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Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

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31–40 of 138 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#31
I have run a linkblog for 15+ years now. It's basically bookmarks (and stored in Pinboard) but my focus is on publishing a social media feed for others to read. https://www.somebits.com/linkblog/

Linkblogging used to be a thing people did in the heydey of early 2000s blogging. Now it's mostly lost as a form. The spirit of it lives though in the way Mastodon, Slack, Facebook, etc make it easy to share a link and have a preview for it. What's missing is an archival backup view of that sharing. Pinboard gives me mine, but I seldom use it other than to search for something specific I vaguely remember.

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#32

Not exactly “reinventing” bookmarks. But I’ve been working on a micro SaaS[0] to send interesting articles, newsletters and RSS to Kindle. And it kinda “forces” me to actually read those articles, and not just send them into oblivion. If you’re developing a reading habit in 2023, give it a try. [0]: https://ktool.io

Actually, I have a Kindle, and this is a great idea, I like the distraction free point of Kindle's, I'll need to "bookmark it" and give it a shot

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#33
post #10

I don't know about anyone else, but "giant list of media to consume in the future" be they games, movies, books, or blog posts is antithetical to me actually eventually enjoying that media. The value of having a list of things that I thought might be interesting but not interesting enough to read immediately is basically zero.

What about blogs themselves?

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#34

Del.icio.us used to be really good. It's a shame they got acquired and shut down. I don't think there is anything that does a good job with bookmarking today.

Yea, I remember the name, but didn't use it, I'll need to do some research on https://archive.org/web/

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#35

The only time I need to save a website it's in the context of some notes, I prefer to cut and paste the exact url into my notes. Bookmarks without context aren't that useful otherwise.

Often times, I copy/paste it into a markdown notes that I keep, and then search for it in there, but I feel it's locked away a bit in there, as much as I love markdown!

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#37
post #13

It would be great to have AI suggest tags/categories, ability to snooze and recall at set times, and see when the site was last accessed. I think bookmarks fail because they are buried away and not front and centre, and they mix the concepts of “notes for future reference” and “regularly visited favourite sites”.

Yea, like, I wish it can combine both, and relate them, even suggest to me, what else I should be reading, that's related to it, but isn't a google search related topic.

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#39
Yeah so the biggest problem with bookmarks is that they don't sync across devices very well, and a secondary problem is that you can't tag them or leave a note about why you care.

If something is ONLY relevant to me in a work context at my work web browser I will store it as a bookmark there.

If something is related to one of my broader life projects, like it makes me take a different perspective on that thing, then I take the time to open up Google Keep, write a blurb about my new perspective, link the article, and tag it accordingly.

I've been contemplating moving these to Obsidian so that the notes can be aggregated and cross-linked, but I am noticing friction where this defeats the abstract point of bookmarks where they are "dump and go". Probably I want to keep using Keep but then have periodic checkins where I move everything from Keep into Obsidian and delete it from Keep?

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#40

IME: Link rot. When your URLs aren’t valid for more than a few weeks, there’s no reason to keep them; it’s easier to search (not that search is always reliable over time either). Any reinvention would have to incorporate search and keep track of sufficient content from the page to do a search for its new location. Either that or link to 3rd party content storage (i.e. archive.org et.al.)

Definitely see that, 90% of the time, I forget about those links, and thus they rot, but sometimes I need to go back, or want to have a well maintained list, also, would love for that list to be updated with AI and "refreshed" with updated / related content.
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