Library clips

I’m trying out various ways in which I can collect links for future blog posts…I don’t really care that much to actually draft the post and send it to post to my blog. I’m interested in the first aspect of the process, which is just collecting links, and perhaps jotting down ideas.

My blog

I can simply click the “Press It” bookmarklet for my wordpress blog, but this will create a new draft post, what if later I want to collect another link to be included in the same post, when I click the bookmarklet it will again create a new draft post, I can’t choose to include it in a particular draft post. For me this is the main criteria for collecting links for future posts, plus it has to be a web service so I can access it form any PC.

Google Notebook

At the moment I’m using Google Notebook as you can add a link to a section heading within a notebook.

Link Bookmarks

I could use a bookmark service like del.icio.us but it is messy to save these kinds of links amongst my bookmarks.
I could register with another bookmark service to just save these kind of links, or even a temporary bookmark service like Scratchlist, or ListMixer, I’d just tag the bookmark with the tag of the service I want to write about. When I’m ready to write a post I go to my bookmark manager and click a tag, here I will see all the links I’ve collected that will be included in my post.

Note Bookmarks

Simpy Notes and TagFacts allow you to bookmark a page and also write some text, so this is similar to link bookmarking, but also allows just text.
This is a quick and easy (and private) way to collect links for future blog posts.

Google Reader

I guess I could also bookmark in Google Reader as you can tag posts, but what about posts that I didn’t find in Google Reader.

Email

Another way to collect temporary posts is to use the email me bookmarklet, these emails will go in my inbox or I can set a rule to bypass the inbox into a folder. But I want to choose which folder for the email to goto at the time of sending it, plus if a folder doesn’t exist yet, then I want to create one at the same time as I send the email.

The Google Toolbar has a send with Gmail button (also find this button at a service like Blummy)…you could send an email to yourself, but again you can’t create a tag on the fly or choose a tag to deliver this email into, bypassing the inbox.
It would be good if you could include the tag in the email address
eg. tag:wiki:username@gmail.com
On top of this it would be good to IM to a tag in your Gmail.

Online word processor

I haven’t used one of these in a while, I wonder if you can bookmark a page you are on to a particular document. This would also be handy if you had a thought you wanted to capture, just hit a bookmarklet and send it straight to the document.

Browser Favourites

I could use good old IE favourites, when ever I add a favourite I can choose a folder or even create a folder, and when I publish my blog post I just delete this folder…very easy.
But the idea of this is to collect these links at a web service, so I can access them from any computer, so the solution to this is to access my favourites anywhere using Chipmarks.

List/To-do/Task

Gubb allows you to SMS or email an item to any of your lists (but first you have to go to Gubb to make the list, so this is an inconvenient for the way we want to use Gubb).
Also you need to know these email addresses you are posting to, so a bookmarklet would definitely be handy as an alternate way, click the bookmarklet and choose which list to add the link to.

Another let down is you can’t IM a post to a list, but then do I really want an IM contact for every list, especially when I have to remember to delete these contacts after I have published my blog post.

Online Blogging Client

WriteToMyBlog allows you to draft blog posts which you can then send to your blog/s. Although it doesn’t have a bookmarklet.

Browser

Flock is a blog editor, but then I don’t want to change browers.

Performancing for firefox - same as above.

Wiki

This option doesn’t seem right, but you could do it.

Outliner

Until a service like OPML WorkStation provides a bookmarklet this isn’t really convenient.

[UPDATE 22/03/07 : Here’s the bookmarklet, I wish my Press It bookmarklet had this, that is choose the draft post I want to add the link to]

My choice

If WriteToMyBlog had a bookmarklet which let you choose the post to add a link or some text to, this would be the ultimate. While I’m there I might as well draft the whole post and publish it straight to my blog (also gives me a back up blog).

I also like the idea of Gubb, I would probably use this if it had a bookmarklet.

A bookmark service, or better still, a note service might be the best answer, as I can add text or a link to a specific tag or create a tag all from a bookmarklet. When I publish my post I can simply delete this tag with all the items in it.

So it’s either a note service like Simpy Notes or continue using Google Notebook

…in the meantime I’ll see what happens at WriteToMyBlog and Gubb.

Related:
Managing draft posts

[ADDED 07/02/07: IMified : access services by IM]

[ADDED 26/03/07: Zotero]