Windows Live Favorites… Do More With It!

Microsoft and Windows always go hand in hand. And when we take their name together, the words like trust, faith, loyalty etc. always come to our minds. Such is their goodwill than they both have created over these years, individually and collectively. Microsoft Window’s Live have an entire range of services to offer to its users. And one of its major services and most loved services include Windows Favourite Live. It offers services just a social bookmarking website would do.

With Windows Live Favorites you can access your favourite bookmarks from any computer. However, not more than thousand favourites and folders are allowed for one single user account. Did I say account? Yes, you need to register yourself first and then before you get down to your bookmarking business, just make sure that you have logged into it.

Accessing your bookmarks from any computer in the world is one thing. With Windows Live Favorites you can also edit then from wherever you wish to. Further more features that are provided by Windows Live Favorites are also very simple and extremely easy to use.

Like most other social bookmarks, you can export or import your favourite bookmarks from different browsers such as Internet Explorer and MSN Explorer. The ways in which you can add more favorites to your list are also extremely user friendly. You can choose from the options such as dragging and a dropping your bookmark to your list of the favorites, or you can simply do this job by a single click on the ‘Add Favorite’ button. Furthermore, you can also simply use the right-click button and choose from its menu the option of ‘Add to Windows Live Favorites ’. And last but not the least, you can also click the Add option from the Add menu at the top of the page.

The most used features, apart from that of adding bookmarks to your list of favorites, include features such as previewing the favorite web pages from within Windows Live Favorites using the In-Line preview option; a simple right-click in order to edit the properties of your favorites; quickly finding favorites using names, address, folders or tags or better known as the Real-time search etc.

And it’s not all…Windows Live Favorites can be easily integrated with a number of other services offered by Microsoft Window’s Live. Some of these are:

Windows Live Toolbar- to synchronise their favorites between Internet Explorer and Windows Live Favorites.

Windows Live Spaces- to share your favorite bookmarks with public and search other’s bookmarks using built-in search box.

Windows Live Messenger- to manage your favorites directly from the program itself. Real-time search is possible using this.

Live.com- to view the top favorites, to search favorites, to add new links to favorites, to view top favorites organized by tags or folders.

With Microsoft Windows you can expect new things and new features. They are constantly working in order to give you something more each time. So do more with it. And trust me, things shall only get better. Try it once. You might fall in love with it.

StumbleUpon…The Interest Searching!

For the Internet savvy people like you and me, search engines form a very important part of web surfing. We are always on a look out for new stuff and that too which is of our interest. How we, sometimes, wish that our most loved search engines understood our requirements and need and gave us what we have been looking for, without making us scroll through millions of webpages or thousands of websites. And then God sent us an angel to help us out- StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon is an online internet community consisting of people who share similar interests. It is like a personalized recommendation engine that works closely with principles of collaborative filtering. This technique helps you find out only those websites which StumbleUpon thinks might interest you.

The Stumbling Procedure

When you become a member of the StumbleUpon, you are allowed to rate a particular webpage or a website using either a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’. As you use StumbleUpon more and more often, your personalized search engine also understands your interests, liking and disliking better. Now when you click on the ‘stumble’ button located on your browser window’s toolbar, the results that are displayed to you are based on your previous ratings of different webpages, ratings by your friends and ratings by the other StumbleUpon users who have interests similar to yours.

StumbleUpon has more than 500 different topics to choose from. It is using these topics that you can actually indicate your interests and preferences. This helps StumbleUpon to present to you more and more relevant data every single time you decide to ‘Stumble’.

This is how StumbleUpon combines human opinions with machine learning to give you the best kind of virtual community that you would love to be a part of. Also, it is compatible with all the major browsers such as the Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla etc.

Moreover, StumbleUpon uses the help from the ratings by its users to maintain its database. This means that it updates its database from time to time to give its users only high quality website results. These are decided by the users’ preferences for a particular kind of websites. The sites with low ratings and low rankings are automatically deleted from StumbleUpon database.

It does not come as a surprise to any of us that StumbleUpon has more than five million users and it has already collected its five-billionth ‘stumble’. Owing to such huge popularity, e-bay purchasing the rights for StumbleUpon for a whopping $75,000,000, does not seem to be a bad deal after all!

The ‘Stumble’ services

StumbleUpon launched its StumbleVideo site in December 2006. Here, users can submit their videos that they would like to share with others and the other users can rate them. It also aggregates videos from YouTube, Google, Metacafe and MySpace. In 2007, it launched the StumbleThru service. It allows the users to navigate through pages of various sites such as Wikipedia, The Onion etc.

