Ma.gnolia is a great bookmarking site

del.icio.us started the whole social bookmarking craze. Problem for me was that it was on the slow side and I didn't like the interface. So I just relied on Google to remember web sites either by searching or through my bookmarks (you can get to your bookmarks either through the bookmarks page for your Google account or with the homepage module).

But this was not an optimal solution. I have four categories of bookmarks: my workflow bookmarks, my daily browsing bookmarks, my bookmarklets, and pages I don't frequent and don't want to forget or are a pain to get to. Google worked fine for the last category (bookmarks to not forget), but it didn't work perfectly for the other three. I needed some way to categorize my bookmarks.

While poking around online at stuff I discovered a new thing called OpenID. Basically it lets you set up an identity on a single site (called an OpenID server) that gives you a URL to represent you. When you go to a site that uses OpenID you just type in your URL to log in. To verify it is you it either has already done some deal with your OpenID server to verify it is you or it sends you to your OpenID server to log in there and then get sent back. The key point here is that you only have to worry about the password and personal info on your OpenID server and not on a ton of different sites. It's really handy.

Thinking that this technology was cool I wanted to find a way to use it. Then I noticed that Ma.gnolia used it. I had looked at Ma.gnolia before and always thought it was a pretty site (I originally found out about from Jeffrey Zeldman's site). Figuring that I needed to play with my new OpenID toy somehow and I was still looking for a web site to manage my bookmarks, I decided to give Ma.gnolia a try.

I am already very happy with it! First off, with OpenID, signing up took like two clicks and no new password or anything! I literally didn't need to type more than a URL. Secondly, Ma.gnolia has a lot of handy bookmarklets (those are bookmarks that do something, like in this case add a web page to Ma.gnolia). Third, the user interface is slick. Not only is the site fast and clean, but I never had to think about how to get to something I wanted. And fourth, they have various ways of viewing your bookmarks, including a trimmed down version. This works out perfectly for me since I can bookmark the sites that fall into my various categories and then have a bookmark that goes to the stripped-down page for easy viewing.

In other words I am a very happy boy with Ma.gnolia and OpenID. If you have any desire to get into social bookmarking or just want a site to store your boomarks I highly recommend it.