Information in the public portion of a FURL account is accessible at the address: http://www.furl.net/members/username
Why isn't this a copyright violation?
The system works differently for the user and those invited to view his/her resources. Visitors see the comments generated by the user, but must follow links to the original material. If the original material is protected in some way (e.g., password), the visitor will have to provide an appropriate password to view the site.
You are encouraged to read the "Help" section associated with the FURL site for an explanation of why the user is not in violation of copyright regulations.
Social Bookmarking Sites
Your are encouraged to explore social bookmarking sites and learn more about the capabilities of these services.
Backflip - http://www.backflip.com/login.ihtml
Del.icio.us - http://del.icio.us/
FURL - http://www.furl.net/index.jsp
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