PSE Is A Personal Search Engine, Makes Browser Bookmarks Useful Again

PSE Is A Personal Search Engine, Makes Browser Bookmarks Useful Again

If you’re like me, your bookmarks are a bunch of nested folders and outdated links that are impossible to sift through. PSE (short for Personal Search Engine) changes all of that by making your bookmarks fully searchable, and lets you bookmark snippets of text from web pages as well.

PSE is free, easy to install (you simply drag a button to your bookmarks toolbar to install it), and works in just about any browser (except IE). All of your data stays on your computer — no logins or other services required. You can easily import your existing bookmarks (although only title and URL will be imported), and export your data to share with another computer.

To add new entries to your bookmarks database, highlight the text on a page you want to save and click the PSE button in your toolbar. This way the URL, page title, and the highlighted text you’ve selected will all go into the database.

The service is great for articles, but it’s especially good for research or other snippets of information that you know you’ll need later not based on the page title or where you found it, but the actual content of the page you were reading. If you stumble on a site with a great recipe, for example, highlight the recipe and add it to your database. Then later you can search for “garlic” and find it, instead of trying to remember that the recipe was on “easycheapweeknightdinners.com.”

If you’re doing research and need to cite a set of studies, or even if you just like saving bookmarks with complete article titles or article text, PSE can handle all of that for you. It really is a “personal search engine,” with each of your bookmarks fully indexed with whatever data you choose to save. Hit the link below to check it out, and right-arrow through the opening presentation. It may seem long, but it gives you a good idea of what PSE does and why it improves on the way browsers handle bookmarks today.

PSE Personal Search Engine [via Hacker News]


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