Introduction

KeepMeOut is an excellent online service which prevents users to visit a specific website according to defined time interval. Using KeepMeOut, you can specify a website which you want to restrict and make a bookmark for it. Using the bookmark will prevent users from visiting the specified website too often, usually according to a set time interval. If you visit the website too much, it will show you a warning message regarding the website.

Usage

KeepMeOut is really simple and easy to use. All you have to do is specify the website, define the time limit (after which you will receive the warning) and click Submit.

You can click on Advanced Settings as well to further customize your preferences and include specific days and timings for applying restrictions.  Set the warning to either everyday or weekdays and define the time frame in which the restrictions will be applied. Click on Submit when you are satisfied with the settings.

After you click Submit, it will redirect you to a page where you will be given a URL to bookmark. You can save it in your browser and use it when you want to visit the specified website.

Now, open Facebook or any other specified website using the bookmark link provided by KeepMeOut and it will show you the warning that you have visited the website once in the time specified. It will also show you the time after which you can open the website again along with  general statistics like average daily visits and past months visits to that website along with the time when it was visited.

If you want to change the settings, click on the Change Settings button.

Conclusion

KeepMeOut is a must try utility especially for those who want to restrict the amount of time spent on specific website. However, there is one drawback, it will only work with the bookmark URL specified by KeepMeOut. Otherwise, if you directly go to the website it will not show any warning. But still, this service can help you become a bit organized and focus on your tasks rather than wasting time on different websites.

KeepMeOut

What is iOSFlashVideo?

Actually, it is not an application. Rather, it is a workaround enabling you to stream flash videos without downloading the videos you want to watch. Above all, it is offered for free. As long as you have a good internet connection, you can watch flash videos from the supported sites.

What are the supported sites?

Unfortunately, YouTube is not one of them. Nevertheless, you can still enjoy watching flash movies and flash video clips from other sites. Here is the list of the supported sites:

• Vimeo
• Blip.tv
• Break
• DailyMotion
• Flickr Video
• MegaVideo

Important Note: When watching embedded videos such as those offered at MegaVideo, you need to install OPlayer or the OPlayer Lite.

Step 1: Launch ‘Safari’ from the Springboard.

Step 2: Point your browser to this site: http://www.iosflashvideo.fw.hu

Step 3: Add the site to your Bookmarks. Click on [+] button below your screen, then tap on “Add Bookmark” button.

Step 4: After adding the address to your bookmarks, click the “‘Save” button to continue.

Step 5: Now, tap on the “Bookmarks” button once again. This time you will be brought to your bookmark page. Tap on “Edit” button below your screen.

Step 6: You will be brought to a page where you need to choose a bookmark to edit; select iOSFlashVideo among the list.

Step 7: We will be editing the URL of the bookmark we saved in Step 4. We need to delete all the characters in the address BEFORE “javascript.” In other words, we will delete this: http://iosflashvideo.fw.hu/#.

Tap “Done” button when you finish.

Step 8: After performing the Step 7, you will be brought back to the bookmarks page; tap “Done” button until you get out of the bookmarks page. In this step you may need to tap on it twice.

Step 9: Now navigate through the supported sites and load a page containing a flash video. Once the page has loaded, click on “Bookmarks” button [+] and select iOSFlashVideo. After which, you will be able to stream the video you selected.

So far, this workaround works perfectly on any iDevice you may have; it works on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Since you will not be using any apps aside from Safari and OPlayer (whenever you are streaming embedded flash videos), there is not much problem you will encounter. However, if you can encounter some, please don’t hesitate to post it here so that we can update this post and look for common workarounds to fix such problems.

Zootool is a web-based bookmarking site offering some added perks over similar bookmarking sites. Do you want a better way to save your favorites other than in your browser? If you use sites like Digg or Delicious to save your bookmarks you will want to read on.

Visual

What I like about Zootool is how visual it is. I have used sites like Delicious pretty frequently. To be blunt, Delicious is a pretty boring site.

