Thursday, December 30, 2010

Saving Favorites/Bookmarks in the Cloud

I recently got an e-mail from a teacher whose Internet favorites were not carrying over to her laptop as they should according to our school's network policies. Since it was the holidays, and I could not get to her machine for a few days, I suggested the following:

I don't use favorites (I put my most frequently used links on an i-google page, so whenever I log-into any computer regardless of whether or not it is school system machine, I can get to my most frequently used links) i-google also allows me to customize my default home page regardless of the browser so that I see the same gadgets and same favorites anywhere I log in to a computer!  Here's how to set it up:

http://www.wikihow.com/Use-iGoogle

Once you have that set-up, one of the gadgets you can add is "favorites/bookmarks" and then you can add those frequently used favorite links so that they will always be part of your i-google homepage

More information on working with a google homepage:
http://www.wikihow.com/Set-Up-a-Google-Personalized-Homepage

Here's a How to on Social Bookmarking:
http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Social-Bookmarking

And, here is a current list of social bookmarking sites:
http://www.social-bookmarking-sites-list.com/
and another list:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_bookmarking_websites#Social_bookmarking_sites

But anyway, getting back to the specific question of moving bookmarks/favorites from one computer to another,  there is a way to export favorites to a file so we can move them to your new laptop.

What you would do is...from your main desktop computer where you currently have many favorites (at school for example)  navigate through "my computer" to the following location:

C:\Documents and Settings\"your user name"\Favorites

Copy that star looking folder called favorites, then go back to your laptop and paste the contents of that favorites folder to the dame location on your laptop:

C:\Documents and Settings\"your user name"\Favorites

Another way to move favorites/bookmarks is to do whats called an "export/import": (again you would have to go back to your desktop computer in your office)

From your Internet explorer menu, You go to:
  • File
  • Import/Export
  • Choose "export to file"
  • Choose "favorites"
  • Choose a location--like your flash drive

Then once that is complete, you would do the same thing essentially, but this time:

You go to:

  • File
  • Import/Export
  • Choose "import from a file"
  • Choose "favorites"
  • Choose the location on your flash drive where you exported earlier


Hope that helps...
:)

2 comments:

  1. Hey John,
    I've long been a big fan of delicious because it did offer a cloud solution for storing my bookmarks. However Yahoo has recently created a lot of uncertainty by suggesting soon they will no longer be in the "delicious" business. Check out there recent "Delicious in Purgatory" link here: http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/29/delicious-in-purgatory/
    So recently I've been looking at Google Bookmarks www.google.com/bookmarks - if you or your staff already have a google accounts it might be one of the easiest options. It appears you can pretty easily import existing bookmarks from any browser into Google Bookmarks. Maybe worth looking into.
    Enjoyed the post. Happy Holidays.

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  2. Hey Emory,
    I had read that article but also read others too that said delicios was probably not going anywhere. Nevertheless, rather than recommend one specific site, I edited my post and just gave a list of social bookmarking sites. I prefer i-google because it lets me see my bookmarks along with the other gadgets and rss feeds that I like to read daily (blogs, news sites, and others) For me personally, it's the best way for me to stay informed and keep myself organized. Appreciate your comment, and I figure google is probably the best way to go since I doubt it is going anywhere anytime soon! Thanks!

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