CloudNotes

News.me is better than Summify

2012-01-27T09:56:00.001-06:00

Now that Summify's been purchased by Twitter, I've been trying out News.me as an alternative.

I'm a couple of days into receiving my daily emails from News.me and I'm already preferring it to Summify for two reasons, one of them trivial and one of them substantial. The trivial thing first: I love that News.me doesn't put an awful-bar with proprietary URL when you click a link in your email. You just get the story you clicked from the original story. Second, and more importantly, News.me is serving up compelling links that I actually missed.

Summify seems to collect all the links that were shared by a ton of people I followed. By the time the links show up in my email, I've already seen them blowing up my Twitter and Facebook. In contrast, News.me has been serving up links I didn't see all over the place the previous day, but which seem pretty interesting to me the next morning. With News.me the content is both relevant and new.

I wonder how they're doing it. Maybe they're purposefully eschewing links that have been shared by a ton of people, figuring you've seen them already. Then they find items that have been shared a lot, but NOT by the people you follow? That's my guess anyway.

News.me may also be using your "favorites" as a way of determining what's relevant to you. If you try News.me, you should definitely check the box that "imports" your Twitter faves. Two big advantages to doing so: first, the potential increase in relevancy for your email summaries, and second the nice Read It Later stream it creates from your selections.

To sum up, I love it. I haven't tried the iPad app yet and I'm looking forward to their incorporation of the Facebook stream. But as a Twitter summary, in terms of cloning what Summify was doing for me, I prefer News.me.

Do the Collapse: How to Speed Up Evernote's Web Client

2011-08-25T11:53:00.003-05:00

Is Evernote, like, SUPER slow for you on the Web? Even if you're using Chrome? It's probably your fault. You might have too many damn tags. It might help to collapse your tag menu in the left hand column. Evernote's web interface was glacially slow for me, but I checked the forums. Sure enough, users who collapsed their tags were able to resolve the issue. Worked for me, too.

See, a long time ago I made a mistake. I ignored my own advice and imported all my Delicious bookmarks into Evernote. I also made the fateful decision to retain my tags. Basically, where before I had fewer than 100 tags, I now had thousands. This is what's been slowing down Evernote on the Web for me. Evernote doesn't even offer Delicious importing anymore, but if you made the mistake earlier, as I did, doing the collapse might help you.

Problem solved, right? Sure, but I have one more suggestion for Evernote and CEO Phil Libin. He once commented here, so maybe he'll see it. Give us poor users with thousands of tags a way to "delete unassigned tags." See, I've deleted my Delicious bookmarks, but all the tags I imported are still there. Sure, I have the option of hiding unassigned tags. But deleting them would be even better.

Consider it another step Evernote can take toward perfection.

Springpad lets you browse and save stuff from your Facebook Pals

2011-08-24T13:28:00.001-05:00

via lifehacker.com

This could potentially fill a gap. Apps such as Trunk.ly and Pinboard will save your Twitter faves. But I've not seen a web app that can usefully save items from Facebook.
If you're on the iPad, of course, Flipboard does this quite well.

***

Evernote "completely revamps" iOS apps. Again?

2011-08-22T15:59:00.001-05:00

via lifehacker.com

I love Evernote's penchant for constantly evolving their products. I love their commitment to a quality, cross-platform family of products. But it seems like they "completely revamp" things an awful lot. Maybe the lack of UI focus and consistency is the price we pay for having a free, bad-ass notebook on multiple gadgets.

***

MG Siegler slams AT&T over "streamlined" messaging plans

2011-08-18T14:23:00.001-05:00

So with the services now out there making people less reliant on SMS, what was going to happen? People were going to want to downgrade their plans. Who wants to pay $20 a month when you’re using only a handful of messages? Why not pay $10? Well, now you can’t. You can either pay $20 for unlimited, or have no plan and pay AT&T’s ridiculous per-message rate.

AT&T knows that most people are not going to chose the latter. Again, we’re not to the point yet where people will be fully comfortable letting go of SMS. Hell, all of the services I mentioned use it as a backup in one way or another.

Think of it this way: unlimited SMS is heroin. The $10 a month limited plan is methadone which you could have used to wean yourself off. AT&T has just cut off the methadone supply. They’re daring you to go cold turkey. Most won’t be able to.

via techcrunch.com

And maybe they deserve it. But Siegler does omit a key bit of information: if you're already an AT&T customer you can keep your existing plan. Indeed, AT&T killed off their $5.00/200 plan in January. But I've still got it. No untoward billing issues or unexplained increase in my bill.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

***

Zotero Announces Major Upgrades Taking Place Over the Next Few Weeks

2011-08-15T09:32:00.001-05:00

via zotero.org

I'm really glad to hear it. I had forsaken Zotero because it was linked to Firefox—and continuing to use Firefox was untenable because it had become so sluggish and old hat.

But part of Zotero's facelift includes a stand-alone client and integration with other browsers such as Chrome and Safari. I'm excited about this.

***

Using your “real name” is not revolutionary.

2011-08-06T15:04:00.001-05:00

Google+ and Facebook both require their users to use their real names on the site. This might or might not be a good idea that is beneficial to users. The wisdom of such policies can be debated. But having such a policy is not "revolutionary."

Alexis Madrigal begins his “revolutionary” claim by conceding his initial instincts "strongly pointed to requiring real names." He then uses a bogus thought experiment to convince himself otherwise:

Imagine you're walking down the street and you say out loud, "Down with the government!" For all non-megastars, the vast majority of people within earshot will have no idea who you are. They won't have access to your employment history or your social network or any of the other things that a Google search allows one to find. The only information they really have about you is your physical characteristics and mode of dress, which are data-rich but which cannot be directly or easily connected to your actual identity. In my case, bystanders would know that a 5'9", 165 pound probably Caucasian male with half a beard said, "Down with the government!" Neither my speech or the context in which it occurred is preserved. And as soon as I leave the immediate vicinity, no one can definitively prove that I said, "Down with the government!"
In your head, adjust the settings for this thought experiment (you say it at work or your hometown or on television) or what you say (something racist, something intensely valuable, something criminal) or who you are (child, celebrity, politician) or who is listening (reporters, no one, coworkers, family). What I think you'll find is that we have different expectations for the publicness and persistence of a statement depending on a variety of factors. There is a continuum of publicness and persistence and anonymity. But in real life, we expect very few statements to be public, persistent, and attached to your real identity. Basically, only people talking on television or to the media can expect such treatment. And even then, the vast majority of their statements don't become part of the searchable Internet.

I’m fine with analogies, but this is the wrong one. Facebook and Google+ aren’t at all like yelling out into a nameless crowd. Instead, you’re writing a message, to people you choose to share it with. This is a lot more like a letter or mass e-mail. Technologies much older than modern social networks, and ones that we quite often connect with our real names. Why? Because we wan’t our readers to know where the message is coming from. We want them to read it and trust it and care about it.

I’m not saying that anonymity doesn’t have its advantages. Sure it does, and it has a rich and honored history on the Web, including web forums, chat rooms, Myspace, Friendster, Tumblr and Twitter. But let’s not pretend that using one’s real name on the internet is some sort of crazy, unprecedented idea.

Both Facebook and Google are trying to connect you with your real friends, because those are the relationships that can most easily be monetized through advertising. And they are the relationships that create the “stickiest” network effects. You trust your close friends more than anyone else. This is the idea behind the “real names” rules.

If we must use a talking out loud analogy instead of a written one, fine. What if you’re talking to your friends in a bar, they all know who you are, don’t they? That bar is what Google and Facebook want to be. They want you to have a few drinks, let down you guard, and show you ads while you’re in the can. They are the new Cheers, “where everybody knows your name.”

You may not like it. You may be worried that someone will overhear, or that you’ll be taken advantage of. That you don’t really control your privacy. You may prefer a low profile. That’s fine. There are a couple of rando funhouses down the street. They’re called Twitter & Tumblr, and they’re great. See you there. I like all the bars in this neighborhood.

Amazon is first to market, Rdio and Audiogalaxy still offer better options

2011-03-29T08:44:00.001-05:00

So Amazon beats both Google and Apple to market with what I expect will be similar approaches to cloud based “music locker” services. You can upload, store, and stream your entire music library for $1 per gigabyte per year. Your first five gigabytes is free, and anything you buy from Amazon is free to store. That’s a good deal, made even better because Amazon’s music downloads are priced much more cheaply than iTunes and are frequently competitive with eMusic, neither of which currently offer a music locker service.

