Bookmarks are like that box you stick in the back of your closet…

…never to be heard from again, except for that once-per-year cleaning when you look at the box for a few seconds and then put it back in the closet :)

If you follow this blog or my delicious feed, you will notice that I bookmark frequently. However, the truth of the matter is that I rarely go back to search those bookmarks.

If I need to find something online I generally visit Google and search, even if I’m looking for something related to a topic I’ve studied (and bookmarked) in depth.

The bottom line is that I’ve just realized I’m using my bookmarks  to communicate my current interests in business and in life to the outside world, and not as a way to refer back to items I’ve found interesting.

What would be very interesting is if I could connect those bookmarks to other parts of my Internet experience, allowing me to tap into them when viewing other relevant content.

For example, if I bookmarked an article about storage area networks, it would be nice to have my email client aware of that when I emailed someone who worked at EMC.  Similarly, if I bookmarked an article about a specific startup, I’d want my email program to make me aware of those bookmarks and give me an option to plug them into an email to someone working at that startup. (Xobni, are you listening? :)

My point (not limited to bookmarks) is that it would be cool to see technologies that would bubble up data I generated on the Internet yesterday and find interesting ways to repurpose it today.  It does take an investment of time and effort to generate this data and I’d like to be able to get a return on that investment.

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