Having something a bit more graphically pleasing to the eye can help a bit when you are a frequent user.

Social

It would be hard for any application or site to operate these days without some sort of social interaction with your friends or potential friends. Zootool’s home page shows popular tags and popular pages saved.

If you are a using a site like Digg or Stumbleupon, you will see some similarities. The socialness of the site is pretty apparent.

Apple type layout

Many of the stylings are very Apple-like. Very clean, simple and there is only what is needed and nothing more. When you are in the “Zoo” you will see what I mean. It almost seems as though you are in an Apple web-app.

Bookmarklet

Using a bookmarklet can speed up the process of adding a bookmark. Drag the small bit of Java code to your bookmark bar. Later, when you are surfing the web and see a page you’d like to come back to, click the Zootool bookmarklet to save the page.

Packs

Packs are categories to better sort your bookmarks. When you are saving a site, you will have the option to add tags, whether you want the bookmark to be public as well as a pack.

Initially the drop down will only show New Pack. If you want to create new packs, the easiest way is to go to your Zoo and press the plus sign in the bottom left corner of the page.

Pictures

When you are saving a page, Zootool will pull up all of the images on the page and offer the option to save them. If you are bookmarking a search on a photo site like Flickr, this is a very useful feature.

When you save a picture, it will save a link to the full size image. If you simply save the page and not a specific picture, the image associated with the page will be a screen capture of the page.

Coming and going

Everyone knows how much it sucks to change services. Zootool lets you import up to 200 of your bookmarks. Most browsers and web-based bookmarking services offer an export option. By exporting your bookmarks to a file on your desktop, you can easily import them to your Zootool account.

Conclusion

I have to admit, I like the way it emulates the Mac application layout. It looks, feels and acts like it is a Mac desktop application. Drag and drop functionality along with a more visually appealing bookmarking site makes for a site much more exciting to use.

Image Japus (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

When I am sitting at my desk and trying to focus on work, it is all too easy to lend my attention to something much more interesting than what I should be doing. Going to a search site or looking at the auto suggestions when typing in a bookmark tag can easily steal your attention.

I have recently been trying out a different homepage at work. 43marks isn’t as flashy as some of the homepages out there, but flashy is usually distracting. How 43marks differs from other homepages, is how much it offers in such a simple layout. 43marks combines two things people use on a daily basis: bookmarks and search engines.

Having four options to search at your fingertips without all of the typical distractions and random links associated with some sites is a breath of fresh air. Google, Yahoo, Bing and Wikipedia are probably the most commonly used search engines. All of them aggregate the “top sites” in a different way. Type in a search term and get the results from Google; to see what Yahoo,Bing or Wikipedia simply click that tab and the results shift to the other search engine’s results.

To personalize your 43marks homepage, follow these steps:

1. Click on the the “customize yours” tab in the top right corner of the main page.

2. Enter in a user name, email address and a password twice.

3. Once you are all set up, you will have a default list of bookmarks and RSS feeds.

4. To change the bookmarks and RSS feeds, click [Manage]

5. Three options are presented to you: Manage Bookmarks, Manage RSS Feeds and User Settings.

If you want to wipe the slate clean, 43marks does give an option to delete all bookmarks.

6. In the RSS Manage RSS Feeds tab, the same option to start from scratch is available.

* A pretty easy way to add a feed is to click on the RSS icon most sites have. This will pull up a page with the feed address listed. The feed URL should look something like this – http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakeTechEasier

The RSS part works well, but if you want to change a feed from ESPN to Make Tech Easier, you need to delete the old one and add in the new name and address.

7. In the User Settings, you are presented a four options:

• Choose whether you want your page to be private or public so anyone can see your list of bookmarks and RSS feeds. If you choose public, just give our the URL to your page. Mine is 43marks.com/trevor_dobrygoski

• How you would like the RSS feeds displayed – Expanded or collapsed
• The maximum number of books marks to display in each category column
• How you want the bookmark or RSS link to open when clicked

With all of the distractions present to anyone who works online, 43marks is a great solution to wrangle the information you NEED to look at and none that you don’t.