But there are some drawbacks that will probably keep me from using the service (much as I love Amazon).

It won’t work on your iPhone or iPad.
MP3s you’ve already purchased from Amazon aren’t included in the service. You can upload them, of course, but they’ll count against your 5 gb limit.
No social integration with Last.fm, Facebook, or Twitter.

Right now Rdio and Audiogalaxy both offer more sensible, comprehensive approaches to music in the cloud. Rdio lets me stream more than 7 million songs with great social features and zero uploading. And if I want to listen to my own mp3 library, Audiogalaxy gives me streaming access to my entire hard drive (almost 200 gb) for free—again, with no uploading.

As I said, I expect iTunes and Google (and probably eMusic) to offer similar services, all of which will probably be oriented around purchasing, uploading, and storing mp3s. But I can’t figure out why I’d want to use any “music locker” option. Why chain myself to the old paradigm of storing thousands of digital files on a virtual drive? Why do that when I can more cheaply access millions of files with a small monthly subscription using Mog, Rhapsody, Rdio, or Spotify (when it gets here to the States)?

Amazon’s storage price isn’t bad, but it would cost me almost $200 a year to store my library. I pay Rdio about $120, and that gets me unlimited streaming and downloading to a mobile device. That’s all I need, and I don’t have the hassle of managing a drive full of files.

I will use Amazon’s free service. And probably Google’s. If only to stream my purchased music that isn’t available on Rdio. But unless one of the big three, Amazon, Google, or iTunes, figure out how to marry a subscription service with their music locker approach, or offer free storage (similar to Lala.com), I’m not interested.

Long time, no see

2010-10-18T22:59:00.001-05:00

You might be wondering where I’ve been. Well, a little more than a year ago, my son was born. And that pretty radically changed my life. For the better. But one casualty, among many lesser things in my life, was this blog.

I suddenly had a lot less time to read tech blogs and do all the dorky things one needs to do to maintain a space like this one. Remember, I have a day job, too. So I took a necessary hiatus.

My son being born wasn’t the only thing that changed. The whole landscape of bookmarking and notetaking (or notemarking, as I’ve called it) seemed to stagnate as Evernote appeared to become the new default, with Diigo and Delicious consolidating their niche bases among those who still believe in social bookmarking. This isn’t to say new startups weren’t, uh, starting up. But in the year or more since I went dark, no new, exciting services have come on the scene and blown my doors off. Or as they say in tech-blog-land nothing new has “gained traction in the space.”

Granted, it’s never been my goal to chronicle all the startups and new services. That’s why you read Lifehacker, Make Use Of, Download Squad and any number of other outlets that pump out their 20 posts a day. Instead, I’ve tried to write longer, more opinionated pieces about how I’m actually using a Web app or tool. Where it shines and where it falls short. If I’m not using it, I’m not writing about it.

With this in mind, I thought I’d give you a quick state of the union. I’ve made a list of all the tools I’m using now. If you go back to my very first post, you’ll see I’ve made a few changes. But, relative to where I was a year ago, there’s not a lot of new services and case uses in my bag of tricks.

I have made two huge shifts. First, I’m no longer using Firefox. Like a lot of other people, I’ve gone over to Chrome. And second, I finally bought an iPhone—my first real smartphone. So mobile apps have become a lot more important to me.

Anyway, here are the apps, tools, and services I’m into now.

Chrome: SO MUCH FASTER. I miss Delicious Bookmarks. And I prefer Firefox’s Awesome Bar to the Omni Bar. But it’s not enough to make me put up with Firefox’s wretchedly slow speed and various eccentricities. Still use Firefox at work sometimes, but I’ve been phasing it out.
Evernote: Getting the iPhone solidified Evernote as my new bicycle. Indeed, the iPhone app might be the best thing about Evernote. I still think other Evernote experiences, on both the Web and the desktop, are clunky and bloated. But its cross-platform ability to store and search everything, including PDFs and image text, make it indispensable.
OneNote: I use OneNote exclusively when I am at work. Oddly, the killer app for me has become the little “send to” button from Outlook. That’s how I save my important emails now. So much better than creating .PST folders, amirite?
Delicious: Honestly, I think I’m phasing Delicious out of the picture. I haven’t found a satisfactory alternative to Delicious Bookmarks on Chrome, and using the Web UI to find my bookmarks is painfully slow. Licorize, which I’ll cover soon, might finally be my go-to Delicious replacement.
Tumblr: You don’t think of Tumblr as a notebook, but you should. Tumblr’s flexible bookmarklet, improved search feature, and ability to import RSS feeds make for a surprisingly flexible and attractive repository. Still the best image bookmarking service, in my opinion.
Posterous: Both Wordpress and Blogger lack a Tumblr-style bookmarklet, Posterous ably fills the gap. I love the way Posterous’s bookmarklet smartly grabs and embeds videos. I still think Tumblr is far superior to Posterous in every other way. But, I haven’t tried the new iPhone app yet.
Read It Later: This alternative to Instapaper was a lot more important to me when I was a heavy Firefox user because of the RIL’s integration with Google Reader. I still prefer it to Instapaper, but I mostly use the mobile app now.
Feedly: I finally stopped using Google Reader in favor of this front-end and Web based GR client. Since it syncs with Google Reader, it’s the best of both worlds: all the advantages of the best-in-class RSS reader, but with a snazzy UI and tons of add-on features. Still waiting for the Feedly team to integrate Google Reader tags. Not sure what’s taking so long.
Reeder: Feedly is working on an iPhone app. But until it comes out, Reeder is my mobile gateway to my Google Reader feeds on the iPhone. Integration with Read it Later and Delicious is a huge plus.
Shareaholic: Actually better in Chrome than it was in Firefox, because it can save your settings and user information. Never use your browser’s bookmark bar again. If you’re reading this blog, I have to believe you’re already using Shareaholic.
Lastpass: The best password app ever. And it’s free. I’ve not tried the mobile yet, because I’m finding I don’t do a lot of web surfing on my iPhone. I mostly use apps. Does this mean the web is dead? Uh, no. But it does mean apps are a viable alternative. Not sure why one thing always must “kill” another in the tech press. Kill me if I ever write “[something]-killer” on this blog.
Google Buzz: I think it’s a lot better than Facebook or Twitter (even new Twitter). Why? Conversations work better; it’s their secret weapon. To be more specific, ask yourself whether you prefer Facebook sending messages to your inbox, or Google Buzz sending you entire interactive, seamless conversations to your Inbox. What you see in Gmail is a fully functioning Buzz post. Sure, you’d like to export to Facebook and Twitter, and be able to import from more sources. I think Google will add these features and others at the same remarkable pace they’ve been on for months. As they continue to innovate, the users will come.

Well, that’s it for now. It’s good to be back. I won’t make any promises for how often you’ll see me or when I’ll post. But it will be sooner rather than later.

Don’t be a stranger.

Is Delicious for saving? Or for sharing? Or both?

2009-08-04T19:25:00.001-05:00

Today, Delicious released a pretty hefty set of features, and it’s a good occasion to talk about a couple of issues related to what this blog is about. First, as I mentioned in my last post, I feel like I can post more frequently and with more relevance over at my CloudNotes group on FriendFeed. The group provides an easy way for me to share a few of the many posts and blogs that are already covering the Delicious update more ably and quickly than I could.

A story about a major site’s significant update is going to be covered by every major blog outlet in the tech-o chamber, and each of them will have a slightly different take. Why not keep track with a few of them in FriendFeed? Certainly no need to duplicate the story with my own blog post. But I can still add my own commentary if I want. It’s the best of both worlds.

That being said, I do want to emphasize one thing the Read / Write post mentioned:

We've long believed that Delicious is one of the most under-appreciated social media services remaining from the early days of the social web. This new version could help win back some of the early love, but it does represent a radical shift away from the original vision most people have of the service as a tool for bookmarking things you want to return to later. The founder of Delicious, Joshua Schacter, said on Twitter last night "i hate the delicious twitter integration (sharing != saving) but i like the new search a great deal."

