Orangeinks

Fav4: A Simple Customizable Social Networking Start Page

Fav4 is a service that allows you to customize a start page for your browser. The page displays four (4) websites of your choice and is presented in the simplest way possible. The website is cookie based so you don’t need to create an account in order to use the website and save your settings after customizing.

Instead of bookmarking your favorite website, which also works by the way, you can simply select four of your favorite social networking site or web service from Fav4’s list. If your favorite website does not appear on Fav4’s list, you can always offer a suggestion to make the site work better for you. You can also check out their pending suggested websites page to see if your favorite is already included in their list to avoid double posting.

Displaying only four websites on a start page is not for everyone but it’s a cool website nonetheless. The huge 70 x 70 icons are hard to miss plus it makes your start page look nice and clean. Plus, you can access each site using your keyboard by pressing 1234 or asdf and c to bring up the config panel.  Check out the introductory video below.

Tags: bookmarks, fav4, Start Page

ToRead: Bookmark to Email

ToRead is a simple but extremely useful email-based bookmarking service. Registered users can easily bookmark any page on the web and send it directly to the user’s email for later reading. The service is free. Registration and practical application is very easy to accomplish.

To register, just hand them your email address and verify it. You will be redirected to a page where you get a bookmarklet which you will of course use for bookmarking. You can select from two of the bookmarklets available. [toread] will simply bookmark a page then send it to your email and the [toread+] bookmarklet will bookmark a page and allow you to comment on that page. Whichever you choose is totally up to you. Just drag one or both of them to your browser’s bookmark toolbar.

What makes ToRead even more useful is that when you bookmark a page, it doesn’t only send you a link/URL of the bookmarked page, it also delivers the cached page (including images) that you bookmarked. This way, you don’t have to go to the link if you don’t want to. You can just read the whole stuff straight from your email. Online bookmarking shortcuts are also available so you can bookmark the emailed link to your favorite online bookmarking site if you wish to. ToRead is a very useful bookmarking tool. If you prefer to get your bookmarks emailed to you, then ToRead is the right tool for you.

Tags: bookmarking service, bookmarklet, bookmarks, toread

Firefox: Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer

Are you using Read it Later Firefox extension or love to use Firefox 3′s easy bookmarking feature but afraid to lose all your bookmarks in events like computer crashes? You should give Foxmarks a try. It’s a bookmarking add-on for Firefox which allows you to sync/backup your bookmarked pages online.

Foxmarks will store your bookmarks online whenever you starred a webpage. This is particularly useful if you are using multiple computers. You can install Foxmarks on all the computers that you are using. That way you can access your bookmarks anywhere. It even backups bookmarked pages stored in your Stumbleupon toolbar and lets you easily import bookmarks from your Delicous account.You can also save/export your Foxmarks bookmarks in html form.

The deleted bookmarks in your browser will also be removed from your Foxmarks account whenever a sync is made. The only downside of this is that when you accidentally remove a bookmark and synced it with Foxmarks, your data will also be lost.

You can set Foxmarks to sync automatically or every time you shutdown Firefox. The tool is very simple and easy to use. You can also view your Foxmarks bookmarks in a cool preview window without going to the actual page. The plugin sits nicely on the bottom of your browser and very useful when you need to quickly or steadily backup your bookmarked pages.

Mozilla Firefox add-on page for Foxmarks.

Tags: bookmarks, Firefox, foxmarks, synchronize

inSuggest: Get Bookmark Suggestions Based on your del.icio.us Taste

inSuggest is a service which gives you suggestion based on your delicious bookmarks. It will go over your bookmarked links in your delicious account and make bookmark suggestions that you might enjoy. It’s pretty much like Stumbleupon, the only difference is that inSuggest displays the links to the websites that you might probably like based on your delicious tags.

This is quite a useful tool for del.icio.us users for finding sites that might interest them based on their current bookmarks. Non del.icio.us users can also join in the fun just by entering a random del.icio.us username. There is no need to register to use this service. Just enter your del.icio.us username or someone else’s username to start using inSuggest. It will automatically generate personal recommendations for you based on the tags saved on the account you entered. I entered my account and it produced quite interesting suggestions for me.

inSuggest also have a Flickr and Website suggestion feature. If you own a website, you can also suggest it to inSuggest users who might find your site useful.

This is an interesting new service for discovering new sites based on your del.icio.us taste and others’. You might want to check it out just for fun and see how it goes for you.

Tags: bookmarks, delicious, inSuggest