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Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

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61–70 of 138 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#61
the only bookmarks i actually revisit with regularity are webpages that have some kind of tool on them (e.g. a BPM counter, a javascript minifier, etc).

otherwise, the rest of my bookmarks end up being generated when i'm on some random site, see something interesting on the page, think wow this is really great let me bookmark it, press Ctrl+D, and then never go back to the site ever again. which isn't all that bad.. there's something nice about the feeling of just seeing all of the titles of those sites (and remembering when you found all of those URLs) when you click the bookmark menu, and all of the titles show up. it feels lived-in, like an old house with history.

at some point, i decided an even better way of capturing bookmark-able moments was instead to take screenshots of something specific on the page, and collect them somewhere else, like on a blog. i dont need to go back to the actual page via a bookmark, because the image is enough.

for example, here's where i collect curious and/or spam-like findings, in lieu of a bookmark: https://jollo.org/LNT/bb/effexor1for1dogs/

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#62

the only bookmarks i actually revisit with regularity are webpages that have some kind of tool on them (e.g. a BPM counter, a javascript minifier, etc). otherwise, the rest of my bookmarks end up being generated when i'm on some random site, see something interesting on the page, think wow this is really great let me bookmark it, press Ctrl+D, and then never go back to the site ever again. which isn't all that bad..…

Yea, I can see that, taking a screen capture, at one point, I was recording my daily work activities (when I was a entrepreneur) to be able to back to, I rarely went back to them, but something about possession of being able to go back and check on something I did.

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#63

for bookmarking articles, you have https://getpocket.com/ and https://www.instapaper.com/ "Social bookmarking" started with deli.co.us and has largely been subsumed by reddit. Beyond some level of complexity, Evernote, Obsidian, Notion, etc become bookmarking tools ...but the ultimate place to find the bookmark managers are in the Chrome and Firefox extension stores: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/extension…

Cool sites, related, yes, agreed about "social bookmarking", but feels like, why do we create all of these "awesome list" for GitHub then, like that's a way to share a curated list of links, kinda like deli.co.us.

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#64

My covid side project was attempting to find a solution in this space. I envisioned users publishing their bookmarks in related forums (not unlike subreddits). The differentiating factor was allowing forum owners to monetize (as opposed to the platform appropriating all revenue). After thing reopened I got busy readjusting, but I plan to revive the efforts starting Jan: https://discoflip.com

Reminds me a bit of Substack, I know it's a different space, but kinda gave me that moment of, huh, one spot to see all cool stuff, and have it updated regularly.

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#65
Tools are not the main problem. What need to be “re-invented?” first is our personal approach to information overload.

One of the bigger issues with bookmarks is they always seem valuable the moment you add them, then that value somehow evaporates most of the time.

Between Bookmark-Hoarding and Zero-Bookmarks, thoughtful curation will always be an art form.

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#66
post #49

I never found a solution to what I actually want/need: - Snippet bookmarking. I don't want to browse to the whole page again, just highlight and save the piece of it I need to bookmark. - Annotations. I want to highlight, underline, bold, and comment on what I've bookmarked so that I know why I bookmarked it or what I intended to remember later. - In an open standard, like JSON, so that I can do things with the bookm…

Yep, that makes a ton of sense too, especially annotations + JSON.

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#68
post #49

I never found a solution to what I actually want/need: - Snippet bookmarking. I don't want to browse to the whole page again, just highlight and save the piece of it I need to bookmark. - Annotations. I want to highlight, underline, bold, and comment on what I've bookmarked so that I know why I bookmarked it or what I intended to remember later. - In an open standard, like JSON, so that I can do things with the bookm…

Not a consumer grade solution, but Org mode handles this with some setup and browser extensions

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#69

Tools are not the main problem. What need to be “re-invented?” first is our personal approach to information overload. One of the bigger issues with bookmarks is they always seem valuable the moment you add them, then that value somehow evaporates most of the time. Between Bookmark-Hoarding and Zero-Bookmarks, thoughtful curation will always be an art form.

What about search that is limited to your bookmarks? Shared bookmarks that really work between phones, tablets, computer, vr headsets, etc.?

I am not afraid to kill browser windows because I can look up anything in my history.

I want to bookmark something and get a webhook notification that I handle so I can build a database of my bookmarks side by side with other content that comes in through webhooks.

Re: Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?

#70

I have run a linkblog for 15+ years now. It's basically bookmarks (and stored in Pinboard) but my focus is on publishing a social media feed for others to read. https://www.somebits.com/linkblog/ Linkblogging used to be a thing people did in the heydey of early 2000s blogging. Now it's mostly lost as a form. The spirit of it lives though in the way Mastodon, Slack, Facebook, etc make it easy to share a link and have…

I just popped over there and the second entry was "Poppy War influences". So I wanted to thank you for reminding me that I really enjoyed the first book and need to get around to the others in the series.
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