If I were writing my own blog post (and I guess, really, I am) that’s pretty much the story I would tell. Indeed, my post last year contrasting Delicious and FriendFeed, says something eerily similar:

I think people undervalue what's so great about del.icio.us. Better than any other Web site, Del.icio.us (along with its Firefox add-on) functions beautifully as a personal, extremely useful map of the Web. I wonder whether the tech-o chamber tends to overvalue social media and undervalue important, foundational functions, such as information collection and quick reference. It's worth asking the question: could FriendFeed do what Del.icio.us does? My answer is no.

I suppose some people might want to use Delicious primarily as a sharing vehicle. But not me. If I want something in my Twitter feed, I’ll usually post with Bit.ly. Twitter is for conversation. It’s ephemeral. I certainly don’t use it for things I’m planning on saving for later. For more permanent reference I use Delicious and Evernote.

So why is Delicious trying to partake of Twitter’s conversational, real time paradigm if it’s ultimately contradictory? Maybe Techcrunch’s analysis provides a clue. Their criticism both today and a few weeks ago pushes Delicious in two directions. Arrington and Siegler can’t seem to decide whether to criticize Delicious for adding features too slowly or attack it for being too complicated. So they do both. And maybe there’s some method to their madness.

Techcrunch is a pretty good proxy for the market, and today’s marketplace has declared real-time search and conversation to be sexy-land. Saving stuff for later is boring-ville. Delicious thinks it can be both your mistress and your wife. And given its scale (still unmatched by any other bookmarking service), maybe it can. As I’ve already said, Delicious is better than anyone when it comes to creating a social map of the internet’s past. What if they could bring you the present, too?

Join the new CloudNotes group on FriendFeed

2009-07-18T13:15:00.001-05:00

Join up now! Then read on for more details if you wish…

If you’re a reader or subscriber to this blog, you know I don’t post more than once a month—if that much. CloudNotes is really not intended to be a news source or conventional watering hole. From the beginning, I’ve conceived of this forum as more of a personal tech-quest; an exploration of how I personally use web-based notetaking and bookmarking services. My posts tend to be infrequent but longer, and I try to be as partial as possible. You’re getting my opinions—there’s nothing journalistic about what I’m trying to do here.

But also, from the beginning I’ve wished for an in-between way to share casual thoughts and links during those long droughts between posts. A place where I could quickly stash links and bits of news that might not ever merit a full post. This, of course, isn’t so different from note-taking. And at first, I simply shared my Google Notebook. When Google announced they would cease further development of the project, I switched my link blog over to Tumblr, which is perhaps the most elegant and easy blogging platform available.

But a blog isn’t quite what I wanted. Nor does a shared notebook quite meet all my needs (although I do maintain a public Evernote notebook, here). I wanted something interactive. A place where I could post my links, but where others could post their thoughts as well. I think there are people who care about the same web-apps and services I care about. People who require powerful research tools for both work and play. I wanted a place where like minds could share tips and tricks and ideas about notemarking.

Admittedly, I could have invited users to contribute to my Tumblr, but I don’t want co-authors. I want full-on exchanges in a place where everyone’s on equal footing. After abortive attempts at using disappointing services like Social Median and Twine, I’ve finally figured out that FriendFeed is perfect for this. Why is FF so great at community building? As I said on my final Notemarks post:

I want a simpler way to share things, and it doesn’t get simpler or easier than FriendFeed.
I want more interaction with people who care about Notetaking and Bookmarking services. I want to make conversation easier. And FriendFeed does conversation better than anyone.
It should be easy for you to submit your own links and stories. You know I don’t blog all that often, but I’d still like to see daily conversation about how we’re keeping track of your thoughts in the cloud.
I really need an excuse to use FriendFeed. It’s a brilliant service, but very few of my pals are here. This group is a great opportunity to make some new friends who care about a fairly narrow tech subject.

Sure there are already rooms devoted to single services like Evernote and Delicious. But I wanted forum where people feel free to talk about any service. In my dream scenario, about 10 percent of my readers will sign up and be active participants. That’s still small enough where it won’t be attractive to spammers. But, really, I’ll take all comers.

That includes you.

Let’s get started.

Win a scanner darkly

2009-07-07T22:43:00.001-05:00

Me: So I saw your Twitter message just now. What the hell is “#evernote_scansnap”?

Eve666: Oh, it’s so awesome. You know that thing where, like, companies were giving away free Macbooks and iPhones on Twitter if you add their hashtag to your posts?

Me: Yeah, I guess. So this is like #moonfruit and #squarespace?

Eve666: Yeah, well, Evernote is doing the same thing, except they’re giving away this bad-ass scanner. All you have to do is tweet publicly to @evernote with the hashtag #evernote_scansnap somewhere in your message.

Me: hmmmm

Eve666: But it’s kinda dumb too, because unlike the other ones, where you could put those tags in all your tweets and have lots of chances to win, Evernote is limiting entries to only one per week.

Me: I see. So you’re kinda bummed because Evernote is taking a quasi-ethical approach to the whole “co-opt your twitter feed” thing.

Eve666: ..

Me: I mean you’re upset because you won’t be able to spam your friends with bizarre promotional hashtags quite as often as before.

Eve666: This is NOT spam.

Me: So you’ve asked all your friends, and this is what they expected when they agreed to follow all your updates?

Eve666: What is your deal? It’s just a few characters. And in exchange I get a freaking sweet scanner.

Me: No. You get a chance at winning a free scanner.

Eve666: ..

Me: And the chances of you winning go down the more douchebags there are who think spamming their friends with ads is a good idea.

Eve666: (away)

Techcrunch: Ditch Delicious for some dude’s side project

2009-07-06T22:32:00.001-05:00

Today Mike Arrington is suggesting to his readers that they should ditch Delicious and use Pinboard, a private beta “side project” developed by former Yahoo Brickhouse engineer. What’s so great about this new product? It basically recreates the Delicious bookmarklet, adding a nice “Read Later” button to the standard layout:

It looks like Delicious. Only without the help of suggested tags added and curated by a large community of users. Uh, no thanks. I think I’d rather use Delicious. What’s really weird is that Arrington doesn’t offer any evidence there’s anything wrong with Delicious, nor does he offer a convincing argument explaining why Pinboard (or any other service) is any better. Here’s what he does say:

[Delicious is] slow, sometimes offline. A couple of weeks ago it wouldn’t let me log in, saying my password was incorrect. I was sure it was right, but I requested a password reset anyway. The email never came.

The service has languished, and has the feel of a product that’s on life support. There doesn’t seem to be a passionate group of developers loving and caring for the product and making it better over time. Or at least not worse. Traffic is stagnating or dropping, depending on which analytics service you look at. Founder Joshua Schacter left long ago in frustration, and is now at Google.

All Delicious really needs to do is let me bookmark sites without a lot of distraction. It hasn’t been good at that for a long, long while.

Let’s go through this carefully…

“It’s slow.”

For this claim, Arrington offers no evidence other than his own experience. I looked at the Delicious User Forum, and there is indeed a year-old user thread in which Delicious promises to correct a speed issue for IE7 users. As of today, at least one user is stating the problem with IE 7 is still there. From what I can tell in the screenshot, Arrington’s using Firefox. And I’m using the latest version on a Vista machine. The site loads in less than 2 seconds. Consistently.

As an aside, you know what service actually is slow? Twine. That hasn’t stopped Techcrunch from covering it twice in the last three months.

“Sometimes offline.”

I’ve not once noticed Delicious being off-line. And there’s not a current thread on the Forum complaining of the problem.

“A couple of weeks ago it wouldn’t let me log in, saying my password was incorrect. I was sure it was right, but I requested a password reset anyway. The email never came.”

Again, there’s no post to the forum active in the last month from any other user with a similar complaint. There are a few threads of IE 7 users of the Delicious Bookmarks add-on complaining about not being able to stay logged in. That does suck, and Delicious seems to be working on it, but at some point people really need to stop using IE.

“The service has languished, and has the feel of a product that’s on life support. There doesn’t seem to be a passionate group of developers loving and caring for the product and making it better over time. Or at least not worse.”

