I was reading in the new issue of PC Magazine about a new, free toolbar / bookmarking utility that helps you manage and keep track of your bookmarks in an interesting way called amplify

Intrigued, I visited the site, downloaded the toolbar and tried it out by organizing some news, pictures, video and my most recent blog entry on Mount. St. Helens (see screenshot below).

They call these files amped files and you can see mine by clicking on the screenshot above or clicking here. You can categorize your amped files and then share via email, IM, or link. To put this together — my very first Amp –it took me about 10 minutes. To add a picture you just click the Amp button and then move the mouse pointer over the image you want, left click on the mouse and choose which amped frame you want to load the image into. You can resize and organize the frames. You can highlight text on a webpage and then right click and choose “Add to Amp” to work on creating your virtual bookmark pizza. That’s my verbiage, not theirs. Here is their official explanation from within their logged in user area of what Amplify is all about:

Amplify’s solution bridges the gap between what people search for on the Web and how they manage what they find by enabling them to create multi-source bookmarks called Amps. Unlike standard single-source bookmarks, Amps allow Web users to pull together multiple pieces of content - including text, images, audio, video and animation - from different web sites they visit into a single page. These pages can then be saved on our servers for subsequent access from any computer and shared with anyone as a single link. And, because all content within an Amp includes one-click navigation back to its online source, users are never more than a click away from the different Web pages they have visited.

You can even post — it is moderated — your Amps with the amplify community, which is pretty cool and could be an additional source of web traffic. Overall, the interface is easy to learn how to use, the supporting website is laid out nicely and it makes bookmarking sites fun and interactive. Grade: A

• Mount St. Helens blows off more steam
• New site registrations via Oct 4, 2005 PC Magazine
• 106 miles from Mount St Helens eruption
• Tabbed browsing in IE via MSN Toolbar
• Blogging from the Windows desktop with BlogDesk
• Google Autolink stinkingly reminiscent of smart tags