Tuesday, January 17. 2006The world needs more Online Bookmark ManagersMy ass it does. Since when did bookmarks applications become the best thing since blowjobs? It's not enough that we have del.ici.ous (which is rid.icu.lous), we have murl.com, linkaGoGo, Scuttle, reddit, MyBookMarkManager, myHq.com, GlobusPro, BlinkPro, BackFlip, BlinkList, Bookmark Buddy, CiteULike, ClipMarks, FreeLink, HotList, Hydra Links, Jots, LinkRoll, LinkVault, Netvouz, openBM, PeerMark, Simpy, Sitejot, Sync2It, Unalog, wURLdBook, YourMarks, Zoogim, oh man I can't go on. Its a joke. Its like there is some web 2.0 overlord laughing his ass off at every moron who thinks calling a bookmarks manager "A personal web based information community organiser" is gonna get him mentioned on every blog going. Anyways, Jeffery Zeldman (undoubtedly a very smart bloke), has decided to try his hand at "Social Bookmarking to Build an Online Information Community". His effort is Mag.nolia.com. And guess what, its in Beta. Like half of the fucking web at this stage. 
I read a while on Matt Jaduds blog, something very short, simple and true. "The killer app is content". Thats why Maddox receives 65,000 hits per day. There is good stuff on his web page, the web page looks shit, and is held together by one 7 year old perl script, but he gets 65,000 hits per day. If you don't have content, don't redesign, don't re-align, don't do anything other than get something worth reading on your page. If you can't do that, close your site until you have something worthwhile to say. Some of the applications mentioned above are undoubtedly written by smart people who write good code. I just wish they'd spend their time writing applications that do useful things. Feature detection in photographs, a web interface to skype, a site thats worth visiting on a mobile phone, a website that sends you a text message when you get an important email, a website so simple that my mother could (and would) use it. These are the sort of things the web needs. Not bookmarks managers. For me, the number one web application, and the thing I use the most is a piece of software written by a friend of mine, called "The List". I can't link to it, or give you screenshots, cause I don't want to. Put simply, its a piece of social software (I hate that term), that allows me to stay in contact with 6 of my best mates, no matter where I go. Its got photo software, a calendar, a chat room and a message board. Its not written in AJAX on Rails with Python scripting thrown in for good measure. It doesn't matter what its written in, it works. We all use it, everywhere we go, and it works really well. It has content, which is what makes it great. Some bell-ends would call it "peer produced content" from our "virtual community", but what it actually is, is my mates having a chat over the interwebnet. Please, don't write an application if you can't explain why someone would use it, and what makes it better than (or equal to) everything else out there. And don't go writing a online bookmarks manager manager, so you can keep track of all your online bookmark accounts. Stop inventing problems to solve, and start solving the ones out there. Oh, and can someone answer bobs question please? LinksThe only two pages worth linking to from this post.
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Ready, aimFire!
But really, I think a bookmark manager could be quite worthwhile. It would allow me to store urls in one place, I've got a shitload of bookmarks that I saved from the cc, but I don't want to have them on just ONE machine. I'm waiting for daves bookmark manager 0.1 for that.
There's at least a few extensions you can get for Firefox that sync your bookmarks with online storage. Had occured to me to write one, but there are a few already, far as I recall.
I had also put together a prototype of a bookmark storage site a couple years back, but as Bob points out, there's millions of the bloody things already, and no point re-inventing an over-invented wheel.
But surely what'll happen is that you'll just export your bookmarks from firefox, and re-import them. I tried using an online bookmarks manager for a while, but it basically resulted in my have an extra tab open all the time.
Hi,
I agree with you 100% that there is more to deliver than something like a bookmark manager. However, when I started thinking of saving my favorites online couple of years back, the options were "you name it" and I was totally confused. Almost all of the so called Online Bookmark Managers out there were just there for the sake of it with no real purpose. But I needed something to store my links online and I ended up creating my own online favorites manager. I created something for me not for the rest of the world. The target was having my own private database of links researched by me so I can share it with my friends, relatives and whosoever may be interested. And I was amazed by the response my site got. And then I decided to take it to the rest of the world. The stuff I developed was simple, no AJAX or JDMEE, just pure simple ASP and Javascript with an Access Backend. Now the important thing is it does what it is supposed to do atleast for those who regularly use it ofcourse including myself. So what is that I do most of the time on the Net? Search Google for my research. I am a technology writer and content developer. I get links and information which are too tardy long for me to remember. I have kinda gaint anoconda of favorites list on my browser that even after organizing takes me a while to search. So I bookmark it on my Online Favorites Organizer site (no i dont want to give out the name for the moment as you have a general dislike for the word itself). The next time I search for mobile reviews, I just search on my site and presto it throws me the links I had visited a few months back. I do not need to search google. And if there are no links that I have bookmarked, it takes me directly to google search results page. No only if Google had something like this, I would not have had to develop my on application. And the likes of yahoo my web2.0 etc do not interest me because first they copied other peoples ideas and i am not interested in sharing my surfing habits with the major players who can hand over all that stuff to Mr. Bush on a whimper. So I stick to my own stuff and yes an online favorites manager is no big deal but it is an improvement over what microsoft and others deliver through their browsers. P.S. I hate doing anything other than calling people on my mobile phone because that is what they are meant to be not for the assorted things that are being delivered. I do not even use it for taking snaps because a good digital camera with does the job better and I find time to download it to my PC and write on a CD. Doing everything on the cellphone would turn me into another lazy guy tinkering with technology Gurudatt Shenoy |
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This website is the online diary of me, Des Traynor, a User Experience Researcher in Dublin, Ireland. I work with Contrast. I usually write on 5 topics: I update about 3-4 times per month. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss this good stuff. If this is your first time here, check out the archives.My official homepage provides more information about who I am, and what I research. You can contact me at destraynor [at] gmail [dot] com Quicksearch |
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