First, it’s obvious Arrington hasn’t bothered to visit the Delicious support site or the separate site for the Delicious Bookmarks add-on. There, he would see developers who are active every day in response to user questions and concerns. Many problems, such as their hiccup last December are related to interactions with other third-party add-ons. Dealing with issues that can have so many causes isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but Delicious is trying hard every day to help their users.

I do agree that Delicious could be adding features at a faster clip, but I can’t think of any features I’d absolutely have to have. And neither can Arrington. In fact, he doesn’t want any “bells and whistles.” He says that Pinboard is exactly what he wants because it’s got “No graphics. no design. just easy, easy bookmarking and tagging. I love it.”

So which is it? Do you want a site with passionate developers and bug-fixers or a site with one developer who’s created a barebones side project? There’s no coherence in this post. At all.

“Traffic is stagnating or dropping, depending on which analytics service you look at. Founder Joshua Schacter left long ago in frustration, and is now at Google.”

I too was troubled by the departure of Joshua Schacter, but I really liked the Delicious 2.0 release that came after he left, especially the ability to bulk-edit my bookmarks. I’ve been a happy user for several months, and I’ve not seen one service that does it better.

I suppose they may be losing users, which should concern those of us who love the service and want to keep it around. But for now, I’m not going to abandon something that continues to work in a speedy and reliable fashion. I’m certainly not leaving Delicious for a tiny site that’s still in private beta. Again, there’s no coherence here.

All Delicious really needs to do is let me bookmark sites without a lot of distraction. It hasn’t been good at that for a long, long while.

I’ll just say that I’m not buying it. Delicious is working awesome for me. No one else is reporting the problems Arrington is claiming, and I can’t figure out what distractions he’s talking about. Note that he’s still got his beloved Firefox add-on installed. And if you operate it in classic mode, it’s freaking identical to what he likes about Pinboard.

_________

Whew. So none of this is to say that Delicious is perfect or that Pinboard isn’t a worthy project (I’m not a user, but I’m impressed by their listed features). I’m just taking a bit of time to fisk one of Arrington’s lazy posts. I started to write a comment over at Techcrunch, but this post is too long, and the comments there are only slightly better than YouTube quality.

I’ll be back in another month. :)

Why Google Reader is still hugely important (to me)

2009-06-03T22:35:00.001-05:00

I read Steve Gillmor’s elegiac goodbye to RSS a month ago, around the same time I read Farhad Manjoo’s exhortation to “kill your RSS reader” and in that month I’ve asked myself a few times “Could Twitter or Friendfeed completely replace Google Reader in my daily webbernetting? Could I do without my RSS reader altogether?”

This has been roundly debated all over the place, including tech blogs much larger and more well respected than mine. And if you’re reading this blog, I trust you’ve already digested the more popular commentaries. But I’m going to come at it somewhat differently.

Why I prefer Google Reader

Imagine, for a moment, there are sites out there that aren’t tech blogs or news aggregators like Techmeme. News sources that can’t be easily read using Twitter and Friendfeed. News sources and blogs that talk about medicine and law and parenting and music.

As a healthcare lawyer, musician, and soon-to-be dad, that’s the world I live in. And RSS still matters to me. Briefly, here’s why I still prefer Google Reader over Twitter, Friendfeed, and all the other real-time web engines.

Real time doesn’t matter to me. I’m a lawyer who works at a hospital. I’m not a pro-blogger or journalist. I don’t have time to sit around reading FriendFeed and Twitter all day. I check in on my pals, sure. But any just-for-fun reading I do has to occur at lunch and in the evenings. When I’m not doing my freaking job. If I used real-time sources like Twitter or Friendfeed to read the news, much of what I want to read would simply pass me by.
But speed does. And with Google Reader, I usually don’t have to click links to see what I’m reading. It’s already there. And if I want to share a post with friends, it’s a single click or SHIFT-S away.
I care about more than just the tech-o-chamber. If I were a tech journalist / blogger, I’d find just about all the sources I could ever want or need via Twitter / Friendfeed. But for other areas, like law and music and healthcare, the coverage on Twitter and Friendfeed is not cast nearly so wide. There are some enthusiastic users in all those fields using real-time tools and social media, but there are a lot of influential bloggers and news sources who are still pretty old school. They have RSS feeds, but that’s it.
I need deep—not wide—commentary. Much of what I consume is long form, niche material. I read longer posts on blogs that are updated far less frequently. These same blogs are not widely read, so they also aren’t widely shared. I’d miss these posts if it wasn’t for Google Reader.
There’s less noise in my RSS feed. There’s no @replies. There’s no “I need to pee.” There’s no links to Perez Hilton. When I finally take time to read my stuff, I want to read MY STUFF. There’s a place in my workflow for conversation and sharing with friends. And I actually like some of what Google Reader has done with respect to sharing and commenting. But when I’m in Google Reader, my focus is usually more narrow.
My RSS reader offers a more feature-rich, versatile, and efficient experience. I can do lots of things with Google Reader that I can’t do with Friendfeed or Twitter. Or at least, couldn’t do as easily. This is because Google Reader is about much more than reading. It’s an inbox with multiple outputs that serve multiple purposes. Yes, Friendfeed is great for sharing. So is Facebook. But I also use the Web for research and plain ole private reading for personal edification. That’s where Google Reader shines: reading and keeping track of what I’ve read.

This last point is important. I like Twitter. I like Friendfeed. But they’re a small part of my news-reading work flow. Google Reader’s speed, focus, and rich feature set simply allow me to do more with my news. Here’s a few examples of Google’s flexibility:

Tagging and Saving

Google Reader saves everything, so it’s easy to go back and search for something I’ve read in the past. I usually get lightning fast results with Google-like accuracy. That’s better than Twitter, isn’t it?

But suppose I want to make things easier to find? I can just tag them and come back to the collection. I’m fond of keeping track of cool desktop apps I’ve read about at Lifehacker or Download Squad. So, I usually tag these posts with “apps” and review them when I’ve got some free time. I don’t need all my friends reading these posts, it’s just for my use and later enjoyment. So when I’m ready to review my “Apps” posts, I click “Trends” then scroll down to my tag cloud.

Publishing and Sharing

Google Reader allows you to create link blogs for all your shared or starred items, both of which can be made public. And, it’s easy to publish. Just click the share or star buttons. If you want, you can import your shared items into Friendfeed or Facebook. It is faster and more effortless than re-tweeting. And you can reach a larger audience with minimal setup.

I take this concept a step further by using some items as inputs into my Tumblr blogs. If you read my Cloudnotes companion, Notemarks, you might have already noticed this. To publish an excerpt on Tumblr, all I have to do is tag an item, and then import the shared RSS feed for that tag into Tumblr. I use the tag “cloudnotes” to designate an item for publication on Notemarks.

Taking notes

I write a weekly post for a music blog, and all week I take notes and do research for that one post, which is usually kinda long. Google Reader is only one of several sources for that research material, but it’s an important tool nonetheless. To make sure I get all my music links together, I like to keep stuff in Evernote (I finally converted!).

So how do I get Google Reader posts into Evernote? I use the email feature. Evernote supports email importing, so it’s a pretty simple process.

I just address it to Evernote, and it shows up for later organization with all my related notes from other sources. Plus, I usually send a copy to myself, so it’s also available in my Gmail. Since I tend to use “Send to Gmail” as my all-purpose bookmarklet (works with any service that imports email), Gmail is a pretty handy backup for all my notes.

Reading it later

Finally, sometimes I just want to mark an article for later reading, nothing more and nothing less. For that I use the outstanding Read It Later add on for Firefox. Sure, it works everywhere in your browser or on your iPhone, but I absolutely LOVE its Google Reader integration.

That friendly red check mark just says, “I’m coming back to this later today or this week when I have time.” Since I usually only have time for light reading at lunch, this this little tool is a godsend for helping me read longer, more involved pieces.

So that’s it.

I use Google Reader because it’s flexible enough to encompass everything I need to do when I’m consuming content online. And I can do quite a bit with keyboard shortcuts and single-clicks. Let me know when Twitter and Friendfeed are that flexible.

