Punful titles for $200, Alec. What is the word to describe when something tastes really, really good? Savor the question. And get ready for more dusty old web era meandering.
I’m writing about maybe one of the oldest web 2.0 (can I even use that phrase without sounding out of fashion) concepts- bookmarking web sites in shared environment. Indeed I was there early (insert old man web badge here) with the original del.icio.us in maybe 2004, and maybe even earlier with something called furl (it got rolled up into diigo).
It was wild. What ever happned to spurl? Mr Wong?
Heck for some time I was a “hot” thing in del.icio.us.
The adjective of “social” here is what I always resonated with was the act of doing something for yourself (keeping track of web sites by bookmarking) gained value in a platform where others were doing it too, so that tagging my sites, tied it into the efforts of others. It all worked so well for me, I rolled it into project work like in the old days of the NMC Horizon report process. I kept piling on bookmarks, then delicious went under.
But because bookmark data was as simple as a structure HTML format, I could pick up my bag of URLs, move to maybe diigo for a stretch (yikes its still there), and since then pinboard. I dig the latter because ot its retro style-less style, but its functionality- rss of everything, tagging, etc.
My use is still primarily my own data hoarding, but I have a few tags I use tied to trigger action elsewhere- stuff I tag as “cooltech” uses an IFTTT thingie to post to mastodon, another tag I have a zapier thing to post to the OEG Connect discourse community. I can even embed a page of current stuff here with RSS.
I was merrily doing this and got reminded that my tagged links in pinboard like https://pinboard.in/u:cogdog/t:cooltech/, which were once public, are not. This worked for a while https://pinboard.in/u:cogdog/?query=cooltech but alas is also clamped down. Heck, now that O am checking, even my public links https://pinboard.in/u:cogdog are not public.
It took a bunch of messaging to find out that the owner of the service had to make this a logged in feature (something about hackers pounding the service). How would I ever know?
Alas, pinboards end of life for me is looking iminent.
Luckily, via a mastodon post by Stephen Harlow, I found a new possibility — raindrop.io. I was able to export all ~8MB of bookmarks accumulated since 2004 (it’s just old HTML) and plop it in raindrop. I am able to now have a public view of all things tagged “cooltech” https://raindrop.io/cogdog/cooltech-49901180 and I can go ahead and use its rss feed to change my triggers.
Now, when I write/post this, along comes along “what about this open source tool” “just install it yourself” Get Readeck. Or Linkace. Or this federated thing. Or that one.
What’s wrong with you, Levine?
Here’s what I want:
- Yes, I should be able to host my own. But I’m tired of tending web sites. I likely have more broken ones than working ones. I’m lazy. I really am not too bothered nor am enough of a purist. Yeah, lazy. But really, with feed readers and bookmarking, I am never “locked” in because I can always export/import easily.
- I want descriptions, notes, with my links. A lot of the tools are just the links, but I take care/effort to include info about a bookmark. I make use of (old web dust warning) bookmarklet tools to add this when I save.
- I want my bookmarks to be public.
- And then I want them to have feeds or triggers that can spawn other acts.
It’s feeling like time to fold the pinboard tent. Sad.
And again looking at the road. Could I be foolish to rely once more on an outside service that most likely will pull the rug one day?
It’s not too problematic to me IF i can pack of my stuff and take it home or to the next one. I have to say I am not sure if I have the energy left to keep patching my duct taped web pile.
Should I stay or go? Does it matter anymore?
Tap. Tap into the blog mic.
hello?
Featured Image: One of my mine. Yeah, old old photo of a bookmark. I feel this web old.
I’m still on pinboard (I paid my one time fee back in the day…), having more my delicious bookmarks to it, but have noticed that bits and pieces of functionality, like the public face, have slowly dropped off; and posts like yours remind me to grab a backup…
But increasingly I think none of this matters any more (it probably never did, but it was sociable, and felt like a way we could all contribute together to exploring the new world; there seemed to be personal benefit from using social tools, and there seemed to be mutual benefit from using social tools and there seemed to be the ability to benefit from stuff other folk shared….
And now there is not a lot of benefit…
I am forced into using Facebook to find events, but fb search is a joke; web search is a joke; it’s all ad related recommendation rather than any attempt at authority based ranking; there must be useful stuff in Youtube, but after 3 results all you can pull back is “we thought you’d like to see this video of someone putting their socks in the microwave, LOL”, or whatever crap they think might keep you clicking till they can stream enough of an ad to make a microcent.
Roll on the day I need never “engage” through a screen again.
Hiya Tony! Looks like the old time RSS is still working. Indeed the social part has fallen off for me, I’ve not looked at the network in a while. But the triggering action through tags appeals to me.
What you describe is truly the heaviness I feel that the web has gotten to be more and more polluted in the main channels. I still believe in the small rivulets. Always good to hear you.
I still read feeds daily…
I’m on the pinboard as well. The guy is a Middlebury graduate which seems cool given where I work. I’m not a fan of stuff getting turned off without any communication though.
I’ve long considered just adding a custom post type to ye’ old blog and using “Press This.” I could build various front ends if I wanted using the JSON. It’d be easy to build some additional WP integration options. Seems like it’d be easy to extract the data out if I ever wanted to give up on WP.
Maybe there’s a downside I’m not seeing?
Hah Majec went to Middlebury? Is he still paying off student loans? Maybe you can reach him.
I bet you could roll your own, my energy feels waning for that.
When I read the post, RSS sans comments, I thought maybe Alan will do a WordPress theme/plugin pinboard replacement. Understandable why not. I am surprised no one else has.
My game is rusty, but Tom Woodward got a proof of concept going
https://bionicteaching.com/wordpress-as-social-media-bookmark-tool/
I’m in email contact with Maciej and he’s working on a fix. Pinboard is being assaulted by bots.
This sort of thing could almost give me hope… https://dynamicland.org/
I love most things Bret Victor is involved in. Nice that the site has updated. It had been the same thing for a long number of years. He also updated his website recently. I will admit his aesthetic is a bit odd.
The bookshelf on the background image should be a reading list for a course.
I never really found a replacement for del.icio.us having tried diigo which was too much, annoying, etc. I want the same things as you, although triggers would be new to me (but sound interesting). For some reason the social, sharing aspect motivates me to keep better notes (maybe?), because bookmarking locally or even sending links to myself I rarely document them enough to be useful (or attempt to categorise them). I’ve also got to the point where lack of memorable workflow means I end up with links everywhere and no idea how to find them.
On the subject of search… I’m giving DuckDuckGo a serious workout to see if life is better without Google bullshit AI and suggestions.
Been following the CogDog since 2008 and I am still learning from you! Thanks for the tips on Raindrop!
Thanks Brit, it’s great to hear from a long time web friend.