Everyone loves lists. There’s something about a set of connected data points that really pleases the brain. It’s as if we mentally applaud the time saving that comes from gathering information in an easy to access location.
URList is a new online list making and sharing service which taps into this love of listings, and gives you the power to become a veritable list hound. What makes this particular offering different is a) the quality of the design, it’s clean, functional and easy to use and b) the fact that it nicely integrates a generic bookmark engine, a link shortener and a sharing tool for discovering new websites, rather like Stumbleupon.com.
Once you’ve created or discovered a cool list, you can play it back like a slideshow using the inbuilt navigation system, and you can also grab links you like from other lists on the service and incorporate them in your personal favorite list. There’s a bookmarklet Add This button to make it easy to add sites to your lists, and you can connect it with your Facebook or Google+ accounts to simplify sign up.
We like the fact that you can invite your friends and colleagues to contribute their links to your list, and we especially like the fact that the developers are up front about the user content being covered by a Creative Commons share alike license. The service is free for now, but since they’re VC backed, we imagine there’ll be some sort of premium option coming down the line once they get sufficient traffic and membership. It’s nice, useful and easy, what’s not to like? Definitely worth a bookmark of its own!