CyberNotes: Keep Your Bookmarks Organized Online with Quick Bookmarks

This article was written on October 27, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Weekend Website

With so many “social” online bookmark services available like Del.icio.us, some of the “non-social” services have been pushed to the background. Today’s weekend website is Quick Bookmarks, a great tool to help you manage your personal bookmarks without the social side. Not only does it utilize tabs and groups to keep all of your important links organized, it can also be used as an RSS aggregator. Because it’s an online service, you can manage and access your bookmarks no matter where you are.  If you already have a bookmark solution that you’re satisfied with, this would be a great place to backup all of your favorite bookmarks, especially because you can import your bookmarks. For those of you with insanely long lists of bookmarks that aren’t organized, I recommend trying out Quick Bookmarks to see if it’s a good organization solution for you.

Getting Started

The first thing that you’ll need to do to start using Quick Bookmarks is to signup for an account.  All you have to do is choose a user name, provide an email address, and select a password – that’s it! Once you’re all signed up, you’ll be brought to a generic main page which has a handful of different sites already bookmarked and a few RSS feeds displayed. This is just to get you started. You’re able to delete any of the bookmarks and start adding your own.

quickbookmarks1 

Features

  • Store and organize your bookmarks in tabs and groups
  • Show the original site icons near every bookmark
  • Import bookmarks (if you have an HTML file with your bookmarks)
  • Export bookmarks

Settings

Once you have an account created, click “settings” up at the top to specify how you’d like this service to work for you. Some of those options include:

  • Turning on “Snap” Shots to get previews of the bookmarked site before you click
  • Removing the Google search bar
  • The option to display site icons
  • Change the skin from blue (default) to red green or black
  • Options for how often to refresh RSS feeds from 5mn. to 60mn.

quickbookmarks2

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Adding a New Tab

Much like personalized homepages like iGoogle, Quick Bookmarks allows you to create multiple tabs.  For example, you could have a tab just for the bookmarks to all of your news sites or one for all of your work related sites.  You choose the name of the tab, add a description, enter some keywords, and select whether or not you want the tab to be public which means they can be shared with family and friends.

add tabs

Adding a Group

Under each tab will be groups like “Search Engines,” “shopping,” “music,” etc. You can add a group by clicking “Add new group, RSS or Gadget” at the top of the page.  Once you do this, you’ll be able to create a name for the group and then decide upon the type.  Different types of groups include bookmarks, RSS Reader, Gadget, Last Visited bookmarks, or Text Content.

Adding new bookmarks

I was disappointed to find that the “Add new bookmark” button at the top of the page does not work.  This is a bug which I’ve reported, and hopefully it will be fixed soon. During the mean time, you can use the “Plus” sign which you’ll find next to each of the groups as displayed in the image below (explanation of numbers following the image):

quickbookmarks

  1. Add a bookmark – click this button to add a bookmark
  2. Modify the group
  3. Move the group
  4. Sort bookmarks in alphabetical order
  5. Read news from your favorite feeds

Once you click the plus sign to add a bookmark, you’ll enter in the site URL  There is also a field for the Site Name which you can leave blank, and Quick Bookmarks will fill it in for you. You can also add a few notes if there’s something you want to remember about the link.

add bookmark

Customization

Much like what you’d expect with personalized homepages, you can drag and drop all of your groups, RSS items, and Gadgets around on each of the tabs and place them exactly where you’d like them to be among three different columns.

Wrapping it up

Overall I’d say that Quick Bookmarks is a practical solution for those of you looking for a way to organize your bookmarks without the socialness.  My favorite things about this service are that you can both import and export a bookmark file which is extremely helpful, but I also like that you can add RSS items. It’s also great to be able to add tabs and groups to keep everything organized. Once they get the bug fixed with the new bookmark button, I’ll be a happy camper.

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Yahoo Jumps in to Support OpenID… Yay!

This article was written on January 17, 2008 by CyberNet.