Ten Steps Evernote Can Take Toward Perfection

2009-04-22T23:32:00.001-05:00

After Google announced the demise of their awesome Notebook product, I was pretty bummed. In the aftermath, I looked at a few other tools, but I’ve mostly been using Evernote. I haven’t been totally happy about it, though. As I said my earlier post reviewing Evernote’s Google Import utility:

Overall, I think Evernote has done a nice job … and it’s definitely a strong contender to replace Google Notebook as my app of choice. Next week, I’ll let you know why I’m withholding my full endorsement.

As you’ve probably noticed, I still haven’t followed up. Frankly, I forgot I was supposed to get back to my readers. A couple weeks ago, a commenter named Larry reminded me of my outstanding obligation.

So here it is, 3 months later, and I’m about to tell you how I think Evernote could improve on what I must admit is the leading notebook product available. Where possible, I’ve linked to other folks articulating similar complaints.

Major issues

Keyboard shortcuts in the Web version. I find the Web version of Evernote nearly unusable, thanks to a near complete lack of support for keyboard shortcuts. I can’t bold or underline. Can’t create bulleted or numbered lists. And you can’t cycle forward and backward through your notes. As a Google Reader / Gmail user, I know perfection in this regard is possible. But in Evernote Web, just about everything has to be done by clicking on a damn menu button. This is item number one for a reason.
Shared notebooks need an overhaul. In the sidebar, I used to link my readers to a shared page in Google Notebook. That’s not really possible in Evernote, because the shared notebooks look like ass. They need to ditch the framed navigation and make each shared notebook look more like a blog, and less like Evernote. You can tell there’s an ambition to make their notebooks more like blogs, because there’s a permalink button and tags right up there with the title and link. But the framed navigation and lack of a tag cloud kills the natural inclination to browse. And, of course, there are no comments. Which is kind of inexcusable given the lack of more advanced collaboration features. I should say I don’t mind the ads, but they’d get a lot more impressions if they made a more readable product. For real, Evernote could make for a killer Tumblelog, but until they get it right, I’m using Tumblr.
Collaboration in shared notebooks. This is a nice-to-have, but it’s something Google Notebook did very well. Because Evernote is a cross-platform behemoth it’s a bit tougher nut to crack, but they could speed it up by enabling collaboration in Web mode only. And make it a premium feature. Now that’s something people would pay for. P.S., I’m aware this is on Evernote’s 2009 to-do list, but it would be silly not to include such a major feature on this list.
Sane tag navigation. Evernote features a fantastic import tool for your Delicious bookmarks, but I’ve avoided it because adding all my Delicious tags to the already crowded sidebar would make things entirely unmanageable. For a small amount of tags, Evernote’s vertical hierarchy of tags makes sense. But once you achieve a critical mass, tags become unusable. You can’t quickly identify or locate your content. I realize tag clouds aren’t universally appreciated, especially in the blog context. But in an app like Evernote conserving screen real estate and minimizing scroll time (in an already scroll-heavy app) becomes very important. Also, the size convention common in tag clouds, in which larger font size indicates greater tag frequency, would allow users to quickly identify their most important content. Tag clouds should at least be an option.

This still isn’t all my tags. Keep scrolling…
Highlighter would be awesome. I’m struggling to think of another notetaking app that doesn’t offer a highlighter. Guess what? Nearly every major Evernote competitor offers a highlighting function. Certainly every app I’ve covered here does. Usually in more than one shade. This feature is also included in Zoho Writer and Google Docs. Ditto Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Not sure what Evernote is thinking here, but if the idea is that it’s an overrated, underused function, just about every other user and developer on earth seems to disagree.

Minor issues

Would a little color kill you? There’s a certain stoic panache to Evernote’s palate of green and gray, but it sure would be helpful to add a little color that helps differentiate content. Gmail is the model here, with options to color code tags/labels. An even better model would be the Gmail labs feature, SuperStars, which itself is similar to the visual tags in OneNote. This could add an additional categorization feature to the already helpful tags and folders. The use of these small, colorful cues would actually enhance the function of apps relatively monochrome color scheme, because the color-marked items would stick out all the more.
Nested folders in notebooks. I realize that under the current Evernote regime, tags are nested. Notebooks are not. This makes very little sense, but it’s not quite the dealbreaker that lack of a tag cloud option is. Still, notebooks are, by definition, designed to house broad categories of information. As you see in OneNote, it’s natural to subdivide these broad categories into tabs (or subnotebooks). Evernote mysteriously avoids this organizing principle in favor of nested tags. I say mysterious, because one of the foundational justifications for tags over folders is that they can apply in a variety of contexts. That is, one tag might belong to several “folders” or ideas. They are atoms, free to combine and recombine according to their different valences and properties. But in Evernote’s bizarro world, the very strengths of tags are neutralized so that you end up with a large clump of useless folder-like tags. Meanwhile, your Notebooks are static and cannot themselves contain sub-units.
Click-less access to edit menu. Both the Web and desktop versions of Evernote force you to 1) Select a note, then 2) click again before you can access the rich text editing menu. In a perfect world, like Google Notebook, you’d only have to click once. Obviously, in the Desktop app, this doesn’t annoy me as much because keyboard shortcuts are available once you’ve selected a note.
One click Web mode. I absolutely love Read It Later, mostly because to save an item for later reading, I only have to click once. No tagging, no confirming. It’s great. The desktop version of Evernote has this feature, and I love it. The Web-based clipper and bookmarklet require an extra step, as you have to confirm your saved item. Evernote could easily create a second bookmarklet, that allowed users to save links using a single click to which they could return.
Additional email options. I recently started using Evernote’s email function so that I could simultaneously save items to Gmail. Unfortunately, when you use Evernote’s email option, there’s no way to indicate which notebook the item should go in or which tag should be applied. For example, it would be nice to add #hashtags to the subject or body of the email and have Evernote automatically read this as a tag or notebook. I saved this for last because Evernote’s saved searches feature can be used to accomplish the same thing: Simply create a saved search for {your hashtag here}. Then, including that text in your email will ensure it shows up in your saved search. Still, Evernote could easily add a syntax parsing feature that allowed you to define notebooks and tags for your emailed items. I would love it because I could then take advantage of Gmail’s highlighter feature in every note I clipped. :p

Well, there you have it. My suggestions for Evernote. Most of them aren’t new or groundbreaking. Indeed, the fact that so many have suggested these changes is a sign of Evernote’s overall strength as an incredible cross-platform notetaking option. Still, there is some frustration because many inferior apps and services already include the above features. These glaring omissions and design errors are sometimes enough to make you forget that Evernote has a peerless mobile app, voice recording, and text recognition in photos.

I look forward to Evernote improving because they responded to many of these ideas within their user forum (many of which are included above as links). Despite what Robert Scoble or Facebook thinks, I believe listening to users is usually a good idea, and I’m glad to see Evernote is listening to people like me.

I like Likaholix. A lot.

2009-03-18T21:33:00.001-05:00

First, four ex-Googlers launched Friendfeed to expand on Facebook’s news feed idea. They ended up creating the gold standard for Lifestreaming services. Now two more former Google employes have launched Likaholix, and it looks a lot like Facebook’s “I’m a Fan” feature. And as with Friendfeed, it’s like Facebook, only better.

Facebook caught a lot of flak for their Beacon feature, but as they’ve refined their brand-interaction strategy, they’ve also proven that users love giving props to the products, services, and entertainers they LIKE. Every week, I notice friends of mine become “fans” of TV shows (e.g., Dexter), Bands (Jesus and Mary Chain), Beers (Lone Star, Shiner), and politicians (Barack Obama).

Likaholix expands on this idea with an entire site devoted to sharing your favorite things, whatever those things might be. As with “fan”-hood on Facebook, you’re broadcasting your affinity for something that isn’t necessarily defined elsewhere on the Web. On Facebook, for example, you can be a fan of Pizza. Or Sleep.

But unlike Facebook, Likaholix doesn’t force you to receive spammy updates from the Page administrator. In fact, you don’t have to wait around for someone else to create a page at all. Instead, Likaholix works more like a traditional bookmarking site. So, let’s say I like Doritos (a fair statement).

Likaholix’s built-in search engine locates several links I can choose to represent the popular site. I’ll choose the obvious one, Doritos.com.

Next, if I want, I can explain why I like Doritos so much, and I can add some topics (i.e., tags). Also, I can search for images and videos I want to associate with my Doritos page.

