January 20th, 2004, 3:54 pm

Furl it!

Ok, so I’m always gushing over the latest and greatest research tool online. But this is by far the coolest. Check; furl.net. Poynter sent me in the right direction with this one. Essentially, we all read a lot online. And blogging is a great way to keep track of it all. But the blog has its limitations - having to write something for each link, having to spend some time coding your entry. Furl It! eliminates that step - just hit the Furl It! button on your toolbar, and Furl It! archives the article for you. The full text of the article. Which you can search. This is elimates the problems of deadlinks, articles that have gone pay-only, and so on and so forth. Taking the coolness to a whole new level, I can syndicate my Furl entries for the day … so you can read my daily readings in your aggregator. I can display whatever I’ve read today in my blog - if you hit “Continue reading Furl It!” below, it will display whatever pages I’ve furled that day. You can even sign up for an email of what other people are furling. Or, you can just visit my furl site. Somewhere on the site, it references Furl as ‘your own personal Google’ - it truly is that kick-ass. And for people who read a whole lot, and who have bad memories, this is the coolest thing in the world: a free searchable library of everything you’ve read on the web. This shit is so new that as of January 13, 2004, only 50 users had signed up.

UPDATE 2-6: Even cooler, Furl links to this blog entry! I love you, Furl!