While people have criticized that OpenID’s have security weaknesses and may be vulnerable to phishing attacks, more and more sites are starting to use them.  Case in point… Yahoo! Yahoo just announced support for OpenID which is huge.  In case you’re not familiar with it, OpenID is a decentralized single sign-on system meaning with one OpenID, you can sign into multiple sites. This system is great for those of us who get sick of creating a new account for every site that we use on the web.  Remembering multiple usernames and passwords can get tedious, and OpenID solves these issues.

According to Yahoo’s announcement,  this new option will be available in public beta starting on January 30th – less than two weeks away.  The fact that Yahoo joined on is huge – doing so tripled the number of OpenID accounts to 368 million! It’s clear that the project is gaining popularity all around which is great because the more people that use it, the better chance it has of becoming mainstream. Aside from Yahoo, other major sites like America Online, Orange,  Live Journal, Zoomr, and others have already joined in on the project. In all, it’s estimated that there are more than 9,000 OpenID compliant sites.

openid

From the sounds of it, Yahoo intends to get involved more deeply with the OpenID project.  Speaking to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Raj Patel, Yahoo’s director of membership and registration said, “This is just the first step in working with OpenID.” Arrington said that Patel would not confirm if Yahoo would end up becoming a “relying party” which means that users with third party OpenIDs could log into Yahoo. All that was said was that Yahoo’s goal was to move in that direction.

Yahoo conveniently has a page setup where you can learn more about OpenID and take a tour. Check that out here.

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Coming Soon: Jabber Support for Facebook Chat

This article was written on May 14, 2008 by CyberNet.

facebook jabber.pngThe folks over at Facebook sure do know how to do things right (most of the time). One of the best things they ever did in terms of helping their growth was to launch Facebook Apps – it’s been a HUGE success for them. More recently, their decision to launch their own Facebook Chat was an interesting one and could prove to be beneficial by luring users to stay a little longer on the site to chat with their friends. It could also give users yet another reason to check back-in to the site more regularly during the day. More visits = $$$ for Facebook. One of the downsides to Facebook Chat as it stands is that users aren’t able to add it to all-in-one clients like Pidgin. That’s about to change and Facebook Chat is about to get more useful because Facebook Developers have announced that they are building a Jabber/XMPP interface for it.

At the moment, some of you may not realize how big this is but it’s huge. Currently in order to chat with your friends on Facebook, most people have to have their browser open and be logged in to Facebook unless they’re using Digsby (PC) or Adium (Mac), both of which have added Facebook Chat support already. This makes it a bit restrictive and could keep some people from using it. Once Jabber Support has been added, it opens up multiple doors by allowing developers to integrate chat into their applications with no hassle. One likely reason they’re announcing this before they even have it ready is so developers can start figuring out how they want to integrate chat into their apps. On the Facebook Developers blog they say, “we wanted to give you a heads up so you can start thinking about (or even start building) Chat into your applications.”

For Meebo users, it means they too would be able to chat with their Facebook friends. Meebo for a while has allowed users to login to any Jabber service. It also means cross-network messengers like Pidgin who wouldn’t necessarily take the time to integrate Facebook chat, would be able to support it because they do support Jabber. No additional configuration would be needed. Once Facebook Chat is more accessible, more people will be willing to use it which can only help Facebook grow in the end.

Thanks for the tip Curtiss!

Source: Inside Facebook

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New Type Of PayPal Phishing Scam

This article was written on June 18, 2006 by CyberNet.

New Type Of PayPal Phishing Scam
 

PayPal scams are always flooding our emails and such, but it is being taken to a whole new level now. When users visit this site it has a genuine PayPal address (as pictured above) and the message says “Your account is currently disabled because we think it has been accessed by a third party. You will now be redirected to Resolution Center.” This message, however, is not actually inserted by PayPal instead it is inserted by the scammers using a cross-site scripting technique (XSS).

