Like many of the enthusiastic early technology adopters (a nice way of saying "obsessive geeks") I know, my browser's bookmark toolbar (the bookmarks that are ever-present along the top of my Firefox window) is overflowing with special-purpose "bookmarklets"--special-purpose bookmarks that actually run a javascript to accomplish a task. One of them, for example, lets me add a page to my del.icio.us bookmarks. Another converts an Amazon item page URL to a version that includes my Amazon Associates ID so that I can get a small % of the profits when someone buys an item because I linked to it. Two others do a searches for the page I'm looking at in del.icio.us or Technorati, so I can see who's linking to or writing about the site.
The problem is that they're overflowing the bookmark bar now, so I have to give them short, cryptic names to fit them all in. And that makes them hard to find.
The solution? A nifty little too called "Blummy," which lets me consolidate them all into one. The web-based interface on the Blummy site lets you configure the size and contents of your bookmarklet collection. When you're done configuring the tool, you simply put the Blummly bookmarklet link in your toolbar in place of the many links it contains. Clicking on the Blummly link displays a nice little CSS div on your screen that contains all of the blummlets you've specificied.
They've got a quite a few "standard issue" bookmarklets on there for people who are looking to add some functionality. But more importantly, for me, they offer the ability for you to build your own "blummlet," thereby allowing me to replicate all the bookmarklets that were cluttering up my toolbar.
So, what's in my Blummly box? Right now, I've got 7 blummlets:
- post to del.icio.us (explained above)
- del.icio.us lookup (list of del.icio.us users who've linked to the page I'm currently viewing)
- Technorati Cosmos (list of weblogs linking to the page I'm currently viewing)
- CiteUlike (post to the academic equivalent of del.icio.us)
- Wikipedia Lookup (look up the selected/highlighted text on the page in Wikipedia)
- Amazon Associates link-maker (explained above)
- King County Library System lookup (Jon Udell's "library lookup" tool--looks up a book in the library catalog of your choice)
Most people won't ever have a need for this...but for those of us who tend to collect these special-purpose bookmarks, Blummly is a great tool.
Awesome! Thanks for the tip.
I haven't used it extensively, yet - studying for the SAT tomorrow - but is this much of an improvement over simply putting the bookmarklets in the Bookmarks menu? It doesn't seem like it would be.
I use Safari, and I have my bookmarklets inside folders on my bookmarks bar. Are there browsers that can't do this?
BTW, I love Jon Udell’s “library lookup” tool. I use it all the time to put books on reserve at my local library.
With blummy you can not only insert bookmarklets as blummlets into your blummy but you can also insert e.g. an image, as the pagerank blummlet does it (so you don't have to install the google toolbar for that functionality), or, use a form for posting to del.icio.us from within the current page. That isn't possible with "normal" bookmarklets.
thanks for mentioning ;) alex
Very cool! I have this same problem! (well, not any more)
Eric
Google searched for bookmarks tools an viola, I think you've ended my plight. Those sound promising... and like you said for the esoteric ;)
Very neat!
I do have one question ... you mention "Another converts an Amazon item page URL to a version that includes my Amazon Associates ID" ... where do I find that? :) That would make our lives so much easier at work, where we add our Associates ID to our New & Noteworthy book listings.