Now, the delicious snack food has it’s own spot on my Likaholix page, where my pals can watch the videos I chose and comment on my page. The can also piggy-back on my Like, if they share my love for the delicious snack food.

And finally, I can close the loop using either Facebook Connect, sharing my likes with an even wider audience. As you see below, my likes can seamlessly integrate with my Facebook feed.

Those are the basics, but there’s an impressive array of features for such a new product:

Bookmarklet allows you to Like any web page
Link your account with Facebook, Twitter, or Friendfeed
Import reviews from Yelp and Amazon
Bookmark your favorites
View a stream of recommendations based on your Likes
Become a tastemaker in up to two topics of your choosing, and earn a snazzy star for your profile
Subscribe to your friends’ Likes or keep up with your favorite topics (e.g., coffee, video games)

The more you explore these features, the more you come to realize that Likaholix isn’t really like Facebook at all. Instead it bears an uncanny resemblance to Friendfeed. Does this sidebar header seem familiar to you? What about that playful logo? Or the careful cultivation of white space? Yeah, me too. But I’m not knocking it. There’s nothing wrong with clean design and transparent usability.

Likaholix isn’t the only site aiming to stake a claim to Twitter-length microreviews. Blippr (recently acquired by Mashable) comes to mind immediately. But think I prefer Likaholix’s open-ended simplicity. There are no categories except the ones you create. There’s no rating system. And there’s no pressure to write reviews. You just “like” something. That simplicity is what was so great about being a “fan” on Facebook. As I’ve said before, a great bookmarking service should work to reduce friction. How many clicks does it take? The closer you are to 1, the better your service.

That’s not to say Likaholix couldn’t be better. The Facebook Connect integration could work more simply and smoothly. And they definitely need a de-duping / disambigution engine. Right now, anyone can create a Doritos page. So even if it says I’m the “first” to like something, it doesn’t mean there aren’t 8 or 9 other nearly identical pages and conversations going on. Now where have I heard that before?

I actually raised both the above issues with Likaholix co-founder Bindy Reddy. She responded almost immediately and said they were working on both issues. Indeed, since I first emailed her, they’ve already improved the Facebook Connect feature so that you can post likes to either your status or your feed. For a timeline of other features they’re working on, click here. Also, check out their room on Friendfeed.

Shareaholic homepage gets a makeover

2009-03-16T22:09:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite Firefox add-ons has fancied up their landing page quite a bit this evening. It’s a good time for me to tell you how much I rely on this one little extension. Basically, it’s a bookmarklet aggregator that allows you to consolidate some of your most used Web tools into one easy button.

What sites does it support? A lot:*

Sure, you could just collect all your bookmarklets in a single folder on your toolbar (and even sync them using Xmarks), but it wouldn’t be as elegant. Besides, Shareaholic also shows you how many times certain pages have been shared or Dugg, something a normal bookmarklet can’t do.

But as much as I love Shareaholic, I think there’s still some room for improvement:

For starters, there should be a sync feature that ports your preferences across browsers.
In the same vein, why not aggregate all the links you share regardless of the service you use? It could be one garage that tracks all your sharing activity. Of course, you’d need granular privacy settings, but Shareaholic could still collect aggregate data that allowed to amass Web-wide statistics similar to AddThis or Add to Any. This might be a better use for Shareaholic’s sister site, Bzzster.
A killer feature would be the ability to add your own bookmarklet to Shareaholic just by dragging and dropping.
But if they can’t do that, at least add some important missing bookmarklets (e.g., Amazon’s Add to Wishlist, Posterous, and the new and totally awesome Likeaholix).

A while back I submitted a Delicious bug to Shareaholic co-founder Jay Meattle, and he promptly resolved my issue with an experimental build that fixed the problem (the latest version includes that fix). He could not have been nicer. I also shared my Amazon recommendation with him, so hopefully that will be part of the next version. Until then, it’s not leaving my browser anytime soon.

*Note that my current version of the add-on (1.6) doesn’t have support for Evernote and does not include the newly updated Twine bookmarklet. I assume he’ll be adding support for these soon soon.

Digging in the DiRT

2009-02-04T21:35:00.001-06:00

Today, my pal Meg sent me a link to a PBWiki focused solely on digital research tools or (DRT). Meg is an academic librarian and frequent Cloudnotes reader, so when she sent me this link I knew I had to check it out. DiRT’s self-described mission is pretty straightforward:

This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively. Whether you need software to help you manage citations, author a multimedia work, or analyze texts, Digital Research Tools will help you find what you're looking for. We provide a directory of tools organized by research activity, as well as reviews of select tools in which we not only describe the tool's features, but also explore how it might be employed most effectively by researchers.

The DiRT home page is helpfully organized around various research activities, including Brainstorm/ generate ideas, Make a screencast, Share bookmarks, Take notes/ annotate resources, and Visualize data. For each task, DiRT provides links to tools, software, and websites that fit the bill. For some of the more well-known research tools, such as Zotero and Diigo, DiRT features a longer review discussing the tool’s advantages and disadvantages.

I’m pretty excited to see a wiki dedicated to online research. And I’m happy to report that, unlike many specialty wikis, DiRT isn’t an abandoned ghost town. While not yet a comprehensive source, it seems to be an active community, with a critical mass of useful content. As a native Texan (I live in Houston), I also have to note DiRT’s editors are predominantly Texas-based, including academic librarians at Rice University and Sam Houston State University.

If you’re at all into the stuff I write about here, a site like this deserves your attention and support. So I encourage you to head over there, take a look around, and maybe become a contributor.

Noscript’s uneasy relationship with bookmarklets

2009-01-26T21:34:00.001-06:00

Whenever I install Firefox for the first time, my first add-on is always the venerable Noscript extension. If you’re unfamiliar with it, Noscript basically enforces a no-javascript zone for all web sites you encounter, except for those you trust (i.e., sites you add to your whitelist). In today’s Web world, nearly every Web site worth visiting uses javascript to implement the whiz-bang functionality and awesomeness we users demand. Unfortunately, not everyone can be trusted to use that power for good. Noscript is your weapon against such unscrupulous programmers.

When I first started using Noscript, I found it was a more efficient and more nuanced pop-up / ad blocker, because I could reliably stuff rogue ad-servers while whitelisting the core site. It also protected me from surreptitious malware agents, which silently utilize javascript to take advantage of browser-based vulnerabilities. Noscript allowed me to surf within a trusted Web, while forcing new sites to earn that trust with good behavior.

One of the minor inconveniences of Noscript has always been the use of bookmarklets. Typically, if you’re trying to bookmark or clip a page using a bookmarklet, you must first whitelist the underlying site. This usually means adding at least one extra click and one page reload before you can save the page. This is annoying, but it’s a reasonable tradeoff, given the enormous security advantages Noscript delivers.

A more recent Noscript / Bookmarklet conflict involves a different Noscript feature: protection against cross-site-scripting attacks or (XSS). This feature is a more sophisticated defense, designed to meet a more complicated foe: hackers that can exploit a loophole in a trusted site, and inject malicious code that can fleece you of your cookies including your stored web mail or bank passwords. These attacks are more insidious than traditional phishing attacks because you can’t prevent them just with anti-phishing smarts. The code is loaded without you knowing. Here’s how Wikipedia introduces the subject:

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in web applications which allow code injection by malicious web users into the web pages viewed by other users. Examples of such code include HTML code and client-side scripts. An exploited cross-site scripting vulnerability can be used by attackers to bypass access controls such as the same origin policy. Vulnerabilities of this kind have been exploited to craft powerful phishing attacks and browser exploits. As of 2007, cross-site scripting carried out on websites were roughly 80% of all documented security vulnerabilities. Often during an attack "everything looks fine" to the end-user who may be subject to unauthorized access, theft of sensitive data, and financial loss.

Obviously, it’s good to have some protection against these attacks. And while Firefox 3 and IE8 offer some protection, Noscript claims to offer a more complete defense. Unfortunately, Noscript’s XSS features can interfere mightily with the function of many otherwise useful bookmarklets. Tim, a Web designer at FastSpot, explains how bookmarklets can be adversely affected by well-meaning XSS defenses:

The great thing about the web is that it’s inter-connected, and even with all the security measures that have been put in place, a great deal of things can still be accomplished with web mash-ups. We’ve done quite a few cool things with Google Maps, eBay, Yahoo, and other web APIs. But we had server access to all the sites we’ve incorporated those cool features on. What if you want to share a cool feature with someone else just by passing them some code to paste into their website, or better yet, simply a bookmark to click?