With so much to choose from, getting down to Stumbling seems like a very good idea to me. This one is surely worth a try!

SiteBar…Your Own Bookmark Manager

If you are one of those people who use multiple browsers or computers to store or save your favourite bookmarks, then SiteBar is the perfect place for you. SiteBar is a free (we all love this word…don’t we?) online bookmark manager. This means that you can save your bookmarks from multiple browsers or computers on the SiteBar server and can access them from anywhere you like. With its availability in more than twenty different languages, no wonder SiteBar is known as the web’s largest bookmark server!

SiteBar as a bookmark manager allows you to synchronise your bookmarks from multiple places. And thus, it eliminates the need to carry your important bookmarks with you anywhere you travel. It’s not completely like other social bookmarking services that allow you to find people with similar interests etc. but is does give you facility to share your bookmarks online with multiple user groups.
As a bookmark manager

Let us now take a look at what all things SiteBar can do for you as a bookmark manager.

The most important thing that it does for you is that it is compatible with or can be integrated with most of the standard browsers that we have today such as the Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera etc. It also features side bar integration into different web browsers.

Another important feature of SiteBar is that it allows you to import and export your bookmarks from various browsers and modifies them accordingly for you so that you get the maximum compatibility for all your bookmarks.

To keep your bookmarks fully under control, SiteBar bookmark server is now an ‘open source software’. It is published under GPL i.e. the General Public Licence. Thus, you can run your own SiteBar server and maintain and control your bookmarks yourself. Apart from this, if you wish to control the access to your bookmarks by others, you can use features like e-mail verification and/or administrator approval. You can grant access to your bookmarks to different individuals, to different groups, family, team etc. Or if not this, then you can always keep them as ‘private’ and safe.

You can also create various different bookmark folders and you can even convert them into a feed and that too in a variety of formats if you wish to. RSS feeds can be easily used if you wish to find out what bookmarks have been added to which SiteBar folders. Link news can also be shown for each folder.

For the sake of its users, SiteBar offers a variety of additional options such as drag and drop, plug-ins, custom sorting, folder hiding, skinnable interface, internationalisation, multi-user or group access, hit counting, link validation, favicon cache etc.

One cannot really compare the social bookmarking sites to SiteBar. They quite differ in terms of what they have to offer its users. There, possibly, can’t be any verdict as to whether this SiteBar is good or bad. If you like it and if this is able to fulfil all your requirements, then you are most welcome to use it.

Simpy…why go for this?

The only achievement or accolade that Simpy has to its name for being a social bookmarking site is that it is the only one that still operates independently. Otis Gospodnetic launched this service in May 2004. The sad thing about this website, however, is that absolutely nothing new that this site offers its users. Its not bad, but there’s no attraction whatsoever to become its member. It just offers the usual stuff and that too in no uniquely different manner.

Getting started with Simpy is extremely easy and more than that absolutely free. One good thing that Simpy offers is that once you become its member and then if you log into your account for bookmarking, you don’t have to see any advertisements. It’s solely you and your bookmarks!

Like any other social bookmarking service, even Simpy allows you to access your bookmarks from any computer with an internet connection, be it your office, home, hotel or school. To save or to tag your pages with a single click, all you need to do is to install a Firefox add on which gives you a button on your browser window itself. So just click on it and Simp(l)y get going!

Using Simpy you can also mark your bookmarks private and/or public. Moreover, one of the good things about Simpy is its search capabilities. You can search the full-text marked pages and not just meta-data. Simpy also allows you to attach with your bookmarks searchable notes.

When we talk about Simpy, the only unique feature that comes across us is that Simpy as a social bookmarking website allows you to detect broken bookmarks and help them repair it. By broken bookmarks we mean that when a particular site, of which you had bookmarked a link or a webpage, gets updated or your webpage gets removed from there, then Simpy simply notifies you. It basically eliminates what we know as the ‘link rot’. It also gives its users a chance to export their bookmarks if they wish to. And you can also upload your existing bookmarks as well.

With Simpy you can obviously find out about the people who share similar interests as you and you can also subscribe to their bookmarks. Also, you can create your own groups and communities and always be in touch with them or you can simply subscribe to other users via watchlists. Almost every other social bookmarking site provides the feature of tagging a bookmark, but Simpy gives you the opportunity to tag cloud them i.e. you can create tags on the basis of the weights of the objects you wish to tag. Most data also have RSS feeds as well.

Just for the sake of some more information, Simpy in 2006 also took over the social bookmarking site De.lirio.us (which is also known as the clone of Del.icio.us) because it faced some technical difficulties.

No one understands the need to be a part of Simpy because its not being able to match upto the standards of other social bookmarking sites. Still, if you are a beginner at social bookmarking then you might as well can give this website a shot before moving on to a much better one.

