You gotta read, mama always said. Reading is fun – and fundamental, teacher would ceaselessly intone. Do you want to be a dope all of your life, watching TV all day? Pick up a book – right now!

Ah, the voices of childhood. Of course, like any good son/student. I listened to the powers that be and read books. Lots of books. And what did I get for my trouble? Bifocals!

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not knocking reading. I’m too ugly to get on TV; the only way for me to communicate with you is here, in the hope that you’ll read what I have to say! But there’s reading, and then there’s squinting at small text on a page crowded with little characters that are a real strain on the eye. Technically, the two constitute the same activity, but the experience is far different.

Our Jewish tradition greatly values and encourages reading – especially of the small crowded text page type. While once upon a time (in the Talmudic era), the spoken word was the primary means of handing down tradition, over the last five hundred or so years (since the invention popularization of the printing press), the written – or rather, printed – word has become the top source of information on Jewish life and beliefs.

One result of dealing with so many words is that things tend to get blurry – even for those with good eyesight. You look at a word and forget its meaning; you glance at a thick tome and your eyes begin to glaze over, as you contemplate another major reading session. But let a text page become associated with a graphic, and things change quickly; when associated with a picture, the memory of – and information on – a page of text is much more likely to stay with you.

You may understandably have a hard time recalling text in a graphic-less book. But when it comes to the long lists of links in your Web browser bookmarks (favorites), there’s a much easier way to associate a picture with that line of text – and it’s called BixBookmark.

Those bookmarks you’ve collected over the years – you saved them because they were useful. But over time, you forget the reason you saved sites onto your bookmark lists. And often, the name of the site doesn’t really clue you in as to why the site is important to you – and you end up searching for sites with the same information you’ve already seen on sites you came across before, and saved to your bookmark list.

BixBookmark can help you recall what you’ve forgotten, because it associates a graphic – usually a screenshot – with sites that you’ve saved. Hover your mouse over the site name, and you’ll see the graphic – and also add notes of your own on what the site is all about. With BixBookmark, you’ll save yourself hours of searching for information you already have at your fingertips!