You are then forwarded from this page to the fake site that the scammer has setup. At this site you are asked for your username and password which then takes you to a site requesting your social security number, credit card number, expiration date, card verification number and ATM PIN. The external site is not able to disguise itself as PayPal.com but the scammer hopes that you will trust this site since you were just forwarded from a “genuine” PayPal page.

PayPal has already fixed the vulnerability and they are now trying to get the site shutdown which is located in Korea. PayPal says that they currently don’t know how many people have been a victim to this scam but thank goodness it is fixed!

News Source: Netcraft

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Yahoo Intelligently Defends Against Phishing

This article was written on August 24, 2006 by CyberNet.

Yahoo Anti-Phishing Login Yahoo now has a new anti-phishing mechanism that should prove to be a very effective solution. What they have setup is a way for you to customize what your login will look like. If you want to do something simple you can just enter some text, like I did, and customize the color of the seal. If you really want something unique you can always upload an image from your computer.

The downside to this is that you won’t be “protected” if you are using a public machine. The seal is saved on your computer and is not attached to your Yahoo account. This makes it nearly impossible for someone to retrieve your seal but also means you will have to set this up on every computer that you use.

I love this idea and I wish other companies, especially eBay, would do something similar. There are so many phishing scams that go on each day and it would be much more obvious for you to recognize them with something like this in place. I give some props to the people at Yahoo who thought this one up.

News Source: BetaNews

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Helpful Tip: How to Buy a Used Computer on eBay

This article was written on September 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

ebay computers While eBay isn’t the best place to buy everything, it’s not a bad place to purchase a used computer. There are some risks involved, but in general, the majority of transactions on eBay will be trouble-free if you know what you’re doing. Here are a few helpful tips for buying a used computer on eBay that will give you a great eBay experience.

  1. Know what you’re looking for and do your homework! I can’t tell you enough how important it is to research the computers you might be interested in, read reviews, and know exactly what it is you want before you go browsing eBay for a computer. You’ll also need to determine whether a desktop or laptop is best for your needs.
  2. Determine the price you’d like to get the computer for and decide right then and there that even if the auction is nearing the end and it’s gone out of your price range, that you won’t give in and bid higher than you wanted to. It’s easy to get caught-up in the excitement of auctions and you could end up spending more than what the computer is even worth. Sellers know this which is why often times, they’re more willing to put an item up for sale as an auction versus buy-it-now.
  3. Compare the costs of buying used versus new. Often times you can buy a new computer for nearly the same price as some of the used computers selling on eBay. Determine if buying used is worth it.
  4. Read the description. Actually read it from top to bottom.  Look for an extremely detailed description of the product. Some of the details that should be included: Are there any scratches, blemishes, or cracks?  Is the battery still working? How long does the battery last? Are there any dead pixels? How often was it used? What accessories are included? What software will be installed on it including the operating system?
  5. Check for warranty information. Is there a warranty, and more importantly, is the warranty transferable? Alienware is one example of a company that does not allow users to transfer a warranty to a new user.
  6. Ask questions – Don’t be afraid to ask questions. If the seller is reliable, they’ll answer you promptly and thoroughly .
  7. Shipping – How will the computer be shipped and what will it cost? Some sellers may charge a hefty shipping charge, beware!
  8. Watch out for scams – they happen.  If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. PayPal is your best bet for a secure transaction.  If a seller asks you to wire the funds or even send cash, it’s a scam!
  9. Look for clear pictures that show any blemishes the computer may have. This is important! Those who are trying to scam you will usually only show a manufacturers picture. If the seller lists in the description that there are cosmetic imperfections, there should be clear pictures of them so that there’s no question about the condition of the computer that you’ll be receiving.
  10. Feedback – check to see what kind of feedback the seller has.  Were there any major complaints from previous buyers? What kinds of items has the buyer sold in the past?

Once you feel confident that you know how to buy a computer on eBay, go ahead and check-out what sellers have to offer at http://computers.ebay.com. Good luck!