Bookmarklets are fairly new to the web, but already there are tons of useful ones! Take a gander at X-Ray (a bookmarklet for inspecting elements of a website), Firebug Lite (an awesome debugging tool for Internet Explorer), and even a bookmarklet for downloading videos off of YouTube and other video sites. You simply drag the link to your bookmarks bar or right click to add the bookmark, visit any website, click the bookmark, and cool things happen on the current site you’re at.

So what do bookmarklets have to do with cross site scripting and web security? Well, they’re the most effected feature-wise when it comes to the web paranoia. There is a cross-domain limit on what Javascript can do in browsers while transmitting data. For example, “AJAX” requests can’t be transmitted from Javascript hosted on www.google.com to www.yahoo.com.

Here’s an example of what Tim’s talking about, using a bookmarklet for Microsoft’s Thumbtack web-clipping app.

Clicking the Thumbtack’s bookmarklet gets you a blank slate and an error message:

But you can choose to perform an unsafe reload, and it will work just fine.

Sadly, if you choose to continue using Thumbtack, you’ll have to perform an unsafe reload each time you use the bookmarklet, even if both Thumbtack and the underlying site are whitelisted. If you like doing patently unsafe things over and over again, this option is for you.

There are two other things you can do:

Create an XSS exception. Go to Options >> XSS. You will see three built-in exceptions for Wikipedia, Google, and Yahoo. The syntax is complicated, and for other sites you’ve got to figure it out yourself. I tried making one for Evernote by copying the examples, but I could never get it to work. Evernote’s Bookmarklet would always require an unsafe reload. It’s worth noting that Google Notebook probably never had to worry about Noscript’s XSS filter, due to the already included exception.
Wait until your favorite site can work out its differences with Noscript. In Evernote’s case, this appears to have finally worked. Noscript announced today that the add-on now works with Evernote’s Web Clipper. I have no doubt that Evernote was aware of the conflict and worked closely with Noscript on a behind-the-scenes fix, although I’ve not seen either company mention it.

Evernote welcomes Google Notebook users with import utility

2009-01-22T21:18:00.001-06:00

As promised, Evernote has released an import tool for disappointed Google Notebook users. I’ve just tried it out, and I’m happy to report it works largely as advertised. If you've tried Ubernote’s import tool the process is basically the same: export each of your notebooks in Google’s Atom format, then import those files into Evernote.

Unlike Ubernote’s no-frills import, Evernote actually gives you some options about how you want your notes to look once they’re imported (reminiscent of their impressive Delicious import tool). You can import your notebooks into an existing Evernote notebook or create a new notebook. You can also decide whether you want to include your existing notes, labels, and section headings.

A few times, Evernote got stuck, and I had to re-import, which resulted in some duplicate notes. But, for the most part, it was a smooth process. Once everything was imported, I wanted to see how the same notes were displayed in each service. Let’s take a look:

Here’s a publicly shared note in Google Notebook. Note the secondary comments section in light blue (one of my favorite features.

Now, here’s the same note in my public Evernote Notebook. Notice that the tags are on top, right below the title (red arrow). The comment is preserved and separate from the text of the note, but it’s indented rather than highlighted (blue arrow).

You’ll also notice a couple of severe drawbacks associated with Evernote’s public notebooks when compared with Google. You have to view each note in isolation by clicking on it, and you have to view ads. I prefer Google Notebook’s uncluttered blog-style view, which allows you to scroll and see notes in context with one another.

My only other complaint is that Evernote promises all imported notes “will retain their original creation date.” My imported notes all bore today’s date. It doesn’t bother me all that much, but if chronology is important to you, I recommend waiting until Evernote has corrected that problem.

Overall, I think Evernote has done a nice job with this feature, and it’s definitely a strong contender to replace Google Notebook as my app of choice. Next week, I’ll let you know why I’m withholding my full endorsement.

What I’ll miss about Google Notebook? Speed and Search.

2009-01-21T21:37:00.001-06:00

Digital Inspiration notes that several newly invigorated competitors are tripping over themselves to offer easy-import tools now that Google Notebook has been left for dead. Ubernote, which has some striking UI similarities to Google Notebook, offers a guide to importing Google’s Atom files. Zoho’s solution is even easier, because you don’t have to import your notebooks one at a time. Apparently, Evernote is working on an import solution as well, but it’s not quite ready.

Being able to import your notes into another app is nice, but it’s only possible because Google’s web-based product was so superior in the first place. Of the products mentioned above, only Google Notebook provides multiple sharing and backup options, including both HTML and Atom formats. Evernote does full XML import / export, but you have to install the desktop app on Mac or Windows to take advantage of those functions.

Of course, the option to take your game elsewhere isn’t the only advantage Google Notebook had. As you would expect with a Google Product, Notebook was fast and it was easy to find your stuff. I’m not sure what you look for in a Notebook, but being able to store and find my stuff when I’m in a hurry is about the only thing I demand. To illustrate what I’m talking about, let’s take a look the two competitors now offering import tools.

Ubernote
I’m actually pretty impressed with Ubernote’s expansive list of features, and I love their UI because it borrows so liberally from Google Notebook’s design (it also borrows liberally from Evernote’s name and mascot, but we’ll let that slide for now). Yes, Ubernote offers just about everything Google Notebook offers, but unfortunately, it’s much, much slower. No, I don’t expect Ubernote to match the scale and resources that Google Notebook had, but the load times are a noticeable drag. In my experience, Ubernote’s search function is only slightly slower than Google’s. But page loads and clippings take much longer. “So what,” you say? “So it takes a little longer.” But as Jeff Atwood noted today, even a little lag time can have a huge negative effect on user experience. What I loved about Google was how quickly I could clip text into its Firefox extension and move stuff around, without ever leaving the page. Ubernote’s Firefox add-on and bookmarklet don’t come close in either speed or convenience.

Still, I could actually see myself using Ubernote if they smoothed out the rough edges and sped things up a bit. A recent blog post implied that the hiccups and slow speed might be caused, in part, by their recent growth spurt. They say they’re working on it, and I hope they are. It’s an app with a lot of promise.

Zoho Notebook
Zoho Notebook is not quite so promising. Recall that I care about two things: speed and search. Zoho’s Notebook is plenty responsive, but as I’ve noted before, it gets an “F” in search. Why? Because Zoho offers no help when it comes to finding your stuff. There’s no search box. There are no tags. Ubernote, Google Notebook, Evernote, and Zotero all feature both tags AND search. But apparently Zoho doesn’t think these features are all that important. Actually helping you locate what you’ve stored with them is unnecessary. I know I’ve said this before, but that’s kind of ridiculous. Somehow they managed to copy OneNote’s look and feel while omitting one of the most obvious and crucial functions. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Frankly, I kinda wish these sites rushing to capture Google’s market share were forced to do it the old fashioned way. Not by creating an easy-import tool for a dying product, but by making their products more useful to end users. All I want is to quickly clip notes from the web, and find them equally fast from any internet-connected computer. If you can do that, I don’t care about your import tool. I’ll export all my old notes to Google Docs (another killer option Google Notebook offers). Then I’ll start over with a product aimed at winning both my heart and my notes.

RIP, Google Notebook

2009-01-14T23:52:00.003-06:00

Right now, I’m a little bummed out.
My favorite Notebook app is was Google Notebook. I say was because Google is apparently ending its Notebook experiment. As reported earlier today in Search Engine Land, Google Notebook is one of five casualties in Google’s effort to get leaner and more focused on its core products and mission. Danny Sullivan succinctly noted:

Google Notebook closes, though those with existing accounts can continue to save material. New accounts won’t be allowed, however — nor will the service be further developed, and the Google Notebook Extension for browsers will no longer work. Google told me it makes more sense to close this when it offers other services that allow for notetaking, such as Google SearchWiki, Google Docs and Google Bookmarks.

