Who knew a label was so useful?

When I started blogging, I was well aware of the fact that I was years behind in technology. I surfed the internet, emailed, even had my own course website for a while, and collaborated on Google Docs, but I had never really taken the time to investigate any of the programs I had heard friends talk about. In my mind a label was a piece of sticky material that was sold in sheets.

Part of my aversion to looking into social networking and other technological innovations was the computer situation. My laptop was good, but it was a little dated and I tried to avoid as many ad-ons and processor drains as possible. When that computer died in an unfortunate run in with Diet Dr. Pepper, we bought a new desktop that happened to come while I was on my brief summer break and I discovered the label.

At first there was a lot of set up time that seemed to be yet another way of wasting time, but the product has been well worth it. I went through my web history and bookmarked everything in Google Bookmarks. I generally use the same 2-3 computers and don't access every site on every computer, so I had just used windows bookmarks in the past. As I transferred them, I labeled everything. This accomplished two things, one is made the drop down list much more manageable and two it made me really stop and think about how and why I use various websites. Initially, I had things labeled in fairly specific categories, but what I discovered that I love about labels (as opposed to the older folder systems) is that the same bookmark can appear in two different places. For example, my school email is listed under "teaching" and "email."

By chance, I had explored Google Bookmarks before other applications, but as I moved on to programs such as Reader and Notebook, I discovered that the system I put in place for bookmarks really was helpful in my everyday life. The materials and websites I have gathered for my dissertation can be quickly located under "diss" in all of my applications. While they don't quite all interface as much as I would like--I can't search reader for a label and pull up things in Notebook yet, I've been amazed at how much more organized it has made me. I was worried that like real and electronic folders I would end up with duplicate versions of similar categories (Ex. Children's lit, Children's Literature, children's lit, etc), but since Google references my other labels and suggests an option, this hasn't happened yet.

I'm definitely a fan, and I'm amazed I made it this far without the electronic label.