Ideas from Mark Stout

Good news.   XMarks has found a buyer .  They had said they needed to shut down, but LastPass , a password service has purchased them.  I love X-Marks as a way to have all my bookmarks available on the various gadgets I have. I tend to use Evernote to keep bookmarks falling in the "Hey, this is cool, I might need this again someday" category.  I keep frequently visited bookmarks in my browser, and XMarks lets me sync them between supported browsers.  And if I am using a gadget without a supported browser, I can still go to the XMarks website on that gadget and see my bookmarks. I mentioned XMarks before.

  My Family Tech column this week was about the choices we have in browsers.  I mentioned to my readers that I love Google Chrome and promised a blog post outlining my favorite extensions. I moved to Google Chrome full time a few months ago.  Now that the latest release supports extensions, and there are many useful extensions out there, I can fully recommend Google Chrome for most people. With web access most people's number one use of a computer, your browser is a big deal.  Changing it is akin to a sales company moving their CRM from Seibel to Salesforce, or a corporation converting their financials to SAP.  Of course, it is safer for browsers.  You can, and should, have multiple browsers on your PC.  While I use Chrome primarily, I also have Internet Explorer 8 which I use for one mis-guided web site that seems to work only with IE.  And I keep Firefox, my long time favorite, around too. I thought I'd review some of the extensions I've ...

If you like the topics I generally cover in this blog, then you should know I often find Web pages about these topics that I do not necessarily blog about. I do save them to my Public bookmarks page , an Evernote public notebook. The entries are tagged, so you can easily find the ones of interest to you.  There is also an  RSS feed  for the page, so you can subscribe to it with your favorite blog reader. There are tags for Evernote , Google Wave ,   Android ,  and many more. Some recent links I've saved are : A comparison of different online Google Voice iPhone/iPod push solutions - VoiceGrowl Cell Phone Plans: The Ultimate Comparison 7 Ways Real Estate Appraisers Can Use Evernote On how Google Wave surprisingly changed my life - This is so Meta CES 2010: AR Drone from Parrot is a helicopter you can control with your iPhone : Shiny Shiny

Getting a new computer for Christmas or anytime, gift or not, is like buying a car with some assembly required. You really can't just fire it up, and take off.  There are a host of irritating little jobs you need to do before that new computer is truly useful About once a year it seems, someone here gets a new computer.  Since there are three of us, that's about right.  Rotating your computer every three to four years isn't extravagant, especially for the two here who carry laptops out into the world--that's rough on a machine. My son and wife truly want the power up and go experience from a new computer, so I've gotten rather used to prepping a new computer.  If you are giving a new computer as a gift, perhaps my little workflow can help you. Note : This is going to assume a Windows 7 laptop with wi-fi as an example PC. Take Notes Before you even take it out of the box, open up either a paper notebook, or if you have another computer close by, open up...

Update same day as publish (11-20-2009 6:51 PM EST) : The Delicious import was forever on the Web Client's Settings page.  I see now Evernote has redone that page, and now has a separate Import page.  However that page only lists import from Google Notes.  It does not have Delicious anymore.  I'll leave a message on one of the forums asking about it and will update here when I get an answer. Update 11-22-2009 - Evernote says " The delicious API changed its behavior enough that it failed more often than it worked for our users. We disabled it until we have someone who can sort out whether there's a better solution. "  Let's hope it isn't too long.  When I see the import ability is back, I'll create a new post here.   Some men collect cars, or golf clubs, or coins.  I collect bookmarks. As I surf the web, I am forever finding things that I either want to be able to find again, or find interesting but do not have the time just then to read. ...