Dennis Kennedy

Every so often I start to think about what will eventually take the place of the browser. Most of the time, I start to think this way after I get fed up with the continuing lousy state of bookmark/favorites management tools in the browsers. That means that, once again, I have a bunch of bookmarks, but can't use them in a meaningful way.

Today, I have a new sense of optimisim.

The latest issue of ResearchAgent News has a link to a new program called Snippy, which is an Internet Explorer add-in that addresses a number of the "research management" issues that still plague serious research on the Internet.

The timing could not be better for me, because I've once again hit a point where my frustration with the standard browser bookmark/favorite tools is about to boil over. And that doesn't even get to my latest question: how in the heck do I find a good way to store, track and return good items in a news aggregator?

Here's the description of Snippy: "Use Snippy to save, organize, annotate and share snippets of useful web content. Simply 'drag and drop' text and/or graphics to Snippy and save into a category or project. Snippy date-stamps snippets alongside your comments and the original URL. . . . Internet research surveys show that over 25% of user bookmarks become obsolete within a year,and over 70% are rarely, if ever, re-used."

While I can do most of these things one way or another, the process is exceedingly cumbersome. I've been thinking lately that just the ability to sort and look at my favorites in chronological groupings in just one step would be great. However, because I use category folders, that won't work with current browser tools, at least with those that I can find.

In fact, I have a concern that the whole notion of nested folders won't work well. That's my concern about the "three-pane" news aggregators. My point of view is this: "Give me enough nested folders and I guarantee that I can't find anything."

So, having reached the end of my rope earlier today, I was so excited by the way Snippy dovetailed with my wants that I want to write about it before I even try it.

My first web site grew out of my first irritation with the inability to manage bookmarks meaningfully in a browser and I've written about this issue in the past.

I'll be testing out Snippy, but I'm pleased simply that it has given me a bit of optimism on this subject.