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iChoose - Global bookmarks and more Pick of the Week
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iChoose is a preference panel that offers easy access to bookmarked websites from any application. Instead of switching to your browser and navigating its bookmark folder, just pop down the iChoose menu from the main menubar and select the bookmark to be opened. You can also use iChoose to store folders containing folders and items that you want fast access to from anywhere.

Although there are many URL managers out there, in my brief time with it, I've found that I most prefer the iChoose interface. It's easy to understand (drag and drop from the browser into the preference panel), very customizable, and (at least for now) free. About my only real complaints are that you can't add items via a keyboard shortcut and that its menubar icon is not movable.

[Sorry this Pick of the Week is so late; I didn't get it done before this week's trip.]
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iChoose - Global bookmarks and more | 19 comments | Create New Account
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Doesn't import?
Authored by: Alex281 on Nov 08, '02 09:56:31AM

I tried to make this work but I don't see how to import my bookmarks. This is a great idea but I'm not willing to type in all my bookmarks to get started using this. Someone tell me if I'm worng, I've been looking for something like this!



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Doesn't import?
Authored by: robg on Nov 08, '02 10:05:40AM

No import that I'm aware of (meant to mention that in the review...). I just opened my Mozilla bookmarks.html file in Mozilla and dragged the items in that I wanted in the iChoose menu.

-rob.



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Doesn't import?
Authored by: Ledrage on Nov 08, '02 10:20:42AM

Have you tried Bookit?



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Doesn't import?
Authored by: balderd on Nov 08, '02 10:58:42AM

Without an import function, it's useless to me. As well, clicking the "Add" button caused System Preferences to hang and require a force quit.

This may hold the record for the piece of software installed for the shorted time on my Mac, right up there with QuicKeys X.

djb



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Doesn't import?
Authored by: iroot on Nov 08, '02 12:33:15PM

In answer to the complaint "without import function, it is useless to me," it seems that we are missing the intended function of this utility: to be used to have quick access to those 10 or 15 sites we read every day. It seems to be a waste of space to have yet another list of 300 or so sites accessible from my menubar. But, it is great to have MacOSXHints and a few others right there for easy connection. Just my opinion!



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LaunchBar better
Authored by: dm2243 on Nov 08, '02 10:33:17AM

I find LaunchBar a much easier & faster way to access bookmarks - even from within a browser.



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Multi computer is what I need.
Authored by: Loren on Nov 08, '02 10:35:13AM

Looks nice, but I am looking for something that will keep the same bookmarks on multiple computers.

So far, the best I have come up with is using My.Yahoo.Com. I keep all my bookmarks there. On windows PC's the Yahoo companion has a bookmark button in the toolbar, and on Mac, in IE, I keep Page Holders open to my.yahoo.com all the time, for easy access to my bookmarks.

Now, if someone could take a program like iChoose, and get it to sync with an internet source for the bookmarks (kind of like WeatherPop gets the current weather from Yahoo), well, I'd start using that program in a second flat. :-)

If I were still a programmer, I'd probably do it myself, but it's been a long time since Pascal in college.

Loren



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Multi computer: My Favorites Matian
Authored by: Nonsanity on Nov 08, '02 11:19:31AM

Have you tried My Favorites Matian:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16548

You need iDisk or an account on an FTP server.

~ Nonsanity



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Multi computer is what I need.
Authored by: Loren on Nov 08, '02 12:23:57PM

Ask and You Shall Receive.

Version Tracker today introduced me to My Favorite Martian, which does exactly what I asked for.

Woo Hoo.

Loren



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Multi computer is what I need.
Authored by: yeidel on Nov 08, '02 12:35:28PM

Another possibility is Skramkoob:

http://www.skramkoob.com

a free bookmark-keeper accessed via Web browser.

("skramkoob" is "Bookmarks" spelled backward.)

It's a little klutzy, like most Web apps, but it might be what you need.



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Multi computer is what I need - I found it here->
Authored by: valiant66 on Nov 08, '02 06:11:24PM

As a consultant who ends up working in many other people's offices, on many strange machines, I ran into this problem 3 years ago. I wanted to be able to access bookmarks no matter where I was. I discovered Backflip <http://www.backflip.com> and have been using it ever since. Recommended. Now the only bookmarks on my home machines relate to internal items - e.g. the configuration page for my gateway, and pages that I only ever need to be able to access from home - i.e. almost none. Meanwhile I've bookmarked hundreds of sites on Backflip. The structure encourages categorization, too, so I find it easy to find links again, rather than having an endless scrolling list of bookmarks.



