Cool Tool of the Day: i-Lighter

If you couldn't get through a college textbook without a highlighter pen in hand, then this is the tool you've been waiting for. It's a small, free downloadable application that turns your mouse into a highlighter (well, an i-Lighter). With it, you can highlight passages on a web page and then store the highlighted information in a folder hosted by your i-Lighter.com account.

You can retrieve your stored highlights from any PC, PDA, or smart phone just by logging in to your i-Lighter account. You also can create annotations called i-notes to accompany any highlighted pages. Using your highlighted notes can be quite powerful and versatile. i-Lighter has tools that let you email the highlights, organize them, drop them in documents or blogs, and even share them with others.

 i-Lighter appears as a yellow marker on your PC's toolbar, and it works with Internet Explorer and Firefox. You turn it off and on as you need it. It's elegant, practical, and the metaphor of a highlighter for the web works for me. (I did encounter one bug that was specific to this blogging tool but the product is still in its final beta test and I suspect i-Lighter will work it out.)