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Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us?

#132
post #87

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I stopped using many online cloud services because they get shut down or acquired by a big fish. Instead, I am using buku[1], a command-line utility to store, tag, search and organize bookmarks on a Linux desktop. But, it should work on any OS due to Python. All I have to do is backup a single ~/.local/share/buku/bookmarks.db SQLite file. [1] https://github.com/jarun/buku

I agree about the services that keep getting shutdown and I also use the moral equivalent of a command line utility to store bookmarks but there are still benefits to "social" bookmarking, no? There's the potential of discoverability and seeing what other people recommend that can't really be done with offline bookmarking. In one sense because there's no company (other than pinboard?) that does "social bookmarking" m…

Up front, I never saw the value FOR ME of social networking. It was always a bit of a perplexing thing, sharing what I'm looking at with the public. I don't even look at unusual things. It just seems like private information.

BUT, this seems like a perfect fediverse offering. Decentralized, self-hosted (or not) software that all talks to other instances to create a sharing ecosystem for people who want it. Based on what other fediverse projects are doing, you could likely even share certain tags only with a certain scope. If there's demand for it, it seems like this would be a no-brainer.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us?

#133
post #132
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree about the services that keep getting shutdown and I also use the moral equivalent of a command line utility to store bookmarks but there are still benefits to "social" bookmarking, no? There's the potential of discoverability and seeing what other people recommend that can't really be done with offline bookmarking. In one sense because there's no company (other than pinboard?) that does "social bookmarking" m…

Up front, I never saw the value FOR ME of social networking. It was always a bit of a perplexing thing, sharing what I'm looking at with the public. I don't even look at unusual things. It just seems like private information. BUT, this seems like a perfect fediverse offering. Decentralized, self-hosted (or not) software that all talks to other instances to create a sharing ecosystem for people who want it. Based on w…

I guess that's the idea I'm trying to explore.

I'm with you that, in theory, I see a value proposition there but in practice it's pretty thin. I remember using delicio.us to find out some interesting links based on some interesting peoples account, but it was very limited and I obviously haven't used that feature in years since delicio.us shut down.

So the "share" feature is useful, but not useful enough to warrant either a centralized entity to make enough money to keep the lights on or create decentralized version for the community?

I have a home-grown note taking/link saving facility that just so happens to be public facing because it's easier for me to keep it public than to worry about logins and such but the audience is very clearly focused on one individual, me.

I do wonder if there are other people that would actually use this type of service for it's community/sharing potential. Is there something adjacent that adds value?

Re: Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us?

#134
post #69

I use https://histre.com/ , which also has a Hacker News integration.

Thanks. It is fast. It gives you bookmarks with notes, highlights, collections, publishing, and sharing. The browser extensions are open source. I’ve described additional features here: https://histre.com/features/ It goes way beyond being a passive store of links. For example, if you save a bunch of AirBnB links, it automatically creates a comparison table for you: https://histre.com/public/collections/35s2o5wz/mexi…

Histre used to offer full text search of your entire browsing history but that appears to have been quietly shuttered. I tried recently to search even the free limit's recent history for bits of text I knew these pages included but alas.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us?

#135
post #110
post #78

From my experience, simplicity and portability is really the key to a long term and effective bookmarking system. I add everything into one single bookmark folder in Firefox and slap on a few tags. Syncing between devices works perfectly. Adding a star (*) to the address bar limits the search to bookmarks only, which makes it insanely fast to look up interesting stuff I have bookmarked but vaguely remember, by typing…

I agree that the browser's built-in bookmarks manager is underrated. I never really got the social bookmarking phenomenon. For your use case, however, I recommend also getting into Hypothesis. I always used browser-based bookmarks (and still do), but I've gotten a ton of utility out of Hypothesis since I began using it. It's weird, because I came at it slowly, having known about Hypothesis for a long time—my initial…

I first checked out Hypothesis back sometime in the early 2010's and it really captured my imagination for a time. Unfortunately, like with all other bookmark-like services I have tried over the years, I did not use it regularly and it faded out of my habits rather quickly. I did attempt to pick it up again a year ago to make use of shared annotations while learning together with a friend, but we only used it for a short while before forgetting about it. I think Hypothesis is really great for those who make heavily use of it's core features on a regular basis – but I don't.

