Springpad

Chrome, like most browsers, lets users bookmark Web sites so that they can be easily accessed again. But if you've ever wished for a way to better organize your bookmarks, share them across platforms, and keep track of notes and to-do lists all at the same time, you'd do well to ditch old-fashioned bookmarking and try Springpad instead.

Springpad requires new users to either create an account or sign in with their Google, Facebook, Yahoo, or Twitter account. Once installed, the Springpad extension appears as a small icon to the right of Chrome's address bar. Clicking the icon reveals a menu that displays your notebooks, which are similar to folders; for example, you might have a notebook for recipes, another for travel, another for hobbies, and so on. You can easily access saved items by clicking the desired notebook or the All My Stuff icon, which displays everything; you can also search notebooks, a handy tool once you've acquired a lot of items. Springpad lets you bookmark Web sites, as expected, but you can also create notes and tasks. There's also a feature to look things up, which we loved. Reading a book review and want to make a note of the book? Look it up with Springpad, and the service will return a list of results that include online retailers. Saving items this way creates a wish list for items anywhere on the Web. We were curious about Springpad's ability to sync with other devices, so we installed the iPhone app as well, and we found that everything we'd saved using the Chrome extension appeared as expected on our iPhone.

Overall, we were quite impressed with Springpad's sleek, intuitive interface and its many features, and we plan to keep using it. So much of our lives take place online these days; we think that Springpad is a fantastic way to keep up with it all.