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- What's ideaREF!?

ideaREF! is an online internet address redirection and archival service.

- Redirection Links

Using the internet, you visit and read different pages/resources. And you want to remember some of these addresses so that you can visit them later or tell your friends. However for most of the pages you visit you need to remember a cryptic, hard to read and remember address. Some addresses even contain numbers, commas and other cryptic characters. And if you make bookmarks using your browser you can not reach them from elsewhere and they are still hard to use addresses.

Using ideaREF! you can add references to internet addresses. And not only you can reach these addresses from anywhere on the internet, you can also define a new address that will also work from anywhere.

For example: You want an easy way to reach CNN's news about Britney Spears. The address is: http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/10/people.spears.reut/index.html

After you add this address to your ideaREF account, http://www.idearef.com/account/britney

will point to the same page. The requests for the new address will reach our servers and they will be redirected to original address. And you (or anybody) can use this address anywhere to reach the original content on CNN. And as you define your own account when you register, the new idearef address is very easy to remember.

- Archived Links

The way internet works, addresses and everything changes all the time, so when someone decides to change the way they organise information on a web site, the addresses and content change. However there are many reasons that you need a certain address to show a certain content. ideaREF! also helps you to freeze and archive the contents. Easier than saving a web page on your computer, you can select to create an archive and ideaREF! creates a copy for you. And now you or anybody can use an ideaREF! address to reach this copy. You have the power over your addresses to change them whenever you want.

- Lists

Using ideaREF! you can also create lists to manage your adresses easily. You can even create smart lists so that your addresses are automatically organised.

You can also use these lists as alternative addresses for example;

http://www.idearef.com/account/britney, http://www.idearef.com/account/music/britney, or http://www.idearef.com/account/news/britney may point to the same address and you only create one addresses.

- Smart Lists

Smart Lists are dynamically lists. When you create a Smart List you define one or more criteria for the list and links that obey the criteria are gathered in the list. On the Links page you can click on the list name to display the links.

For example you can define a Smart List named "Music" as "Any Field Contains Music" and all the links that have the word "Music" will be in this group.

- Browser Buttons

You can use the following link to quickly add addresses while browsing on the Internet. Please drag the following link to your browsers bookmark bar. Alternatively you can also create a normal bookmark.

+Add to ideaREF!

When you click this link from your browser you will be presented with a short form to add the URL to your ideaREF! account. The form will be filled using the title, address and the selected text from the page. Some browsers, i.e. MacOS X Safari does not support selecting text.

If you require detailed instructions please click here.

- Links For Webmasters

You can add links to your web pages so that users can easily save your pages to ideaREF!. To do this you can include the following code in your web page.

Below is an example;

- Sharing

When you add links to your account your links are automatically shared at your ideaREF! account address http://www.idearef.com/account So if you tell your friends your account name they can always reach your current links. Your lists are also accesible from this page or using direct access addresses http://www.idearef.com/account/list And if you are using Smart Lists you will be sharing dynamically updated pages as you add new links. And another sharing option is mailing your links. Just select the ones you want and click on "email links" an email will autamitacally be prepared for you to fill the addresses and voila.

- Privacy

You have the three privacy options for your links or lists. The default is "Not Private" which means that these links will be shared. Another option is "Redirect Only" these links are not displayed to other users, you need to login with your password to see them. But if you (or anybody) types ideaREF! urls the request is redirected to original page (or archived version). The last option is "Private" for which the redirection is also not performed. You need to logon and click on the original URL to access, or change privacy settings.

-Import/Export

You can transfer your Favorites/Bookmarks from your computer to your ideaREF! account or vice versa. ideaREF! supports all popular browsers. And if you transfer your links to Firefox you can just type ideaREF! names you defined into the address bar and you will be directly transfered to your link.

- ideaREF! Shortcuts

As ideaREF! is a service trying to serve many people we are required to use accounts. And we are using the account names in the ideaREF! addresses to classify and make them readable. However if you find the addressses long and want to make them shorter, ideaREF! also provides unique access numbers for addresses. And you can use these unique identifiers to reach your addresses as a shortcut. For example for any address you enter you can use an address like http://www.idearef.com/4916 .

- Uses For ideaREF!

ideaREF! is for everyone who use the internet, and want to remember, organise Internet addresses and reach information.

There are some specific uses which we believe will benefit from our services more. People who use references prefer to make them more readable, and in some cases they want to reach the original content when they made a reference.

For example; As an academician working on an academic paper you may use references to information on the internet. So you may prefer having your references organised in such a manner as;

http://www.idearef.com/einstein/relativity1

http://www.idearef.com/einstein/relativity2 ...

Refering to information on the internet as said before is volatile. When someone tries to reach the reference after a certain time, the information referred may not be there. It may be moved elsewhere or just deleted. To overcome this you may create archived addresses and the above addresses will always show the same information until you change them.