- What's ideaREF!?

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

- How does that help?

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, /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.

- Is that all?

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.

- Anything more?

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;

/account/britney, /account/music/britney, or /account/news/britney may point to the same address and you are not required to make multiple addresses.

- I want shorter addresses.

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 /4916 . So if that is not short enough, just tell us and we will try to work on it.

- What about sharing?

When you add links to your account your links are automatically shared at your ideaREF! account address /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 /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.

- I have private links

You have the three privacy options for your links or lists. The default is "Not Private" which means that these links will be shared. Anothe 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.

- What about my Browser Favorites?

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.

- Logging in and creating links takes too long.

If you only want to add a link you don't need to use the ideaREF! web site. Instead you can use Browser Buttons below. Add this link to your browser as a favorite or better as a toolbar item/favorite, and clicking on this link will bring you a shortcut window to add a link. Description and title fields will be automatically prefilled, so you can just click on ADD button. And if you have selected text on the page, the text will also be added to description. And after that you can easily mail this link to your friends.

- Who is ideaREF! for?

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;

/einstein/relativity1

/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.