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Yahoo and Motorola Join To Feature Web Phone Services

This article was written on July 22, 2006 by CyberNet.

Yahoo
Yahoo! and Motorola have joined together to form a new partnership. Motorla, which is the second largest maker of phones, has teamed with Yahoo to provide Motorola phones with ready to run ‘Yahoo Go for Mobile‘ services. Mid-priced and high end priced phones will have these services integrated such as Yahoo e-mail, Yahoo search, along with Yahoo address book.

The specific Motorola models that will be equipped with these services has yet to be announced. The new Yahoo Mobile services have been designed to make popular Yahoo services just as easy to use on Mobile phones and TVs as they are on computers.

As these kinds of partnerships continue to form between Internet companies, and hardware makers, it will make accessing personal Internet information quicker and easier on mobile phones and other portable devices.

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Put the Photos in your Flickr Account to Good Use

This article was written on May 07, 2007 by CyberNet.

If you have a Flickr account set up, or maybe there’s an account owned by someone else that’s filled with pictures that you enjoy, you can put those photos to good use.A program called Flickr Desktop Wallpaper will select images randomly from a Flickr account of your choice and turn them into a pattern of tiled images.

Features:

  • Select the opacity of the images (lighten, darken)
  • Choose how often you want the wallpaper to change
  • Go to the system tray when minimized

The image below (source) shows what Flickr Desktop Wallpaper looks like.

Flickrwallpaper

There are many great photographers who post their photos publicly on Flickr, so if you don’t have an account of your own, you could find one that you like and use their photos.

One Flickr account worth checking out has a lot of awesome photos which we’ve written about before. In fact, two of them are part of the default Vista Wallpapers.

Another great source is the Spectacular Landscapes Group over at Flickr where there are mounds of great photos from thousands of members who become part of the group by invite only. Nearly every photo I’ve seen in this group deserves to be there.

The developer appears to be pretty open to new features, so if there’s something you’d like to see, let him know.

Download Flickr Desktop Wallpaper

 

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How the Internet All Began…

This article was written on August 20, 2008 by CyberNet.

Have you ever wondered how the Internet all got started? Knowing the crowd that is reading this, some of you probably already know. For those that don’t, you’ll want to take a look at a site that the National Science Foundation put together.

What they did with the site is very well thought out and it tells the story of how we got to where we are today with the Internet. They start in the 1960s and work their way up through the decades. For each decade they show the number of computers that were on the Internet and the Baud Rate. For example, from the site we learn that in the 1960’s, there were just 4 computers on the Internet and the Baud rate was 4,000. Compare that with the 1980s when there were 159,000 computers on the Internet and the Baud Rate was 1,400,000 or the 2000s with over 1,200,000,000 computers on the Internet and a Baud Rate of 20,000,000,000.

nsf birth of the internet.png

For each decade they have additional information in the form of articles, videos, presentations, and documents from their archives of information. Looking through the site was a great reminder that it wasn’t that long ago when we didn’t have the Internet and we weren’t connected with millions of people around the world like we are today.

Checkout The Birth of the Internet

Thanks for the tip OldManDeath!

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Yahoo Answers Meets Jay Leno

This article was written on July 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

Yahoo! Answers on the StreetI’m not sure if you’ve visited Yahoo! Answers before, but it is a very active community where everyone tries to help each other. They even have an area dedicated to just computer and Internet related questions for those of you who are having PC problems.

The newest addition to the Yahoo! Answers family is called Answers on the Street, and stars J. Keith van Straaten. It reminds me of Jay Leno’s Jay Walking where Jay walks around the street asking people questions that they aren’t able to answer. It’s quite a spectacle if you haven’t seen it before.

Answers on the Street is a little different in the sense that they actually try to provide useful information, rather than looking for opportunities to make fun of people. As of right now there are only three videos posted, but they are pretty useful:

I really like this series, and I hope they continue to make more of these videos. It’s also nice that you can embed them on your own site, which I have done here with the home theater system video:

Source: Mashable

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