What tools do you use to cut down on distractions when you work online?

This is one of the most powerful way for a site to be discovered by the world and then become popular. Who wouldn’t like to be famous? (Digg effect, anyone?) We all know the power of having popular site(s), right? I mean, the money, the fame, the money, the money, that sort of things… That is why most Webmasters are doing their best to maximize this bookmarking trends.

The problem is, because so many people addicted to the bookmarking sharing trends, more and more bookmarking services are popping out everywhere and it has become a bit difficult to keep up with all of them. I can’t begin to imagine the tedious job of having to submit each and every of your posts/articles to each and every bookmarking services out there.

The Only Wire you’ll ever need

Luckily, many people are also having this problem, and some of them came up with a solution: OnlyWire – a bookmarking submitter service. Basically what this service do is help the user to submit his/her (or anyone’s) posts to many bookmarking services with just one push of a button.

There are several steps that users need to complete in order to use their service.

1. First is register with OnlyWire. They have two options: paid and free.

“Pay” version – use fully-supported OnlyWire “ad free” by paying $2.99 per month or prepaying for 1 year ($24.99). Pay customers are encouraged to embed the Bookmark & Share Button on your website to drive traffic and backlinks. You will also have the option to turn off OnlyWire advertisements.

“Promote” version – use fully-supported OnlyWire for FREE by adding the Bookmark & Share Button to your website or blog. You still enjoy the same functionality as the “Pay” version of OnlyWire, but promote the continued operation of the site through advertising.

2. Then you have to install the Bookmark & Share Button in your site. The term “install” here actually means copy and paste few lines of code, or for WordPress users, use OnlyWire plugins.

3. After that, enter your Username and Password for the websites that you wish to utilize. To date, OnlyWire supports twenty social sites, including: Del.icio.us, Facebook, Technorati, Twitter and Multiply. Of course you have to register with these services first.

Up-up and away

Suppose that everything is done, you can enjoy your effort. Everytime you post something in your blog, it will be automatically posted to the social sites that you’ve set above. And, everytime your readers click on the Bookmark & Share button, the post will also be submitted to the social sites which your readers choose.

Now you can have more free time to write and worry less about the tedious job of submitting your site(s)/blog(s) to the social sites.

Share your opinion about social bookmarking and other method of popularize your site/blog in the comment below.

Just like speed dial, Tidy Favorites allows you to keep a thumbnail of your favorite sites on a custom page so that you can click and access the site easily. In addition, you can drag the thumbnail and place it in wherever you like and resize it to your preference. You might want to create a big thumbnail for the site that you frequent the most and a small one for the one that you seldom visit. You can even select a particular region of the site as the thumbnail image. If one page is not enough for you, you can create tabs and folders to store your bookmarks. In short, there are tons of things that you can do here and it is really up to your creativity how you want to get it done.

One thing that I like about Tidy Favorites is that regardless of which browser you use, you get the same set of bookmarks throughout. For example, if you add a new thumbnail bookmark in Firefox, Tidy Favorites will backup the bookmark to its database. When you open Opera, it will show the same set of bookmark that you saved in Firefox. As such, there is no need for you to import/export your bookmarks from one browser to another.

Click to enlarge

At the moment, Tidy Favorites only support IE, Firefox and Opera.

Some caveats

On the first run, Tidy Favorites will scan your history and automatically create a series of thumbnail of the sites that you have previously visited. I kind of dislike this function since it created a list of thumbnails that I don’t like and I have to manually removed them. I would prefer it to generate the thumbnails based on the internal bookmarks that I have saved all over the years as that is really where my favorite sites are stored.

Secondly, this application only works in Windows. I would hope that it works in Mac and Linux too. If Firefox and Opera can be cross-platform, I don’t see any reason why this application can’t, especially when it is just a simple Firefox extension.

If the developers can fix up the above issues, I am sure this will become a very handy bookmarking tool, especially for those for use several browsers in their line of work.

[Tidy Favorites]