The Internet is full of fascinating material, things we know we’ll need now or in the future. Sure, you can bookmark a page, but your browser bar can only hold a half dozen or so and the overflow can be unwieldy. And worse, pages can just disappear any time and all you will see is the dreaded “404 Page Not Found ” Error message.
A new online service called BO.LT has a remedy.BO.LT looks a lot like Pinterest — it’s got the photo eye candy, but it’s made for providing easy access to written content on the web. Think of it as a grown-up version of Reddit, where users post links to stories they’ve seen and liked online. When you “bolt” a page, so that if the page is later taken down from a site, you still can view it.
BO.LT includes a community like Pinterest , so that you can follow other “bolters” to discover new material. It starts by selecting your interests, which will be used to fill your feed with “bolts” based on topics such as Music, Thinking & Reading, and Technology.
To start bolting yourself, add the “Bolt it” button to your browser toolbar and click it when you find a page you want to save similar to Stumbling. A new window pops up where you write a brief statement explaining why the page is interesting, assign it a category, and choose an image to accompany the listing that will appear on your BO.LT page. You can add hashtags in front of words in the description to make your bolts searchable by keyword for other community members.
Each bolt includes an image. You can select one of the photos on the page, choose a “thumbnail” image of the whole page or upload an image from your computer. A compelling image will attract more attention and followers.
BO.LT offers one-click posting to Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest when you’re creating a New Bolt, so you won’t have to bother with copying and pasting links to other sites in order to share your bolts with other social networking websites.
Initially the website came out with a beta launch and is now available by Invitation like the Pinterest - before opening to the public.
