I like to consume information. I like to organize and categorize information. I like to share information. I like repositories of information. I like to do all this on a variety of platforms -- Windows, OS X, iOS, Chrome OS -- at anytime that suits me. I have different services I'm connected to -- Twitter, Google Buzz, several Posterous blogs, Google Reader, and Google Bookmarks/Lists.
So, at any given time, on any given device, I'll run into something that I need to read, digest, share, tag, and/or organize. Should I tweet this or bookmark this, or blog about it? The choices are numerous and sometimes it is difficult (at least for me) to decide what to do with all this information. But even more important to me is how can I quickly access the tools I need to do all this?
How many of you at ISTE right now are in this quandary...trying to do something with what you are consuming in an efficient and organized way?
It seems that most of the time I am consuming something, I'm on my iPhone or an iPad. There are a lot of JavaScript-based bookmarklets that are available to post to many different sites. I have them all stored in my synced Chrome bookmarks that follows me wherever I go and where I can use either the Chrome browser or Chrome OS.
Unfortunately, Safari on iOS doesn't seem to play nice with Chrome bookmarks. That is unless you use
ChromeSync, an iOS app that syncs your Chrome bookmarks to an app on your iOS device. That actually was a cool app until I was warned that my Gmail had been accessed via the Ukraine. With this app, you have to directly enter your Gmail username and password. I'm nervous about that and I hope the developer eventually sets this up to access your Google account in a more secure way. But I'm getting off the point of this post.
I need to be able to post to different sites easily from my iOS device but manually managing javascript-based bookmarklets was a real pain to setup on each device I had.
Enter Bookmarklet Combiner
Through my Twitter feed (someone from EBC on Saturday), I found
Bookmarklet Combiner, a neat site that allows you to bundle all your bookmarklets into one easy-to-access bookmarklet.
With this site, I created the following:
This list includes all the places I need to post to. You too can
access mine as a starting place and then tweak/customize to your own personal needs. Note the Post It! link at the bottom. THAT is the link you would drag to your toolbar to access the list of bookmarklets. Once you do that, go to a site you need to do something with, click on the Post It! link you added, and this is what you will see:
OK, so that is all fine and good for sure. But, what about accessing this on your iOS device? The basic steps are:
- On your computer, place the Post It! link where you can access and edit the link properties.
- Get to the link properties and copy the huge chunk of JavaScript.
- Paste it somewhere that can be accessible from your iOS device. I just email it to myself.
- Copy the javascript you sent over to your iOS device from your computer.
- In Safari on your iOS device, create a bookmark to a site -- any site will do just fine.
- In Safari on your iOS device, edit the bookmark you just created above and paste the javascript into the URL field and then rename the bookmark itself to whatever you wish to call it.
- Once that's done, each time you want to share a link, tap your bookmarks icon in Safari, select the new bookmark you created and share away!
- There is an excellent step-by-step process you can and should look at if you need more detailed help.
And it will look like this:
Now that I have this, I can easily share anything I run across to all the pertinent places. I hope this helps!
