Tech Zombies

Personally I am a big “bookmarks” guy.

Everything I come across that even has the slightest bit of relevancy to something in my life I bookmark for a later time.

I used to be just an in-browser guy. Whether it’s a fun game that I can kill some time with or an important article on SEO for work…I would just bookmark it locally in my browser. Of course, the problem with this was transportability. Anything I bookmarked at work, I couldn’t access at home and vice versa…(unless I wanted to export/import a new file everytime I made a new bookmark!)

Then an apparent “answer” was found called, Del.icio.us. A browser based bookmark storage system that was accessible anywhere I had an internet connection. PERFECT! It even involved a tagging system to “tag” your bookmarks for easy retrieval later. Of course like Star Wars Episode II…we saw an “attack of the clones” and this idea spread like the plague. Literally 100’s of other bookmarking sites followed suit that involved bookmarking sites based on tags, labels, and even throwing in a dash of social networking to find friends with related interests.

This “golden age” of bookmarking…didn’t cut it for me. While tagging was nice and the social networking aspect added a good time waster, the use of tags only seemed to confuse me.

I found myself saying all too often, “Yeah that site with all the television shows on it…Did I tag that as ‘T.V.’? Or Was it ‘Television’? No wait, I think I tagged it as ‘Streaming’ ” With so many possibilities, and the bookmark being over a few months old…I had no idea where it could be or what it could be under.

I longed for a simplistic approach that was similar to the in-browser methods. Just a simple bookmark, a title, and a folder to organize my bookmarks into certain topics or categories.
If I wanted to bookmark a page about the beatles…I could bookmark it in Delicious under “Lennon, Beatles, Music”…sure. But personally I would rather have a folder just titled “Music” where I know I could find any music related bookmarks.

Well I am pleased to say that after a long wait, I think the service I was looking for has arrived and it goes by the name of DESKLOAD (http://www.deskload.com).

Deskload is in its infancy right now and although a bit lackluster, it looks to be the perfect solution for those internet users out there who want a simple place to drop your bookmarks into categories.

Deskload is basically a “desktop view” for your bookmarks. Add a bookmark, provide a picture to represent it, and BAM it is placed on a virtually blank screen as an icon. You can drag this icon anywhere on the page…make groups of icons…and when you want to visit the page, just click it!

Like many of the web 2.0 apps of today, Deskload also has a top navigation bar where you can access your bookmarks through a series of tabs. That’s right, registered users can create multiple named tabs which can divide your bookmarks into categories. These tabs work like having “multiple desktops”.

OK…so check it out and see for yourself:

VIEW OF MY DESKLOAD

You see at the top (I circled it in red for you) is the list of my deskloads…the tabs that I use to divide my bookmarks into certain “categories.” The one you see is music…with two of my most frequented sites already bookmarked. Those icons are draggable ANYWHERE on the screen like it was my personal desktop. If I just want to look for a game I bookmarked to play…I click over on the “Fun & Games” tab and just like what you see…a bunch of icons would show up…each a bookmark I entered into the system. This really makes it easy for me to organize my bookmarks into EASY TO FIND categories, that only involve one click.

As with most new sites there still are a bunch of features that are necessary in order for Deskload to even compare to the current trend of bookmarking sites…but everything I need appears to already be on a “To-Do” list for the Deskload developers.

1) The use of the favicon.ico to be the icon of the bookmark if you dont supply an image yourself.

2) The ability to bookmark pages as you view them (currently you have to manually enter the URL into deskload itself)

THAT is Deskload…and to me…it’s the long awaited answer to easy bookmarking that I have been waiting for. As soon as these new features are rolled out…I expect the site to start picking up a lot of steam. What does everyone else in the internet tubes use for their bookmarking purposes and why. What features of your current bookmark storage do you appreciate the most and which the least? Let us know!