Wandering electrons... but not too far

Like most people I have a good number of web pages bookmarked. However I've noticed recently-in fact for quite a while now-that in reality I virtually never use most of them. In fact, what usually happens is that I bookmark something, and then I just forget that it's there.

Why? Well, Google.

The performance of search engines has become so good these days that I find it much easier to simply search Google for the site that I want, instead of going/searching through the hierarchy of my bookmark folders.

Instead of Bookmarks>folder>subfolder>subsubfolder>subsubsubfolder -- site Y
I use
Google -- Site Y
And baf, I'm there.

If you know the name of the website (and you usually do if it's something that you'd bother to bookmark) you'll get THAT web site as you're first result 99.9% of the time. Even if you don't know the name, a few good keywords will usually make your target appear on the first page of results. This tactic is of course more efficient for large websites, but I'm amazed by how well it works for small sites too, especially if you know their names.

The only bookmarks that I use regularly are those illustrious few that have been ennobled to the personal bar, the first of which is, of course, Google, followed by Yahoo! and then a baker's dozen's worth of others.

There are now bookmark websites, such as del.icio.us, that have put new twists on the idea of keyword bookmarking, but they've never won me over as my preferred way to bookmark...

So what do you think? Is bookmarking still pertinent? As Google and other search engines get better and better at reading our minds, are we going to see a day when browsers no longer offer a bookmark function?

Voilà, today's existential question...

As was the case at wired news and Ars Technica, Extremetech.com has few nice things to say about the Safari Beta for Windows recently released by Apple. They've decided moreso to give you Ten Reasons Not to Use Safari on Windows.

Their recommendation:

If you really want to be different and superior in terms of browser speed and look, we recommend Opera, which has proven security, plenty of sidebar options, and lickety-split page rendering.

Thanks are in order to iliad for posting this article in the forums today (here and here).

I will add a disclaimer here: All this might give the impression that I have a chip on my shoulder against Safari. This isn't the case. In fact, I thing that the arrival of Safari in the Windows world might actually be a good thing. However, I find it strange that Apple released this not-at-all ready for primetime "beta"... They've GOT to know that the competition on the other side of the fence is pretty darn rude with IE7, Firefox and Opera (especially:D) all proposing top-class browsers these days.

The theory is out there that they did this just to make the Safari browser a bit more familiar to people for the release of the Iphone. Maybe. But really, I think they've done themselves more harm than good here...

EDIT: The day after writing this I found still another article at Eweek.com. The title says it all: "Safari on Windows Falls Short of Top Browsers".

And when it comes to browsers, Eweek knows what they're talking about.

Wired.com published a not very glorious article on the new Safari for Windows beta.

The article summarizes with, "Overall, it's hard to find a compelling reason to like or to dislike the beta version of Safari 3. And without a compelling reason to switch, most Firefox and IE users won't." (Of course, no mention of Opera users, but nothing new there:mad: )

Also, they noted that the speed data given on the Safari for Windows website may be, well, a bit fanciful to say the least.

So, here I am with my first blog entry, and I thought I’d ask you all a question that might be fun for all of us:

What was “the thing” that made you decide on Opera as your default browser?

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