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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

#91

Post by Pamar »

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.

So far the best compromise I found (and I found it here on HN, btw) was historio.us, which I have used for a couple years so far, with fairly good results (for my use case, at least).

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#92

Post by 15charslong »

So basically I tried to solve the 'Bookmark Problem' by creating a simple user focused search engine, user builds a list of bookmarks, and the app, Mrkff, allows you to search your bookmarks as if it were google, but tailored to your own content.

If you would allow me to plug my own personal bookmarking app - Mrkff [0] - pronounced `Mark off`. I went through YC in 2019 for it, and I launched it in 2020.

I also built a cross-platform web-extension for it too using a small framework (Desolate-Zero) I made for the web extensions to make use of all the features of both chrome and firefox. It just a simple click extension and click bookmark and the server takes care of the rest.

Basically I opted to make a full-text searchable version of every webpage I bookmark. A copy is also stored on the server, I intended to paywall downloading the actual webpage text, but make it searchable in the free version. This way I can search for obscure words or phrases that were on the webpage that I remembered while not remembering the actual webpage. I had an auto tag system on it too derived from the actual text of the web page. V2 is set to expand from text to video, pdf, audio etc.

I had a lot of fun with it, but this version is lacking in certain aspects, and I've spent the last 6 months working on version 2 of this app. I certainly didn't know how widespread this type of app was to be honest. But I use my solution on the daily, so I'll probably continue working on it.

[0] - https://mrkff.com

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#93

Post by Arubis »

LittlePeter wrote: post #32

I pay for Pinboard. I have 5K bookmarks and daily add about 1-10 new ones. I will never read most of them. But when push comes to shove, I can easily find that BioTech article that generated a lot of discussion on HN because I tagged it as "hn" and "biotech". And if that article disappears from the web, Pinboard should still have a cached version. So now I can bookmark an article close tab #231 and fall asleep peacef…

Pinboard is great! It works everywhere, it’s super simple, and it means I can find stuff later.

For anyone looking for a “Read Later” option, [Paperback](https://readpaperback.com/) is lovely as well, like Instapaper before all the bullshit.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#94

Post by inter_netuser »

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…

Bookmarking is broken. We bookmark to find them later.

Better would be to save the entire page, not just the URL, as that would likely have more keywords that you'll remember later.

That's what I do, just save pages into a folder.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#96

Post by elefantastisch »

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…

I want to be able to refer back to valuable writing I've read online. I read something once about effective use of multiple choice questions in a classroom setting. I'd like to be able to find it again.

I want to be able to browse a curated collection of the web around some topic. I've come across a handful of really, really good tech blogs over the years. I'd like to be able to flip through them in one place. I'd like to be able to peruse my collection of in-browser games.

I want to get faster access to sites I use often. This might be seeding the autocomplete algorithm in the address bar, some kind of launcher, etc. I don't know what form this would ideally take, but it's a use case I want for bookmarks.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#97

Post by BeFlatXIII »

TrailMixRaisin wrote: post #85
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…

I think you describe the real problem here. For me I just skip the bookmarking part. If I want to come back to something later, I just leave the tab open. This was a good solution because 2-3 years ago there came an inevitable browser crash and all the open tabs were lost. If you could not remember them, they most likely are not that important. Unfortunately these hard resets do not occur any more. So I have to close…

Hello, fellow 100+ tab club member. How do you keep your tabs organized? I used Tree Style Tab plus an extension to aggressively unload background tabs. I wish there were a browser where a vertical tree of tabs was the default tan interface instead of a hack around an inferior horizontal bar of tabs.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#98

Post by minutillo »

zenkat wrote: post #84
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.

But Google indexes the whole web . I want a search that works just over the articles I've read. "What was that article I read a few months back that talked about why you should be able to explain why a fence exists before tearing it down?". It works be perfect for the discussion I'm having with my team right now, but I can't remember the name of the stupid law or where I came across it . Google is useless in these si…

Chesterton's fence.

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#99

Post by csdvrx »

throwamon wrote: post #78
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 re…

> 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

I love your comment and share your approach: my bookmarks are what will pop up if I search something before Bing tries to take me somewhere else.

By bookmarking, I both accept that I do not have the time (not now or ever) and therefore I may never read this, unless serendipity or need drives me to type the exact same keywoard

> I gotta bookmark this comment and review it later

No, as that would be an attachment: instead, you should let this comment go :)

Re: Ideas that have been beaten to death

#100

Post by csdvrx »

zenkat wrote: post #84
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.

But Google indexes the whole web . I want a search that works just over the articles I've read. "What was that article I read a few months back that talked about why you should be able to explain why a fence exists before tearing it down?". It works be perfect for the discussion I'm having with my team right now, but I can't remember the name of the stupid law or where I came across it . Google is useless in these si…

Chromium and Firefox have, in the form of a sqlite database.

You can and should use it. Even if you don't directly, typing in the address bar usually plucks from your bookmarks first.

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