i-Lighter

There are several reasons to stick the Windows-centric i-Lighter in your virtual backpack, including that it’s free. Dubbed “the yellow marker for the Web,” i-Lighter is also a great organizer. Say you’re building a rig. You could use Excel charts, bookmarks, Word docs, and email to keep your online research straight, but overlap and confusion often lurks nearby. i-Lighter lets you literally mark up specific areas on Web pages, including prices, specs, and benchmarks, that you can save and access from an Explorer-like local client in folders you can make private or public.

My public searches were hit and miss. i-Lighter is still less than a year out of beta, and most of my search results returned from the same small group of users. Practically speaking, though, i-Lighter is great for tucking away things you’ll know you’ll want, just not now. i-Lighter fans are also praising its benefits in universities, law offices, and research facilities.

Using i-Lighter means giving up an email address to download the installation file. Once installed, you can open i-Lighter from the System Tray or toolbar in IE and Firefox. Click Start Highlighting and the mouse cursor morphs into a highlighter icon. Beyond highlighting, i-Lighter has a great notes tool for inserting comments right on Web pages, excellent for summarizing articles, noting charts, etc. i-Lighter is more one-dimensional than, say, Clipmarks and EverNote, but what it does, it does very well. There is del.icio.us support if needed, plus email, print, and blog tools.

One downside is that your data is stored on the company’s servers. i-Lighter says it inserts a username in the Registry but does not use cookies or install malware. Spy-Bot’s TeaTimer tool picked up my Registry change, but other security apps from Symantec, AVG, Trend Micro, and Zone Labs on my Windows XP Home and Pro notebook and PCs didn’t fuss at i-Lighter’s presence. On one hand the online approach means you can access your data from other Web-linked devices. On the other hand, i-Lighter’s speed at performing even the simplest task in my tests was often frustratingly slow. Still, if your job or hobby is researchintensive, i-Lighter has great upside.