ESnips is a cool tool for organizing notes A lot of services have sprung up recently to help you organize your notes and favorite links. Among them are deli.cio.us, wink.com and RawSugar.com. They're worth checking out because they let you see link lists from people with interests that are similar to yours and so facilitate a kind of social networking through lists.

But the coolest tool I've seen so far is eSnips from Net Snippets, Ltd. This services gives you a generous 1GB of server disk space and a browser toolbar that you can use to clip and organize anything you find on the Web. You can upload anything from simple links to entire Web pages with a couple of clicks. You can also upload files. Everything is stored in folders which can be kept private, shared with selected friends or published on the Web. Here's a folder I'm putting together on fun and offbeat stuff. Visitors to your public folders can rate the content and add comments.

ESnips is still in beta, is buggy and has some user interface shortcomings but it has quickly become an indispensable research tool for me. As I read articles or find websites on topics that interest me, I drop them into the relevant eSnips folder for later retrieval. When I'm ready to put together an article or chapter, I can revisit everything I've found in one convenient place. And the generous disk allocation allows me to store photos, PowerPoint files and other items that I may need to retrieve when I'm not at my own computer.

It's free. If you're an information junkie, try it.  ¶ 10:41 AM