BlueOrganizer is probably one of the more difficult to describe tools that I’ve used recently. But, it’s become one of the more valuable tools, being a digital swiss-army knife of sorts. In this post I’m going to detail a little bit more about the BlueOrganizer, what it is, and what it does, so that you can decide if this tool would help you out.
The description on BlueOrganizer’s site says that BlueOrganizer is:
“BlueOrganizer is the new smart-browsing technology for Firefox. It automatically recognizes things like books, wine, travel destinations and offers contextual shortcuts between your favorite sites. With BlueOrganizer you can instantly send books to your Amazon Wishlist, find wines with similar taste on Wine.com, lookup maps on Google - all from one simple, personalized menu. Here is how BlueOrganizer lets you Browse Smarter”
This statement is a little bit misleading about what it does though, in some places it doesn’t give you the right information and yet still doesn’t tell you about some of the BlueOrganizer’s more desirable functions. Although feature-wise their site does contain a comprehensive list of what this thing can do.
One thing about BlueOrganizer that has kind of irked me from the very beginning is that it operates on a ‘whitelist’ style of figuring out what your websites actually have on them. Granted, most of the big sites are there, but a white-list can’t keep up with all the latest sites. This kind of limits the usefulness of the organizer, if you’re planning on using it to bluemark gadgets, books, and other things you might like. Although it does make up for it in other features. For instance, if you look up an iMac on Amazon.com the blue organizer will recognize it as a gadget. This is evidenced by the icon changing. Go to Apple.com and look at the EXACT same iMac, and you’ll see that nothing happens.
Where BlueOrganizer actually DOES excel though, is in being a window to multiple websites and services. For instance, if you were to find an item you might like to post to del.icio.us that’s as simple as right-clicking and adding it. Want to post a photo to imageshack.us? Easy to do, just right click and go. This kind of functionality DOES make my life easier and more fun. In my opinion, JUST this functionality is worth installing this firefox extension for.
I have used BlueOrganizer off and on since earlier versions existed, and I’ve even talked to the developer about my problems with it and he was very happy to help me with it when I first started. One feature that it used to have, that it doesn’t have anymore, is integration with services (importing from flickr, del.icio.us, Amazon, etc.) while this wasn’t a ‘deal or no deal’ feature, it was still nice to have.
I do know that the developers of BlueOrganizer take almost all reviews and sites that talk about their extension very seriously (I even received an email from a staff who noticed that I had removed my ‘bluebadge’ from my blog) so let me use this space to present a list of features I would REALLY like to see with this in the future (in no particular order):
- A toolbar or buttons to quickly get to my bluemarks. The sidebar just feels kind of clunky, bloated, and slow to me. If the app built menus in my Bookmarks toolbar, or something, that could be incredibly useful to me though, and fast.
- Let the hive build your white list, keeping up with all of the content on the web has to be incredibly difficult, why not let the hive (people) decide what’s a gadget site, what’s software, etc.
- Continue to offer solid integration with apps and services. I really look forward to the day I can use BlueOrganizer to find out what local retailers might be selling a book I found on Amazon, and where they’re located with a map (thanks to Google Local).
One feature that hasn’t been touched on yet, is the ‘smartlinks‘ and ‘Bluebadges’ that help you share what you’ve found with other people. These are SERIOUSLY cool if you’re a user of a social networking site, a blogger, or just anyone who has a place to post these. (I’m fairly certain they only have value to you if you’re a blueOrganizer user, though)
An example bluemark might be: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
So, while the value of BlueOrganizer may not be where the site and other articles would lead you to believe (Bluemarking based on what an item is, etc.) the BlueOrganizer has tremendous value in it’s integration with other sites and services and it’s truly a pleasure to use. I definitely wouldn’t feel bad recommending this extension to a friend.
Rant Over. Flame On.
- Adam.
It’s no secret that I pretty much pine after Apple’s computers. I love the design of them, the simplicity, they appeal to me in a way that no other brand does. It’s also no secret that they’re pretty expensive, regardless of that fact Apple’s