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I’m not the only person writing about Furl. Here are a few other recent Furl-related items (tips, observations, comparisons, etc.) that have caught my attention recently…

• The Artist’s Statement (text only version), by Ian Spiers. This is perfect example of when Furl’s archiving function comes in handy. This is an excellent first-person essay recounting a photography student’s inadvertent run-in with the developing Homeland Security apparatus. When I first encountered this document, and Furled it, it was illustrated with several photos which, in my view, add crucial context to the text. Later, this essay became very popular (you know how word spreads online). That put a huge unwelcome demand on the author’s Web host. To reduce bandwidth demands, the author removed the photos from the essay. But since I Furled this document when I first found it, I still have the photos. Keep that in mind when you find a Web page you suspect might catch on like wildfire.

• The Personal Web, from Ten Reasons Why: One of the most intriguing explorations of Furl that I’ve read so far. This article contains plenty of great food for thought, and here’s a sample: “I quickly did away with categorizing “furled” pages once I realized I can use Furl’s fairly decent, Google-like query syntax. That’s great because heirarchies are bitch to maintain and keep relevant (just ask Yahoo). Furl is like Lookout for bookmarks. Or, more to the point, it’s like Google for bookmarks.”

• Say farewell to Blogs and Bookmarks and get your Furl on, from PassingNotes.com: Detailed and fairly comprehensive explanation of Furl. Writing from a researcher’s perspective, Dave notes “My primary frustration with Blogs and Bookmarks is the inability to structure findings clearly beyond date-stamped archives or clumsy Internet link listings.” Yes, Furl definitely does offer a viable solution to that problem, I’d agree.

• Grokking Furl, by John Battelle. This is the article where Battelle coined the phrase “Personal Web” in relation to Furl. He wrote, “Furl … prevents link rot, on the one hand, and creates what I’ll call a “PersonalWeb,” on the other. Now, having your own PersonalWeb is a very cool thing. Every page you care about is now saved forever, and is searchable. …But wait…there’s more. You can share your PersonalWeb with others. And [Furl founder] Mike [Giles] just added a recommendation engine, so you can see links the service thinks will be interesting to you, based on what you’ve already Furl’d. Now, let’s play this out. Imagine Furl on, oh, Yahoo, for example. Or Google. You now have a massively scaled application where millions of people are creating their own personal versions of the web, and then sharing them with each other, driving massively statistically significant recommendations, and…some pretty damn useful metadata that can be fed into search engine algorithms, resulting in…yup, far better search (and…far better SFO (Search Find Obtain) opportunities).”

• Travis Swicegood wrote a great explanation of Furl’s “clipping” function.

• Simpy: Another Web-based “social bookmarking” service – free. Basically it’s Furl without the archiving.

• Socially Publishing, Bookmarking, Archiving, Annotating & Searching the Web, by Peter Caputa, The Social Software Weblog: Furl is just one of many tools that allows people to effectively customize the Web and share their custom creations online. This article explains several such tools.

• Furl News: Furl’s own news page features a running list of media and blog coverage about its service.