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Ideas that have been beaten to death

ruky.me

21–30 of 130 posts

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#21
Could it be that bookmarking is something people often think they need, but actually, even if they remember to bookmark something they will rarely revisit their bookmarks.

What people really need is a way of recalling instantly every snippet of information from every website they have ever visited on any device in a timely fashion. Which sounds tricky to implement.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#22

The other idea / product that has been beaten to death would be note taking, todo lists, and similar... illusory productivity tools. I say illusory because writing down notes and tasks feels like you're being productive, but they really aren't. I think these are really popular to be built because they are simple in terms of technology. Most early developers can fit the concept of a todo list in their head - it's what…

Hmm, I would say the process of note taking is an important part of my retention.

I refer to my notes a lot. I worked with a guy who never took notes and was able to remember everything. I’m not that smart!

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#23
post #15
post #14

The problem with bookmarking overall is that it's very easy to click a button to save it for later, but very little of it ends up actually being read. It's basically a nice-to-have list, if there were infinite time and we had infinite energy. But we have neither, so we end up developing personal folder systems or installing extensions or utilizing SaaS, all in the hope that the links won't be dead by the time we can…

> you can just as easily google for I can't find most of the links I saved by using a search engine, and I think that's part of the problem.

The bookmarks would have the same title that a search engine uses, so I'm not sure why it would be more difficult. Could you provide an example?

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#25

Could it be that bookmarking is something people often think they need, but actually, even if they remember to bookmark something they will rarely revisit their bookmarks. What people really need is a way of recalling instantly every snippet of information from every website they have ever visited on any device in a timely fashion. Which sounds tricky to implement.

Yes that is so true, the extension I made for Chrome changes the new tab page of your browser to all the links you saved.

I did it because even I used to bookmark stuff but then forgets all about it. So having it sticking out to your face every time when you open a new tab will at least make you go out and read it.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#26
post #16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can just as easily google for I can't find most of the links I saved by using a search engine, and I think that's part of the problem.

I think the core part of this bookmark problem and dilemma is the fact that browsers execute their bookmarking functionality poorly.

Why would Google ever implement decent bookmarks aka local search for all your data? They need to track you for their business.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#27
100% agree that bookmarks need a better solution. Whoever does it will change the game.

I'm a bookmarks hoarder. If I encounter a useful site, I bookmark it.

I have about 20,000 bookmarks on Chrome now.

Someone on HN once described bookmarks as a "knowledge graph". That's an apt description for what they do for me.

I've long given-up trying to neatly organize my bookmarks in folders. Now I use lots of keywords (as pseudo-tags) while saving a bookmark, with the hope that I'll be able to use the correct keywords later when looking for the bookmark.

I would, however, like save them neatly in folders.

In case someone from the Chrome team is reading this, some features that would really change the game for us bookmark hoarders are:

1. bookmarks search: allow us to search exclusively within a folder.

2. bookmarks search: option to search only folder names.

3. when saving a bookmark, give us a search box we can use to search folder names, and then quickly identify and pick a folder to save the bookmark in.

4. tags for bookmark (similar to tags in Gmail).

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#29

Could it be that bookmarking is something people often think they need, but actually, even if they remember to bookmark something they will rarely revisit their bookmarks. What people really need is a way of recalling instantly every snippet of information from every website they have ever visited on any device in a timely fashion. Which sounds tricky to implement.

My problem with bookmarking has always been that they quickly become just as unwieldy as not having things bookmarked, so finding a bookmarked item becomes really difficult. Plus I forget what I have bookmarked so when I want to read a thing again I don’t think to check the bookmarks. So I’ve largely stopped using them and just use it as a giant “to browse through again eventually” list instead.
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