Over the last few weeks, I’ve been struggling to manage the influx of daily overwhelm, that firehose of content about Generative AI. Everything from book recommendations to articles, podcasts, ethics of Gen AI (don’t start!), and so much more. Every morning, I get a new book’s worth of emails with tool recommendations, must-know information that I should know because I’m presenting on Gen AI in education and many other fields. It’s enough to make anyone’s brain explode. And, let’s not forget, the left-overs from now defunct Get Pocket, the normal weblinks to Google Docs ad nauseum you have to track and find immediately.

Introducing Raindrop.io

I’m so grateful to a Mastodon poster a few months ago that introduced me to Raindrop.io. I had never heard of it until that moment. This super simple, easy to use bookmarking tool that is FREE works on my mobile devices, every browser I’ve tried, and there’s even a desktop app for Windows. After using it for awhile, I face-palmed and realized I could dump XbrowserSync, Wakelet (sorry, you guys charge money now), and stop worrying about synchronizing bookmark mess, etc.

What’s more, I am also able to back everything up in HTML or CSV (comma-separated values) so I always have a copy of my bookmarks. If you were to see my bookmark bar in any of the browsers I use (e.g. Brave, Chromium, Opera, Edge), you’d see 99% of my bookmarks are gone. Instead, I simply go to Raindrop.io to access my content.

I’m going to pull the trigger later this month and upgrade to a paid account (inexpensive). It’s worth the cost and has the same high level of utility as my favorite note-taking tool, Joplin Notes.

Curated Content for Anyone

You can find several collections I share linked but here are links to specific areas:

• AI Content. Note the screenshot above shows there are several collections, which together include 448 bookmarks.
• Cool Resources. This covers a wide range of content. It’s so easy to share specific collections with others since each menu item (e.g. “Book Recommendations” or “Encryption”) is also shared. And, of course, I have a Critical Thinking section as a companion to Another Think Coming blog, but I need to spend some time organizing it.

But Wait, There’s More!

Another super cool aspect of sharing collections in Raindrop? You can generate RSS feeds. This means people can subscribe to your content via RSS, or you can easily add them as WordPress widgets (in Appearance). That’s how I added the links to the right on this instance of WordPress.

Anything added in a nested collection gets shared. That makes organization by “folder” or collection easy, and sharing works. Not everything has to be shared, however, and you can “turn it off” by clicking the SHARE checkbox in the screenshot above.

Here are RSS feeds for what I’m sharing:

• Generative AI. This includes all the nested collections.
• Cool Resources and all nested collections.
• Critical Thinking
• Politics and History. These collections have controversial stuff that’s caught my eye. Check the Cool Resources for teaching history/social studies if you want educational content. Make sure to put your Skeptical Thinking hat on (use the SIFT Method or the Orwell Test) before you repost or share this content.

The Pro Version

The Pro version can apparently do even more, like keep copies of your content, allow more storage for file uploads. I wish there was a NOTES feature that allow me to add like a short note to preface a collection that wasn’t part of the SHARE window. I have lots of text files that I’d like to organize.

Final Thoughts

But wow, what a lifesaver of a tool. It’s free, it’s easy to backup so you always have a copy, and you can share links or via RSS to your buddies. If you’re into content curation, this is an amazing must-have tool, whether free or paid.

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