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Ideas that have been beaten to death

ruky.me

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Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#71

Post by tehbeard »

JohnDeHope wrote: post #68
jhkiehna wrote: post #64

He states that bookmarks in browsers are "broken" but doesn't elaborate. I've never felt this way, Anyone know what he's talking about?

My biggest issue is that they don't interoperate across browsers. The idea that I would use a single browser is crazy. I don't use a single browser on one device on any of the devices I use. If the browsers treated themselves less like silos, people would be more encouraged to use them for this sort of note taking.

> The idea that I would use a single browser is crazy

Honestly, and as someone who uses >1 browser, you are an outlier.

For the vast majority, you click the "beachball" or the "red fox" and that's how you internet.

And among those that use >1 browser, I don't want bookmarks or other stuff interoped/shared. I'm specifically using seperate browsers to keep things seperate.

I don't know how well Firefox Pocket works, but Google seems to have no issue keeping bookmarks between phone and desktops synced just fine.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#72

Post by brk »

timoth3y wrote: post #65

Alternate Take: - Bookmarking is not broken. Bookmarking works just fine. What's broken is what we want to do with the bookmarks once we have them. The problem is we don't know exactly what that is. We tell ourselves that it's to "review it later", but that's not really it. It it were it would be simple to block out some time and do that, but we never actually do. We don't know why we really make those bookmarks. Boo…

You just clarified so many things for me.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#73

Post by jamesmaniscalco »

JohnDeHope wrote: post #68
jhkiehna wrote: post #64

He states that bookmarks in browsers are "broken" but doesn't elaborate. I've never felt this way, Anyone know what he's talking about?

My biggest issue is that they don't interoperate across browsers. The idea that I would use a single browser is crazy. I don't use a single browser on one device on any of the devices I use. If the browsers treated themselves less like silos, people would be more encouraged to use them for this sort of note taking.

I have had a good experience with the browser plugin floccus, which I use to sync bookmarks to a self-hosted NextCloud instance. It has cross browser support. I have a 'sync' folder that is shared across all browsers/devices, as well as local-only bookmarks on each device (home/work/mobile/etc.)

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#74

Post by NAHWheatCracker »

timoth3y wrote: post #65

Alternate Take: - Bookmarking is not broken. Bookmarking works just fine. What's broken is what we want to do with the bookmarks once we have them. The problem is we don't know exactly what that is. We tell ourselves that it's to "review it later", but that's not really it. It it were it would be simple to block out some time and do that, but we never actually do. We don't know why we really make those bookmarks. Boo…

This is what I was thinking as well.

I find bookmarks work just fine for me in Firefox. However, it only works well for the 10 bookmarks that I use weekly.

If I bookmark anything and I don't use it soon after, it inevitably languishes. I have dozens of bookmarks from years ago for lectures I wanted to watch, tutorials I wanted to follow, games that I wanted to play, blog posts that I wanted to read. It was a list of things I wanted to be or do, but haven't taken the time.

A bookmarking tool can't change whether I have follow through. It's a tool to keep track of things, but I have to spend the time.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#75

Post by tconfrey »

Guilty as charged! I'm building my own 'unique' take on bookmarks[0] (really it is unique ;-) .

I think the reason this comes up is that people have more and more stuff to keep track of, and more and more of peoples stuff is accessed in a browser. Not so long ago there were standalone apps for email, word processing, spreadsheets, group chat, bug tracking, CRM etc etc. Now all of that stuff is inside some web app I get to in Chrome - me all all the other billion+ knowledge workers using Chromium. Thats why everyone has 50 tabs open at any given time.

When almost everything I want to track has a unique URL it opens up possibilities and the browser builders have not been keeping pace.

[0] https://braintool.org

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#76

Post by NAHWheatCracker »

jonwinstanley wrote: post #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.

Yes, many things bookmarked are things that we just want to instantly recall, in conversation for example, but bookmarks don't accomplish that.

Unless we have amazing memory, or put in work to build something like a memory palace, nothing accomplishes that.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#77

Post by hliyan »

My theory: the larger your bookmark collection grows, the more indistinguishable it becomes from Google. It basically becomes a curated search index. The closest I have come to using bookmarks is through Firefox address bar suggestions from my browsing history.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#78

Post by throwamon »

timoth3y wrote: post #65

Alternate Take: - Bookmarking is not broken. Bookmarking works just fine. What's broken is what we want to do with the bookmarks once we have them. The problem is we don't know exactly what that is. We tell ourselves that it's to "review it later", but that's not really it. It it were it would be simple to block out some time and do that, but we never actually do. We don't know why we really make those bookmarks. Boo…

For me I often feel it's a refusal to accept that life is short and I'll never have time to explore every single thing that has ever interested me in enough depth, and that no matter how much I learn and explore in the time I do have, I'll never be satisfied. So I keep on piling bookmarks on top of bookmarks and thus avoid having to choose what I will intently dedicate my time to.

I gotta bookmark this comment and review it later. Keywords: digital gardening, data hoarding, Buddhism, hedonic treadmill.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#79

Post by mitchdoogle »

hliyan wrote: post #77

My theory: the larger your bookmark collection grows, the more indistinguishable it becomes from Google. It basically becomes a curated search index. The closest I have come to using bookmarks is through Firefox address bar suggestions from my browsing history.

This is exactly how I've come to use bookmarks. Thanks to Firefox's ability to tag bookmarks, I can add a few tags each time I make one and then a few months down the road when I want to find something I've seen before, I will just search in the address bar (begin with * to search bookmarks). It's been working very well for me.
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