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One of the features of Firefox that I really like ... even though I don't use Firefox ... is the ability to have important bookmarks up there in your toolbar. Steve loves it and it definitely has saved him time in the past but what happens when your important bookmarks outgrow the amount of space you have on the toolbar to display them?

One feature that is really lacking in IE is exactly what Firefox does offer, that ability to have important bookmarks in your toolbar. Without it you have to go digging through your bookmarks every time you want to find something and if you're like me and have lots and lots of bookmarks there are occasions throughout the day when you can waste time looking through your bookmarks for that one important link that you need right now.

There was a time when Steve would feel quite smug when I went digging for a bookmark while he had it in his toolbar ... but he's not so smug these days. These days, because he has so many important bookmarks he wastes time digging too.

Of course you might think that the seconds or maybe a minute that you spend looking for that bookmark is really nothing in the overall scheme of things but stop and think about it. If you spend 20 seconds looking for a bookmark and you do that six times a day then that's two minutes that you've wasted. Multiply that by seven and you'll see that you're wasting 14 minutes a week looking for a bookmark. Multiply that by 52 and you'll see that you're wasting quite some time every year.

And then there's the little problem of those important bookmarks that you add so you can go back to the site later but then forget about. The important information you wanted is lost in your bookmarks until one day you stumble on it and kick yourself for losing it.

Time and information is important to us in this industry because it all equates to money in the long run so how can we overcome the problem? What can we do to fix the problem of lost bookmarks and time wasted in searching for bookmarks?

Well one way to overcome the problem is to build our own personal homepage. We don't even have to put it up on the Web; instead we can have it sitting on our hard drive and simply set the browser to view that page as our homepage.

It wouldn't take long to put the page together; you wouldn't need any fancy graphics or fancy CSS because no one but you is going to see it. Simple tables, and simple text is all that you need to use. Of course you would want to separate in the information and links into relevant categories so that it was easy to follow. Perhaps if the page was going to be rather long you could even include some internal navigation using anchors at important points.

You could also pull in important information from the web so that it was displayed right there on your homepage. If stocks and shares are important include a stock ticker, if local weather is important include some weather information that keeps you updated on the temperature etc. and if you want to decorate your page you can.

If you still haven't seen enough naked women you could include a slide show or a pic of the day script to pull images off your hard drive and have it displayed anywhere that was important to you. If you have to monitor a webcam somewhere you could pull that in to your personal homepage too and if you just wanted to see images of your significant other, your kids or even your pets that could be on your homepage as well.

With all that information right there in front of you you'll be saving time and money and that's always a very important reason in this business to do anything.

Another Way to Save Time and Money
Yep - today's column is all about saving time and money so here's another tip that could be important to you.

If you look around the mainstream side of the web sooner or later you will begin to come across references to local search. It's definitely becoming important and even I've talked about it here ... but is it as important as you might think?

After reading all the stuff you might see on the Web about local search you might think that it's here right now and if you're not getting into it then you're going to miss a great opportunity to make money.

I must say that I was becoming influenced by all the things I was reading about local search but I was also getting a little confused. If it really was right here right now why wasn't I seeing much of it where I live?

Well that question was answered for me today on a local business blog. The guy who runs the blog has just taken a trip from north to south through the eastern United States and he found some interesting things.

In the major northern population centers local search was important and local businesses were working hard to get their name out there via local search but the further south he traveled the less important it became. The importance of local search also changed as he moved from major population centers to smaller towns and in rural communities it was hardly even acknowledged by the local businesses.

So the way to save money here is to not necessarily believe all the hype that you might see. It's so easy to look at what you see on the Net and fail to believe what your own eyes are telling you as you move around your own community.