No doubt, Google needed to consolidate some of its bookmarking efforts, and there clearly wasn’t a critical mass of Notebook users to worry about. But I love Google Notebook, even compared to flashy, feature-rich competitors like Evernote. Google Notebook’s chief advantages were its superb bookmarklet/extension and excellent, no-frills handling of text and links. As I said before, my notes are all about text, and Google Notebook handled basic text and links better than any web-based notebook I’ve used.

Alternatives

Although Google Notebook is technically staying open, I can’t continue to use it without the handy bookmarklet/extension. That was the best feature. So I’m in the market for a decent alternative. The two most obvious options are as follows:

Evernote: I like Evernote a lot. I had almost decided to switch a few weeks back but I ran into a snag when their bookmarklet didn’t work so well with the popular Noscript Firefox add-on. For now, I choose Noscript. But evernote has promised to overhaul their web clipper in the new year, so I’m looking forward to that.
Zotero: In some ways, Zotero is better than either Evernote or Google Notebook, but its relatively strong privacy and superb handling of PDFs make it perfect for my work. And I try not to mix my personal stuff with business stuff. Check out my Zotero review for a good idea of why I like it so much.

So my two favorite Google Notebook alternatives are perhaps out of the question for now. And I absolutely can’t stand Zoho Notebook. That being the case I may try one of several smaller, similarly named notebooks: Ubernote, Springnote, Springpad, or Webnote. Honestly, I’ve tried them all, and found them all lacking. Anyway, I’m don’t think any of these smaller companies will have any better luck than Google did. And without Google’s cash, I’m not too sure I can trust another company to hold onto my data.

Exporting your Google Notebook

Speaking of which, Digital Inspiration already has a great guide to exporting your Google Notebook for use somewhere else. I will probably go the Google Docs route.

One final prediction

As I said earlier, Google probably had to split the baby when it came to Google Notebook and Google Bookmarks. The fact that they decided in favor of Google Bookmarks might seem surprising given how poorly the product stacks up against every other bookmarking service out there (e.g., Delicious, Magnolia, Diigo). But I think focusing their effort on Google Bookmarks is consistent with a few other moves they’ve made in the last year or so:

Integrating bookmarks more closely with Google Toolbar.
Introducing an entirely new browser (which has embryonic bookmarking features).
And recently, hiring Delicious founder Joshua Schachter

Could Google be thinking about expanding Bookmarks into a bona fide Delicious competitor that’s fully integrated into its desktop offerings? I think that would be the most sensible (and compelling) route for Google to take.

Tagging: How to do it and knowing when not to do it

2009-01-04T06:48:00.001-06:00

One of the best innovations in social media is also one of its most pernicious traps: tag creep. Do you have too many tags? Redundant tags? Tags that are similar? Tags that break your own rules for tagging stuff? I know it’s happened to me, in both my blogs and my Delicious collection. But Steve Rubel points me to some great advice from Jason Falls on how to ensure your tags are useful and organized so that YOU can FIND STUFF (that is why you do this, right?).

One of the best tips is also a bit counter-intuitive: don’t bookmark everything.

This one is a hard one for some to grasp, but bear with me. I bookmark fewer and fewer items these days for one simple reason: I subscribe to just about everything I find interesting online via RSS. If I want to find an article I read on Mark Dykeman’s blog a year ago, I can search my RSS feeds and find it. It’s not much more time consuming or difficult than bookmarking it, so I don’t need bookmarking as much anymore. However, there are purposes and reasons for aggregating everything I find on certain subjects, so bookmarking hasn’t lost its relevance. But I only bookmark what I’m going to later need when writing an article on the subject or preparing presentation for clients, etc.

This is the one bit of advice I’ve already been following myself. I use Google Reader as my primary news source, and if I want to go back to an article I’ve read there I simply search my feeds for it (I also use tags within Google Reader, but I use them very sparingly).

But what if there’s something I want to read later? Call me crazy, but I use Read it Later.

So what do I use Delicious for, if not for organizing items I’ve read or saving items for later reading? I use Delicious for reference. Reference doesn’t mean, “I might need this later.” Reference is stronger than that:

I will use this later. More than once.
I will recommend this to friends now. I will want to recommend it to them later as well.
This matches a collection of other items for which I already use a common tag.

The last bullet is related to an idea I would have added to Jason’s outstanding post. Don’t tag everything. Tag an item only when you know how to tag it. Don’t tag it just because you’re saving it. Tags are for items that are thematically or topically related to something else you’ve already saved. Adding a tag means, “I’ve got more than one of these.” If you aren’t sure how to tag something, but you think it needs to be saved, write a good description of the item. A later search of your bookmarks will find it. If you never use that item again, that’s okay. You’ve avoided cluttering your system with a tag that makes you scratch your head.

How to bork your bookmarks, delicious-style.

2008-12-06T09:07:00.001-06:00

Step 1.
Read this post, in which Delicious announces their updated Delicious Bookmarks Firefox add-on. The addon:

has received a major behind-the-scenes change as we moved from using RDF to SQLite for storing the bookmarks. This means that the add-on is faster and more stable, especially for users with large accounts. It has been updated to work with Firefox 3.1 Beta and now works on Firefox 2.0-3.1b1 on Windows, Mac, and most Linux distributions that support Firefox.

Exciting, huh?

Step 2
Install the update, as requested by your Firefox add-ons manager.

As it synced for the first time, I noticed the progress bar was making a lot of progress, but I only had 39 bookmarks (out of 1894). Turns out, after the full update, that was still all I had. 39 bookmarks.

Okay, that’s okay. Let’s try this: Delicious Options—>Advanced—>FULL SYNC.

Yes. That’s what I need. Go little green progress bar, GO!

Uh, wait, what’s this? I now have zero bookmarks. And I’m not the only one.

Look, I love Delicious Bookmarks. And I know they’ll fix this. But this update is only one in a long line of updates to this venerable add-on, all of which were intended to fix some prior grievous error. This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve had a serious problem, so I’ve been a regular reader of both the Delicious Forum and the Yahoo Group for the Delicious Bookmarks Firefox add-on. I am only one of many users who are waiting for the day when everything will just work as advertised and as hoped. Said one poster about this latest update:

Finally a new version that hasn't created more problems than it fixes. Also, thank you for allowing capitalized tags again. I had about given up on it ever being fixed, and was looking into other bookmarking options.

From my end, it appears he spoke too soon. I am aware that Delicious has updated their site to include streaming audio bookmarks, and that is very cool. But I’m necessarily focused on my own little problem right now, and I’m hoping that a fix comes soon. I also hope that the fix doesn’t break something else.

I kid.

Because I love.

Your own private Google

2008-11-20T22:41:00.001-06:00

Earlier this evening, Google unleashed SearchWiki, a feature allowing you to edit and annotate Google search results. The kicker? They’ve added the feature to their flagship product: Google. It’s not in beta. It’s not a lab feature. It’s not part of Google Notebook, and it doesn’t require a Firefox plug-in. As long as you’re signed in under your Google ID, you’ll see it whenever you search for something on Google. This video does a great job explaining the feature, so I won’t bother repeating it.

This is pretty fascinating, and I’ve got a couple of thoughts. First, if you’re the type of person who thinks bookmarking is useless because Google gets you there faster and easier than any other option, well, this announcement bolsters your argument. For example, type in “sports.” ESPN comes up first, but you don’t like that. You’d rather see Fox come up first. Press the arrow to promote Fox to the top. Done.

But what if you want to see Football Outsiders and King Kaufman’s Salon column on this list? Just add them using the “add search result” feature at the bottom of the page. You might rarely use Google for simple, generic keyword searches like “recipes” or “weather”, but with SearchWiki, those same keywords can now be used to map your most visited sites.

The other obvious use is for searches you might regularly perform, but which are frequently updated with new results. A vanity search is a great example.

Come on. It would have been boring if I used my own name.

I’ll be interested to see how often I use SearchWiki. I certainly use Google a lot, but I don’t frequently run the same searches or run into the same results. I’m skeptical as to whether Google’s latest innovation will prove all that useful. On the other hand, it’s difficult to predict how useful a new feature will be. I’ve never used anything like it. In a few weeks, SearchWiki might be solving problems I didn’t know I had.

Finally, I should say that I’m impressed with how polished the new feature is at launch. Google has managed to add some extraordinary new features without changing the basic layout or aesthetics of their flagship product. And the icons make the functions refreshingly clear.

Nice job, Google.