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Multi computer is what I need - I found it here->
Authored by: pnas on Nov 09, '02 11:54:02AM

I agree with you. I used Backflip in 2000, but then they ran into problems, so I thought they would disappear entirely. I started to use URL manager instead. I like Backflip however, since it is web-based (and still free!).

One problem with Backflip is that you can't use Chimera for one-click bookmarking. But then there are other things that don't work in Chimera either, so that is not Backflips fault.

If you use IE Backflip is great.



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Multi computer is what I need.
Authored by: videobored on Nov 08, '02 07:25:42PM

i have been looking for a slick solutiom to this problem for years. this is my current solution, which i feel works the best for me. it uses a combination of skramkoob and the ie page holder feature. just set up an account with skramkoob, and then open your skramkoob bookmarks window. right click inside that window and choose open page in new window. this will give you all the browser chrome and features, especially the page holder sidebar. now just hit 'add' in the page holder. now any time you open a browser window, the skramkoob bookmarks are on the left, and you can easily add delete and organize them. it looks great cause the skramkoob window is the same width as the page holder frame. do this on all your computers and your current bookmarks will aways be available. the beauty is that even if you are not using ie, or are on a pc, you can still get to them. try that with my favorites martian...

peace to the middle east...
vb



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Re: Skramkoob or BackFlip
Authored by: jiclark on Nov 09, '02 04:22:09PM

I'm trying to figure out how to use one of the online bookmark services with OmniWeb. Anyone had any luck? I'm able to get the account set up, but can't get the bookmarking java applets to work; they're supposed to send your bookmarks to your page, but it doesn't work in OW. Anyone have any suggestions?



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Re: Skramkoob or BackFlip
Authored by: sherlock42 on Dec 28, '02 10:37:46AM
Aside from waiting for OmniWeb to improve its JavaScript support, the best solution I've found is to bookmark this:
http://www.backflip.com/add_page_pop.ihtml
. . . and add your page to Backflip manually.

-- Charles

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Uncertain Honor.
Authored by: theRegent on Nov 08, '02 11:27:54AM

No import? No method for sharing a menu's contents between machines? This tool really doesn't seem worthy of any particularly special recognition. The ability to mix files, folders, and URL on a single menu seems more likely to be confusing than helpful.

I recognize that this is merely my opinion, this tool might be exactly the right thing for some users. I may, in fact, use it myself to create a "Visitor's Menu" on my machine for visiting friends to have easy access to common apps and sites. (i.e. Yahoo mail, Explorer, Music directories)

For me, LaunchBar is the fastest, most efficient way to get to almost anything. For an extensive, regularly visited bookmark collection I use BookIt. Alas, it does not offer true synchronization, which would be nice, but since bookmark collections can be stored in its own file format, transporting between machines, while still manual, is at least reasonably efficient. I have found both of these programs to be well worth their price.

Kudos are in order, however, for what seems to be a stable piece of FREEware.



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Ah well...
Authored by: robg on Nov 08, '02 11:39:23AM

I like it, so I picked it ;-).

I agree with one of the earlier posters - I would pay for a seamless (no import/export or upload/download that I have to be involved in) bookmark manager that resided in the menu bar and utilized .mac or an FTP site of my choice to synchronize with. But it would have to be seamless -- I don't want to be bothered to remember to upload or download or import or export. Just let me manage my bookmarks, then the program goes off in the background and do what needs to be done to keep everything in synch.

Picks of the Week aren't necessarily perfect pieces of software; they're just things that I found useful and/or interesting during the last week of my time with OS X :-).

-rob.



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Active PHPBookmarks (APB)
Authored by: bluehz on Nov 08, '02 06:05:33PM

If you run a web server (e.g. your built in Apache) this is a really nice little web-based bookmark manager that is php-based. Very easy - 1 min install, then whenver you go to a site you want to bookmark, click a link to your local APB site and it grabs the bookmark and lets you file/sort/organize. I have used URLManagerPro for years and years and their is really no way I can migrate my 1000's of bookmarks to another app - so URLMgr is my number one choice - yet I installed APB just to experiment - and I have found that I end up using it more often than my URLMgr Pro for basic bookmarks. It is very similar to the online server mentioned here: skramkoob - except YOU own the service not some 3rd party.

http://lbstone.com/apb/



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Active PHPBookmarks (APB)
Authored by: pnas on Nov 09, '02 12:09:28PM

Thanks for this tip. This looks like a very interesting program, since i use Chimera. Even the one-click adding off bookmarks is working on this one.



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