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Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web

betula.mycorrhiza.wiki

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Re: Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web

#41
post #37
post #24

My main problem with bookmarks that I forget about them. I don't need a bookmark keeping service, I need one which would bring them forward when I look for something, based on context too. Something like which also makes a plain text searchable snapshot of the page? Maybe LLMs can solve that.

Yeah, I feel like what I really want is something like this, but also it saves the whole page and indexes it and that's the first set of results when I type into my address bar. Ideally self-host-able. I kinda enjoy organizing my bookmarks at times, but I mostly do that so I can find things... which I remember from content, not my organization, so I know it's mostly pointless to organize (for me). You can get some of…

See my comment above, but maybe this tool, https://showboard.ca, that does most of what you're looking for. Except the address bar auto-complete, that would be next level.

Re: Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web

#42
post #24

My main problem with bookmarks that I forget about them. I don't need a bookmark keeping service, I need one which would bring them forward when I look for something, based on context too. Something like which also makes a plain text searchable snapshot of the page? Maybe LLMs can solve that.

I self host wallabag and use the wallabagger extension on my machines. Works well and doesn't cost me anything on top of what I already have.

Re: Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web

#43
Bookmark managers that I have found:

- https://grimoire.pro/

- https://bookmarkos.com/

- https://wakelet.com/

- https://raindrop.io/

- https://booky.io/

- https://www.knowies.com/

- https://carrylinks.com/

- https://www.zotero.org/

- https://pinalist.com/

- https://web.ggather.com/

- https://lasso.net/

- https://onekeep.com/

And the last one, is mine: https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive

My bookmark manager is also a web scraper.

Re: Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web

#44
post #7

Misread it as “federated bookmaking software for the independent web” and thought “Yes, a useful application of blockchain!”

https://joincircles.net/ - but it suffers the same scalability problems as every other application of blockchain.

Re: Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web

#45
Certainly interesting. I had a similar project under works; I first looked at ActivityPub for federation but couldn't wrap my head around it. I settled on using some naive HTTP / REST for it, ie. just having one instance send queries to other linked instances when searching the whole network. The "federation" then would be kind of a whitelist model where each admin chooses their own outward peers / who to follow.

I didn't end up completing the project, though. I lost the code once due to an unfortunate home directory accident. I also worked both the front and backends at the same time, which slowed things down. Additionally, it was more of a hobby project where I was just learning the tech stack.

The end goal was sort of a small federation of independent indexes of good-quality webpages, which could function as a search tool for use cases such as finding different alternatives in a certain product category. Search results would be ranked based on how many linked instances save the links.

I might end up trying Betula, but it doesn't really seem to fulfill my ideal. I'm fine with Raindrop too, search works, and publishing my bookmarks is not a passion of mine.

Re: Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web

#46
post #14

Oh nice. I have a static html page I maintain on my website. the simplicity of maintaining that can't be beat, but it would be nice to give other people an easier way of following that if they'd like.

ironically i didn't went that route because it would be a pain to add content from both computers and mobile... turn out i now think maintaining a static html or md page on a remote server is less work than dealing with all the bs of thise things. including the bookmark Managers built into browsers which are all garbage to retrieve links

Firefox is actually decent for retrieving taged links, you just type * in the address field and it will only show you results from your bookmarks. It has become my second brain. I have written more about my use of the built-in bookmark manager in earlier comments if you are interested.

My only real gripe with Firefox is that the mobile client lacks the option to add tags. So frustrating!

Re: Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web

#47
post #24

My main problem with bookmarks that I forget about them. I don't need a bookmark keeping service, I need one which would bring them forward when I look for something, based on context too. Something like which also makes a plain text searchable snapshot of the page? Maybe LLMs can solve that.

My main problem is similar:

- I want tags in my bookmarks.

- Firefox no logger supports tagged bookmarks.

- -> I need to use a third-party service (Raindrop) for bookmarking.

- Common web searches in the Firefox address bar do not search my bookmarks at the same time, as they would normally. I need to directly use Raindrop to search specifically from my bookmarks.

- -> I might save useful things but forget about them entirely, and end up searching for them again.

Re: Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web

#48
post #24

My main problem with bookmarks that I forget about them. I don't need a bookmark keeping service, I need one which would bring them forward when I look for something, based on context too. Something like which also makes a plain text searchable snapshot of the page? Maybe LLMs can solve that.

https://mymind.com/ is based on AI analysis of page content, or something like that. I've never been able to use their product because they require a Google or Apple account.

https://raindrop.io/ apparently also has full-text search for page contents as a paid feature. I'm on the free tier and haven't tried it either.

Re: Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web

#49
post #24

My main problem with bookmarks that I forget about them. I don't need a bookmark keeping service, I need one which would bring them forward when I look for something, based on context too. Something like which also makes a plain text searchable snapshot of the page? Maybe LLMs can solve that.

My main problem is similar: - I want tags in my bookmarks. - Firefox no logger supports tagged bookmarks. - -> I need to use a third-party service (Raindrop) for bookmarking. - Common web searches in the Firefox address bar do not search my bookmarks at the same time, as they would normally. I need to directly use Raindrop to search specifically from my bookmarks. - -> I might save useful things but forget about them…

> - Firefox no logger supports tagged bookmarks.

How so? You can still set tags on bookmarks, and those tags get matched by text you type in the address bar to determine what bookmarks to show you.

> Common web searches in the Firefox address bar do not search my bookmarks at the same time, as they would normally.

Yeah, that's something I would love Firefox to add: a local search index for full-content search of every page in my bookmarks and history, based on my cache.

Re: Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web

#50
post #35
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same problem here. I have thousands of bookmarks and have no quick way to find out what I have. The bookmarks just get lost in the nested folders. I built a browser extension for myself to show all the bookmarks on one page, making it easy to access them and to search them. I called it One Page Favorites. Basically all my bookmarks/favorites on one page. Edit: Also it’s the first time for me to try to do an extension…

I had the same problem for my bookmarks, but I (kinda) answered it using 2 ways: Random link (when you don't know what to search but want to visit a (curated) cool link), and search (search in title, link, tags, description). On the paper it works great, if only you can tags those links and write a comprehensive description using keywords you'll remember. But in real life, it's something like this: https://links.l3m.…

I do something similar with interactive fuzzy search (CLI), and the search experience is quite good for me, even with limited tagging. Links contain a lot a useful information...
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