Managing bookmarks.
Bookmarks are a strange artifact of modern computing. They are a link to a visited page, and it's only one page--unlike a book which has many pages. Every computer user is familiar with bookmarks. Up to now there have been only minimal innovations in this popular and key area of computing. I say key because I believe its here we'll see a battle in the coming years. Bookmarks are like file management in an operating system, and little has changed since the GUI was introduced 25 years ago. Yet changes are brewing. The first area we see in both file management and bookmarks will likely be searching. Another idea also changing the way we use bookmarks is tabbed browsing.

There is little predefined structure to bookmarking. Every Browser starts out with some sample folders, but every user can alter or ignore these to their leisure. Unlike the system, there are not mandatory folders or categories. Every user has to decide for themselves how they want to organize their files. I have developed my own system for bookmarks. Like elbows everybody has their own way, let me describe for you what I use currently.

Tabbed Browsing.
Now let me first say I'm not a uber-bookmarker. I'm sure people from BoingBoing.net or K10K.net would have more to say about effective ways for managing bookmarks then I could ever surmise. I've found this has been the best innovation in browsing since Mosaic. It makes browsing most like reading a magazine-except you're the editor. Find your favorite blog (two above are good examples). There will be a lot of interesting stuff, but only a handful will be worth your time. Using the "Load Tab In Background" preference, you can scan a blog for interesting articles and load the links to the Tabs. After you've finished scanning the day's contents, then click through your tabs--just like paging through a magazine. If your browsing using Mozilla, then you can save these tabs with a descriptive name like: "Boing Boing:Virgin Mary Sandwich on EBay- TABS". (Note the all caps "TABS", short descriptor to clue you that you made a grouping). Now just file this group of tabs, but where?

The Venerable "In" Box.
Images of cheesy sitcoms or early commercials before computers showed us the iconic image of an overflowing inbox on every desk. The inbox is the catch all for everything. For sorting bookmarks I use it to separate "to be sorted" from other subfolders of presorted bookmarks. First I'll give a brief description of a simple bookmark sort to give you an idea of how best to use the in-box.

I have generally no more then five sections: Blogs/News, Art & Design, Computing, Personal, and IN. Each of the first four sections each has an IN, and any major sub-categories also have an IN folder, and so on. Because most browsers add the newest bookmark to the last item in the list, anything placed in a folder is added after the inbox. This is like a mini sorting area. Bear with me.

The combination of the last item browser behavior and the IN folder are used together making bookmarks more effective. By placing the inbox at the end of sub-categories, any subsequently added bookmark will be automatically listed after the inbox and waiting to be sorted. Thus the time to filing a bookmark is reduced. A GOMES test could determine a base time advantage, but true efficiency testing would also need to take into account the cognitive activity of sorting one item into preexisting categories (is the new bookmark more like A or B). Under ideal (repetitive filing of single subject) browsing circumstances is negligible, and when filing a randomly acquired bookmark--inscrutable.

Using the inbox a user can access folders up to the point of confusion, and leave the rest of the work for later. For example, when reading boingboing you encounter a savory link to the British Library's gallery of Rare Bookbinding. You may file this under My Bookmarks/Design/Reference. The link will be added after the inbox. Later you can decide if its more relevant to "typography", or "bookbinding." Should you neglect your Sort area, the next time you go to the Reference folder you may discover many links-- even ten, twenty links--that can not be filed according to their bookmark description or title. Just dump them INTO the inbox folder and you now have a clean sorting area. HAHA. You say this is too chaotic for you? Then maybe you are just not an old skewl organization (wo)man.

Search Sites With Bookmarks.
Maybe you're like Steve Jobs, always looking to the future. He's suggested there is no good way to file bookmarks or documents. Every document should be located anywhere and found using some faculty of a search action. Herodotus is a desktop application for Mac OS X. It allows users to search their browser history and saved bookmarks. I've used it to varying results. Mostly I use it useful find pages I forgot to bookmark.

Furl.com is an online bookmark agent. The general idea is to use furl as a clearing house of interesting links. When you choose to add a link to your furl bookmarks, you add it for the community. Then you can choose to share your bookmarks with others. Later you can use furl's page searching tools to examine pages one at a time or with custom categories. The furl way of browsing emphasizes bookmarking not just frequently used links but also interesting links. Thus as a boingboing reader, you can publish to the furl database interesting links that others on the network may also want to read. In a nutshell, furl is the enterprise answer to my suggested usage of TABS above. But in this case they archive the bookmarks and provide management tools that are separately available on the desktop.

Archiving.
Having an archive of relevant past bookmarks is important part of effective browsing. I use two methods to effectively save my web experiences. One, I save my bookmark files. Mostly after I've altered the organization for some consideration of the bookmarks as a collection. Every time I make a major change I save the new and the old sort. Also I take screen shots of favorite sites. If your a fan of k10k then you know designer sites come and go. The only way to keep any record of a fantastic page design is to take a screen shot.

That's a basic review of managing your bookmarks. Right now this is a combination of folder sorting and random applications. I think there will be many new innovations, soon. But, until furl adds a combined cache feature and archive, I'll stick to my method.
- Good Luck.