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An Informational Spring Cleaning with Bookmark Surprises

So I just moved back to the east coast after living in San Francisco for 13 years. (SF is great but I got sick of the cold fog, the greed, and the overpriced rents) For the first time in years my email inbox is quiet. You'd think I'd be happy about that, but I miss the attention. I think I'm now receiving more spam mail than friend mail. Sigh. While I'm waiting for my stuff to complete it's trip east, I'm left with my trusty old powerbook, and nothing much to do but get organized.

First the email. Fortunately I switched to web based email a couple years ago, which makes things simpler. Like a tyranical queen of the digital domain I deleted EVERYTHING out of the Yahoo! mail account. Who needs Yahoo? Apparently Microsoft! Next, I tackled my gmail problem, slashing archived mail like a Bazilian Rainforest. For christ sake why am I so open??!!

Next comes the pandoras box of bookmarks. Over the years I've saved sets of bookmarks, from many different work computers and personal computers, the sets have collected, for the most part, here on my laptop. Going through them is like a stroll down memory lane. (no pun intended) My biggest shame is that most of my bookmarks are related to work for various projects, or competitive research which I have done throughout the years. Probably only 5% of my bookmarks have any personal relevance. It's just sad that I've managed to save more techy geeky info than information I actually care about, like art, travel, and food... I feel like a looser.

Last November I was working on a new "social bookmarking" website sortof like a Yoono meets Clipmarks but way more user centered. Unfortunately that project died over Christmas when the market tanked and my partner got scared. I still have the prototype and I own the domain, and I might resurrect the project... But today a recruiter contacted me about a position at Yoono! I had to tell him I only consult for start-up companies. No full timey for Stephy at start-ups! Anyway, I pretty much concluded that all bookmarking sites suck when I did all that research. Except for Stumbleupon, Google Notebook, and Digg. Is Digg a bookmarking site?

Back to the bookmark graveyard. Look old friends! It was nice to look up the Other Stephanie again, but her website's expired. Then retracing my friends band Sydewynder which turned in to a band called The Mayhematic which is apparently a rant about Peak Oil. After purging most of my old bookmarks I decided to let Digg and Google do the remembering for me. Dwayne, please get more cultural categories like Art and Travel into Digg! :o)

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