Reddit…way to go!!

Reddit, pronounced as ‘read it’ or short form of ‘I have read it’ is a social bookmarking site. But, this social bookmarking site offers its users a variety of new features and facilities. This is the fact due to which it is able to give its competitors, specially, Digg an extremely tough competition. Though Digg is one of the most popular social bookmarking sites, but even Reddit is not far behind. Its popularity is surely increasing by the day and I decided to find out why.

The war of legends

Digg and Reddit offer more or less similar features to their users; however, there are some slight noticeable differences among them.

First of all, both Reddit and Digg allows its users to rate or vote for a story and then accordingly they are displayed on the respective homepages. The story on Digg just keeps moving downward and finally gets disappeared if it has not been voted enough. With Reddit, the voting counts but even the time of submission of the story is also taken care of while moving the story downwards or when removing it.

Secondly, both Reddit and Digg have advertisements on their sites. Reddit, however, allows you to rate the ad or vote it up or down according to your liking for the same. Digg does not support this feature.

Thirdly, Reddit lets you find out who are the people whose stories have been voted for the maximum number of times in the day and in the week. They are known as the karma gainers. In the case of Digg, you can get to know of the people whose stories have appeared on the homepage.

Fourthly, Reddit has a feature by the name of ‘Recommended’. It observes the kind of stories which you upvote for and then on this basis recommends you stories which Reddit thinks will might interest you.

What’s new?

Reddit has a number of new features, which tends to attract more users. For instance, on June 17, 2008 Reddit announced its out-sourcing i.e. people can now download the code behind Reddit and can also submit their own codes, to make Reddit even better, and send it across to the Reddit staff.

One of the most loved and new features of Reddit is allowing its users to create their own Reddits. You can now customize the feel and the style of your own Reddit page and you can also change the CNAME to host your Reddit at your own URL.

Reddit has always seemed to do the trick by involving the users in its main action process or plan. Users can make this site better by writing their own codes, they can customize the page and the Reddits and they can also help Reddit go global by offering to translate Reddit for them. Presently, Reddit offers translation support in English and in German.

Many a people are extremely fond of Digg but Reddit is bound to give it a tough time. With so many options, so much of variety, with so much support from its users…this social bookmarking website has surely a long way to go!

Propeller…the change unwelcomed

With the competition getting tough with each passing day, even the social bookmarking sites have to keep up with this present trend. Propeller is no exception when we talk about giving your site a facelift or simply updating or re-launching them with new features. Previously Propeller was known to the world by the name of Netscape.com and was operated by AOL-Netscape.

The disparity

Talking about what different things this social bookmarking or social aggregator site had to offer to its users, well…this time even this website banked upon voting. Propeller, just like the very popular Digg, gives its users a chance to vote for their favorite stories, and thus, the story that gets the maximum votes is displayed on the very first page. However, the only major difference between Propeller and Digg is that the latter displays the stories clearly on voting done by its users. And in case of the former, voting plays a role to only a certain extent after which ‘Anchors’ or their team of people who maintain this site take over.

The disparity which Propeller exercises when it come to its users is that apart from ‘Anchors’, this social bookmarking website also has some power users known as ‘Scouts’ and earlier known as Navigators. This group includes Weblogs, celebrities, and other Netscape power users.

The unpleasant change

Its users had actually grown fond of Netscape.com. But when Propeller and its new features were introduced, this change was not welcomed by many of them. They complained about a number of things. Navigating through bookmarks became tough for them and understanding the structure of the website became a task in itself.

Most people also found themselves to be confused because according to them Propeller had copied various different things from a number of other websites. For instance, the voting feature was taken from Digg, the color schemes and the designs were a copy of Yahoo etc.

Moreover, the traffic to Propeller was much less as compared to Netscape.com and also, the link to the collections of tonnes of bookmarks etc. by people were broken, which indeed was very discouraging and extremely disheartening.

The silver lining

One new feature that Propeller has recently provided to its users, which was whole-heartedly welcomed by its users, was FAS or Friends’ Activity Sidebar. This extension allowed the users to view the activities of their friends i.e. keeping a check on them became much more easy. If anyone from your friends’ list added a new story, or commented on any or voted for any, then the Chad button, the big brother of the AOL’s chat mascot, will automatically get activated. So all you will need to do is to simply click on that respective button and view your friend’s latest activity. But please make sure that you are actually signed in to Propeller before hand.

Whatever it is, the conclusion remains that Netscape did a blunder by converting itself into Propeller. I speak for many other people who believe so. With many more social bookmarking options, there’s absolutely no reason why people should opt for this.