For me, the simplicity offered by the built-in bookmark system in Firefox is what makes me use it regularly. The moment I decide I have found an URL I might want to look up later, I hit ctrl + d, add a few quick tags, close the site and move on. It takes me less than 10 seconds and has lowered the bar significantly for adding a bookmark. No cognitive overhead is incurred by choosing an existing folder from a (deep) hierarchy, or trying to come up with yet another category in a sub-folder somewhere.

That said, I might move on to a self-hosted bookmark solution in the future that adds the the option to locally archive a webpage, but until then I'll keep doing what I'm doing, because it really works for me :)

Re: Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us?

#136
post #91

Try this one: https://t.me/aquilanet_bot BotMark: A Telegram bot for quick bookmarking & powerful search (works in groups as well) For Individuals: When you find an interesting website/article on your mobile phone, press the share button and select "botmark"—nothing more, nothing less. For Groups: Add "botmark" to a group and keep track of all the links in your group in one place—easy peasy.

I have a big friends group on Telegram approaching 33 people. How does BotMark improve on the Links tab that every Telegram group contains already?

Re: Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us?

#137
post #88

I’m working on an open-source social bookmarking site in Elixir that is API compatible with delicious/pinboard. Its named linkhut and it’s currently able to import your bookmarks from pinboard and browser exports. The flagship instance is: https://ln.ht The source code is hosted here: https://sr.ht/~mlb/linkhut/ The documentation: https://docs.linkhut.org/introduction.html The one thing that I’m working on before rel…

This looks cool. An unsolicited anecdote from a former huge delicious/stumbleupon guy, what made these sites awesome for me was the backfill of amazing content that other people had already cataloged. I didn’t share much, I just enjoyed other people’s content.

Obviously there’s a big chicken and egg problem with any social network like that, but I suppose what I’m getting at is I wouldn’t be afraid to “fake it” when you’re first starting out. Maybe scrape links from Reddit, HN, or even an old cache of StumbleUpon?

Re: Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us?

#138
post #64

Well... Shaarli. Dead simple to install, no fuss. https://github.com/shaarli/Shaarli I have been using it for the past 15 years with great satisfaction.

I expected this to be higher up. I used pinboard for years, but finally decided it's not worth the money. Self-hosting this requires very little resources and knowledge. Super happy with it, use it daily.

Thank you. :-)

Re: Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us?

#139
post #78

From my experience, simplicity and portability is really the key to a long term and effective bookmarking system. I add everything into one single bookmark folder in Firefox and slap on a few tags. Syncing between devices works perfectly. Adding a star (*) to the address bar limits the search to bookmarks only, which makes it insanely fast to look up interesting stuff I have bookmarked but vaguely remember, by typing…

>Adding a star (*) to the address bar limits the search to bookmarks only I did not know this, this will make searching through hundreds of bookmarks so much easier!

I should mention that I do not use the star that often because I have disabled the history function in Firefox completely, including deletion of all cookies (except a few whitelisted ones) when closing the program. I also have a bookmark folder where I put my most used websites, sometimes adding a keyword (shortcut) to gain quick access to them. Disabling auto-completion of search terms has also focused and simplified my use of the address bar.

These changes has made my address bar instant to use with no clutter at all. Usually I find exactly what I'm looking for in less than a second, be it an often used URL or a far forgotten bookmark. In my opinion, this is the core functionality of a browser address bar. The current defaults has turned the address bar into the main interface for big search engines (with a capital G), which happily gobbles up all the data users send their way.

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