One of Evernote’s shortcomings is that its web clipping on the iPhone is hit or miss. Not only can it be slow, but with some sites it just doesn’t work – the clipping window runs off of the screen, so that you can’t fill in any information or even click on the buttons. As a result, I’m turning more and more to Read It Later on the iPhone. Read It Later is an app that is available as a Firefox plugin, as an iPhone app and bookmarklet, and as a bookmarklet for all computer browsers. If you find a web page that you want to review later, use the bookmarklet. That page will then show up in a reading list that you can access from your browser or from the iPhone app. I find it particularly elegant and useful on the iPhone. When I’m at a page that I want to review on my computer later, I open up my iPhone bookmarks, and tap on the Read It Later bookmarklet. So long as I’ve signed into Read It Later recently, a second page briefly opens, flashes a "Saved!" message, and then closes, returning me to the original page. It all happens quickly. This is the type of functionality that I wish was built into Evernote.

Xmarks, formerly known as Foxmarks, is a Firefox extension that synchronizes your bookmarks across all of the computers on which you use Firefox. Xmarks also supports Internet Explorer, and Safari (Mac OS), but I haven’t tried it on either of those browsers. Xmarks was the first of these five syncing tools that I used, and is essential for anyone who needs to keep bookmarks in sync between browsers.