Oneview…there is nothing complex about it.

Oneview is yet another social bookmarking website. What’s new in this one? Simply nothing. What new features does this site have? None. What new things does this social bookmarking site have to offer to its users? Not even a single one. Still, Oneview has a collection of more than five million bookmarks. Still, this site is simply loved by its users.

The simple reason behind its popularity is that it is one of the oldest social bookmarking websites. In fact, this can be considered as the oldest. It was launched in 1998 by the multi-media agency Denkwerk and is bi-lingual i.e. is in English and in German. Oneview is said to have brought to us the current Social Bookmarking. It remains to be the pioneer for social bookmarking and various different kinds of search offers.

The key features

Oneview is primarily a social bookmarking service. Thus, it does everything that a usual social bookmarking website is supposed to do.

It serves as an online memory you. You can store and save any kind of information from the world wide web. This information can be in various forms such as a webpage, website, blog, blog post, link, image, picture, audios or videos.  Your bookmarks are saved online and thus, you can easily access them with any computer that has an internet connection.

Oneview also lets you organize your tags and bookmarks in such a way that it becomes easy for you to search for one particular tag, whenever you want to. The ability to search for a particular bookmark is also a very significant feature of any social bookmarking website. With Oneview you can easily search for a bookmark so that you can find the required information quickly. The tag line or the punch line of Oneview is ‘human powered search’. Thus, as it can be understood, when we search for a particular bookmark, the information that is presented before you is humanly filtered.

Oneview helps you peek through other people’s bookmarks as well. And if you like any of those, then you can simply add them to your own collection. Through this, you can also find out who are the people who share similar interests just as yours and if you want you can even add them to your list of friends and be in touch with them. You can also start building up your own networks (like for schools, colleges, workplace etc.)

As per your wish and need you can make your collection of bookmarks either public or private. Also, you can do central copy of the saved items (if you fear that they would be removed from the internet).

Oneview did update itself in 2005, but the fact that its older version was still available in the market till 2007 proves how much its users love it. Oneview has got no complexities whatsoever and runs purely on the basis of trust and good work. If this view managed to attract you even a bit, then may be Oneview is all that you need.

Mister Wong…bookmarking and buddies and more

Though the name of this social bookmarking website is pretty different from the rest of its competitors, unfortunately it does not offer any different features to its users. It is quite like the social bookmarking website, namely, ‘Del.icio.us’ and offers services like bookmarking a website, or a webpage, sharing these links with friends, adding new friends, sending them messages or basically what is known as ‘Wonging’.

Mister Wong is one of the famous and most used social bookmarking websites in the Europe and this is because of the fact that this website is available in six different languages, namely, German, English, Russian, Spanish, French and Chinese. And it, thus, is able to cover almost all the variety in population. Even though this social bookmarking website came into existence only in March 2006, it has still successfully managed to create a name of its own. Mister Wong is German setup started by Kai Tietjen.

Highlights of Mister Wong

· Bookmarklets- They allow Mister Wong users to very easily bookmark a webpage or a website. They are small and very convenient to use and can be even used to return to your Wong homepage with just a single click.

· Searching- Mister Wong allows its users to search for different bookmarks, webpages or websites using different keywords. If you are looking for more than one tag, then ‘And’ is automatically added between the different tag keywords. If you type in ‘my:’ before the keyword, you can get the results from within your own bookmarks.

· Buddies- Mister Wong popularizes friends as ‘buddies’. You can contact other people from their bookmark page and can add them to your buddy list. You can also ‘recommend’ to them the bookmarks that you feel might interest them or be of use to them.

· Wong letter- If you subscribe to the ‘Wong’ letter them Mister Wong, every week, sends you the details of the name of webpages, bookmarks, or websites or even buddies that it thinks might interest you. It even includes your lucky number!

· Finding groups- The ‘buddies’ with similar interests can even form their own ‘group’. And if you want to be a part of any such group then even you can search for them using the ‘Groups page’. They can even be arranged in alphabetical order or you can even identify those groups that have the maximum number of bookmarks and members.
Its some of the other most used features include adding new bookmarks from other users, tagging similar bookmarks under a single tag, tagging bundles(allows you to store bookmarks on a particular subject), easy URLs, RSS feeds, maintaining tags as public or private etc.

And more than anything else, this site’s registration is absolutely hassle-free and in fact, it is absolutely free. Wonging is actually fun. No wonder, people of Europe love it so much. If you haven’t tried any of these social bookmarking sites as yet, or if you are bored of using the previous one…this one is surely worth giving a chance. Try Wonging for yourself…atleast for once!