Written by David Fisco
14 December 2011
Word count: 793
I moved all of my projects to the cloud, using Web applications such as Springpad and Google Docs to create the majority of my project assets.   But as my list of requisite Web applications grew, I found myself becoming increasingly burdened by searching for—and sometimes just remembering—my resources for any given project. So, I decided to use Google Chrome bookmarks to organize my cloud assets by project, with each project having a folder providing links to the part of each Web application that applies to a given project.  For example, if my project has a bibliography handled by Zotero, clicking on the Zotero icon in the project's folder will take me directly to the bibliography folder associated with that project, not the "top" of the Zotero Web application.

You'll find that each project is different, using different cloud resources.  Here is a list of instructions on how to create project-specific bookmarks for some of the Web applications I use most frequently.

  1. In Chrome's bookmark manager, create a bookmark folder with your project's name.
  2. Remember the Milk:  Create a task list with your project's name in Remember the Milk.  Visit that list in Remember the Milk and click on "Print" on the right-hand side.  Copy to the clipboard the URL that Chrome sends you to.  Back in the bookmarks manager, select your project's folder and tell the bookmark manager to add a new page.  Set the title of the new page to "Tasks" and paste the URL you just copied into the address field.  Then, in the URL, replace "print" with "home".  (This hack is necessary to go directly to a given task list.)
  3. Zotero:  In your Zotero library, create a new collection with your project's name.  Open the new collection by clicking it, and use the star on the address bar to add the address as a bookmark to your project's folder, altering the title if you want.
  4. Google Docs:  In Google Docs, create a new collection with your project's name.  Open the new collection by clicking it, and use the star on the address bar to add the address as a bookmark to your project's folder, altering the title if you want.
  5. Dropbox:  In Dropbox, navigate to the directory you will keep your project's files in, creating it if necessary.  Use the star on the address bar to add the address as a bookmark to your project's folder, altering the title if you want.
  6. Blogger:  In Blogger, create a blog for your project and visit the overview page of that blog.  Use the star on the address bar to add the overview page's address as a bookmark to your project's folder, altering the title if you want.
  7. Evernote:  In Evernote, create a notebook for your project and visit the notebook.  Use the star on the address bar to add the address as a bookmark to your project's folder, altering the title if you want.
  8. Finally, back in the Chrome bookmark manager, sort (using "Reorder by Title") all of your newly-created project bookmarks and, if necessary, sort the folder containing all of your projects so they will also be in alphabetical order.

You don't need to create the full set of bookmarks and resources for each new project you create.  When I start a new project, I sometimes create only a bookmark folder for that project, then the first time I look for a cloud resource that isn't in the folder, I create it and bookmark it.  You may want to create your own checklist with instructions on how to add the resources you use.  Then, when creating a new project, you could use your checklist to create the resources you know you'll need for the given project.  For example, almost all projects need task management, so you might want to include a Remember the Milk bookmark to your project's task list every time you create a new project.

There's another benefit to accessing your assets through bookmark folders rather than searching through Web applications:  It helps you concentrate.  When you open a project's bookmarks folder, you've made a decision to work on that project, and you know your thoughts should be focused on that project, not wandering into another.  For example, when I access my Remember the Milk tasks through a project's bookmark folder, my thoughts focus on the tasks of that project, to the exclusion of all of my other responsibilities.  I find it superior to opening up a Web app at some "home page" and being barraged by an array of things I'll eventually need to get around to.  It's a good habit to get into.

I use Google Chrome as my standard browser, but it's easy to adapt this technique to any browser.  If you'd like access to your bookmarks from anywhere or the ability to synchronize your bookmarks between different browsers, check out Xmarks.