Posts in category "software"

After briefly evaluating Furl, del.icio.us and Blinklist, I finally decided to ditch Furl and spurn the advances of del.ico.us in favour of Blinklist as my preferred one stop shop for all my social bookmarking needs.

Furl was my first experience of 'social bookmarking' but, as I became more comfortable with the idea of tagging Web pages, I found the Furl interface is simply horrible. There are simply too many key clicks required to add a single tag let alone two ! And if you want to add a brand new category, it takes so long that you have almost lost the will to tag the page and forgotten why it was of interest in the first place. It looks like the tagging functionality was added on as an afterthought.

I then experimented with del.ico.us as loads of people seem to rave about it and it appeared to be the longest established technology. After all, 50 million Web 2.0 aficionados and satisfied del.ico.us users can't be wrong, can they ?

However, just imagine that you are a first time user and you encounter the del.ico.us home page for the first time. The initial impression of the home page is absolutely terrible. What is it ? What does it do ? How do you use it ? How do you get help ? Where is the FAQ ? Or the tutorial ? Also, there is the confounded sub-domain - del.ico.us - and the oh so clever pun which I took three weeks to grasp.

After my previous post on social bookmarking, a nice gentleman from Blinklist spammed - sorry commented - on my blog to tell me about the existence of Blinklist so I felt obliged to evaluate Blinklist as well.

Blinklist's interface looks modern and clean, well designed and thought out as though they employ proper Web designers who actually use the system themselves ('eat your own dog food'). Contrast that with the initial page presented by del.ico.us which looks like an undergraduate knocked it up during a lunch hour and a manager said 'Looks good - let's run with it!'

It is true that I had some teething problems with Blinklist; for example when the tag editor kept insisting on SHOUTING AT ME and the odd tag got duplicated. However, I used the feedback form and tried to provide some constructive feedback to the Blinklist development team. Almost immediately, I found myself in direct email contact with a lead developer (well he could be the CEO for all I know) who passed on my suggestions and got them addressed very quickly. Sometimes they appeared to be making releases as quickly as I was providing feedback.

One of the best features of Blinklist is the tagging of pages is really quick and intuitive. Suitable tags are suggested automatically (which are usually adequate) and it is trivial to add as many new tags as you want - quickly. Blinklist also has a facility to import del.ico.us archives which worked fine for me when importing my massive archive of 15 pages. Your mileage may vary if you have 5,000 del.ico.us pages.

Although Blinklist doesn't keep a Web archive of the saved pages (like Furl) this doesn't really bother me as I can use the Internet archive if it really comes to it.

Of course, Blinklist has some disadvantages. I presume that Blinklist are a small startup and they are the new kid on the block in what is already a crowded marketplace. Worse, it is obvious that those clever people at Google labs will inevitably be entering this space (RSS Reader, My Search History) in the not too distant future.

Secondly, Blinklist has a relatively small user base (compared with Furl, del.ico.is, spurl et al) although this is compensated by the more intelligent, discerning type of people using the service and subsequent higher quality of the Blinklist content.

I used to use Yahoo Bookmarks which maintains a list of Web sites that I could access from any computer. This was a nice idea but I found I didn't use (or maintain) the bookmarks regularly and the links gradually fell into a state of disrepair. For my most frequently accessed Web sites, I would simply type the start of the address into the browser and simply let auto-complete do its work which was quicker.

A couple of weeks ago, Yahoo launched My Web which overhauled the bookmarks functionality and added the ability to save a copy of the Web page so that the referenced content was preserved in the event that the Web site was subsequently moved or deleted. However, My Web still uses a hierarchical system of folders to store the bookmarks. For example, the Manchester United home page would typically be stored in a folder named 'Sport-Football-Manchester United'.

Then I discovered social bookmarking (Furl, del.ico.us, spurl) which also saves the state of the Web page and maintains a personal, searchable archive (just like My Web). However, the key difference with Furl (et al) is that all Web pages for all users are stored on a central server. For any Web page, Furl can then quickly display similar, related, associated pages which have also been stored by different Furl users. This is what those Web 2.0 people call 'social bookmarking'.

Another difference is that Furl'ed pages does not use a hierarchical structure. Instead, stored pages are simply associated with various tags. So, in the earlier example, the Manchester United home page might be tagged as 'Sport', 'Football' and 'Manchester'. Note that, unlike My Web, the bookmarked Furl page can be associated with multiple categories. Tagging is the key to effective searching with Furl.

This feature is really useful. For example, I am currently interested in using Microsoft OneNote as a single repository to store information, emails, jottings, to do lists, articles, and even Outlook notes. OneNote has a couple of disadvantages; it uses a proprietary format and is a commercial product. So I searched SourceForge and Freshmeat for an OpenSource alternative without much success. Then I discovered KeyNote which looked promising but wasn't much different from using outline mode in Emacs.

Then I stumbled across EverNote and, using Furl, immediately got directed towards some more interesting Web based organiser applications like BackPack, JotSpot and possibly even TiddlyWiki all of which immediately get furled.

Another subtle way that Furl affected my usage was that previously I might stumble across a Web site of interest but could not be bothered to file it as (subconsciously) I didn't want to clutter up my nicely organised bookmarks. With Furl, I tended to add the Web site regardless and simply tag the page as 'Of interest'.

Another possible use for Furl is to capture ideas for blogs. When you see a Web site of interest, simply tag it as 'Ideas for Blog' together with a short comment.

Well I was finally forced to join the masses and download Firefox and ditch Internet Explorer. Yes - my nickname is Johnny Come Lately.

I had been aware of the Firefox browser for a while but my previous experience was with a very early version of Mozilla that had a few problems with a couple of the Web sites I was using at the time.

The final straw came that pushed me over the edge was when my children downloaded some invasive spyware that commandeered the Web browser and implanted a 'Web Search' toolbar. As you can not de-configure this toolbar without completely removing the product, I found myself uninstalling it, my kids would reinstall it for some whizzy colourful cursors. Repeat ad-infinitum. Life is simply too short.

The immediate benefit of Firefox is the tabbed browsing which lets you keep multiple Web sites open and visible at the same time. After you have used this feature for a while, it is indispensable and you wonder how you ever lived without it.

Then I experimented with RSS feeds from the BBC and elsewhere. Instead of having to periodically check a range of Web sites for any new content, I wanted automatic notification of when new content was available. However, while the 'Live bookmarks' feature in Firefox was pretty good, I really wanted something like a pseudo newsgroup that would list new articles on a Website just like articles in a newsgroup. So, I downloaded Thunderbird which seamlessly and painlessly converted all my email messages and contacts from Outlook Express and I was finished.

I have been using Firefox for a week now and so far, the only Web sites that I have encountered problems with is Sony's SonicStage download page (which insists on Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0) and Blueyonder's selfcare home page (which is gloriously blank). However, this probably says more about the authors of these Web sites rather than any deficiencies in Firefox.