MicroContent Musings

Firefox 3 bookmark management

With the introduction of the lasted release of Firefox 3, a new approach to managing bookmarks has been introduced. In order to test this feature I imported my 3000 some bookmarks from WebNoteHappy. This did not make Firefox very happy, I had a crash, but in the end I could access these bookmarks. Unfortunately all this bookmarks were added to my Bookmarks Menu. This really brought Firefox to a temporary halt when I accessed the bookmarks menu item. I missed the cross-application exchange of folders and tags from WebNoteHappy (a lack of standards?).

In Firefox a bookmark consists of a title (usually the name of the web-page), a location (URI), tags, keyword (?) and a desription. The user can show a list of existing tags through a toggle and then he can check the box in order to add a tag to the bookmark. Or the user can just type the tags he wants to add separated by comma’s.

The Items-pane shows the bookmarks of a selected list in table format. The user can determine which fields must be shown. In addition to the bookmark fields, the user can also show the visit date, the visit count, the added date or the last visited date.

The most interesting part is the Lists-pane, as this is not totally compatible with other MicroContent Clients. The History-list is a folder with the recent browsing behaviour, so not really a bookmark thing. The Tags-List is really a group that contains preprogrammed smart folders for each tag. Each tag-folder contains the bookmarks that have been tagged as such. The All Bookmarks group is really the entire library of bookmarks. This group contains three other lists/groups: the Bookmarks Toolbar group, the Bookmarks Menu group and the Unsorted Bookmarks group. These three groups are fixed and one can not add other groups on this level.

When adding a bookmark one can chose on of these groups or any folder in these groups. One can also drag&drop bookmarks from one group to another. The Bookmarks Menu group has two predefined Smart Lists: Recently Bookmarked and Recent Tags. I assume that ‘recent’ means the last 10. These Lists can be d&d’d to other groups.

The Bookmarks Toolbar group has smart lists for Most Visited and Latest Headlines. It is again unclear what Most Visited means. Latest Headlines refer to Items in a RSS-feed. This seems to be part of the Live Bookmarks feature of Firefox.

All in all a pretty reasonable implementation of a MicroContent Client, but it is not match for WebNoteHappy. The tag-feature is nice, but the approach will break down with hundred of tags. I miss XBEL-support. And I can not create my own smart lists. And it is just to slow for many bookmarks.

On the other hand the integration with the browsers allows to create smart folders such as ‘most visited’. I do not like the split between Toolbar, Menu and the rest. In this way there is no entire library. I understand why it was done in this way, it seems simpler. The integration of the URI-bar with the bookmarks library is very nice. This allows to make very clever URL-suggestions and can indicate whether the URL has been bookmarked yet.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • application • type • bookmark ,
firefox

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A look at Pownce

Thanks to some other services, I happened upon Pownce again. I already signed up, but I never had a deeper look at it.

At first it just looks like another micro-blog. The structure of an Item consist of just one field: the title. And I use Pownce in this way, as I post to 4 micro-blog services simultaneously. An Item (called a note) has a corresponding permalink, where one can also see the comment thread.

However Pownce is not limited to a micro-blog structure, it is possible to add more fields to a pst/item. The ‘link’ structure adds a field for a URL.

The ‘file’ structure allows you to add any file. If I add an image it will be shown in the note. A file can only be posted to friends.

And finally one can create an event. This structure consists of a title, a place, date/time and a real note. There is a corresponding ics-file for easy importing. Interestingly you can reply to such a post to indicate you will attend.

I get the impression that I can not edit a note. I already needed that feature a few times. I am also annoyed that I can not edit the recipients. I already made several errors due to that. I miss a RSS-feed, at least I do not see it.

Pownce is a bit more a communication service, as one can send a note to just a single friend, all friends or the public. I like the approach of Pownce to struture.: if you want more, just add a field. It is much more like wild MicroContent.

I do not think that I will use Pownce though. I only view MicroContent through feeds in NetNewsWire. Although I will continue publishing to Pownce. My usage will depend on the feeds and integration with my desktop;

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • service • type • blog • bookmark ,
pownce

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Bookmarks, ratings and reviews: what’s the difference?

For my Wiki I am trying to define the various MicroContent Types I encountered in terms of the fields of a MicroContent Type.

Thus a Bookmark Type consists of an URI, a Title and a Description. This is however very close to a Review Type. A Review Type consists of a Title, a Review and an Identifier. It is possible to add other fields to either MicroContent Type, but that does not change the things fundamentally.

If one reviews a web-page, then the two Types become identical. Only the actual content might distinguish the two. And in case of a review, the Identifier might point to a web-page where one can find the product. One sees this a lot for reviews of books, where the Identifier points to a web-page at Amazon.

This leads to the conclusion that one should see a Bookmarks as some sort of Review. One could see a Bookmark as a minimal Review. The user has taken the time to create the Bookmark and has thus recorded his attention for the web-page. This recording is already a review: it was worthwhile to save the web-page.

And one can even go a step further by rating a bookmark as some services and applications do. The rating makes the appreciation even more visible. The same is true for rating a review. In that case one could even leave the description/review away, as is done in iTunes for instance.

I see the line Bookmarks -> Ratings and Reviews -> Rated Reviews appear. Each Type adds a new Field. The essential element of a Review is that it has an independent Identifier and not just a URI.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • type • bookmark • review
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Tag browser

A problem that I have with the usage of tags on services, is the lack of traversing possibilities. In order to show the tags that are used, they are use presented in a list format: an alphabetical list of tags. Not really useful if you have hundreds or even thousands of tags. The other presentation method is the tag cloud, where the size of the tag indicates it's popularity. Not very useful either, just eye candy.

Tags are related and as a user I want to see the relations between tags. And I want to see which items are available for a set of tags. I think this was marvellously solved in WebNoteHappy by Luis de la Rosa. This application allows a user to manage his bookmarks. One of the (optional) panes of this application is a tag browser.

This tag browser shows multiple interdependent column (like the column's view in Apple's Finder window). The first column initially shows all tags for all items in the application. The user can the scroll down this list and select a tag. What happens then is that the second column will show all tags that are related to the selected tag in the first column. Naturally this is a smaller list and allows the user to focus quickly on the items that a user looks for.

If required the user can select a tag in the second column to show up related tags in the third column. And this can go on until the available tags are exhausted.

A great way browse through your bookmarks. I created a XBEL output for my weblog, which I then imported into WebNoteHappy. Then search and tag-browsing is a great help. One of the lessons is that I would like to have such a tag browser for any MicroContent Client. Second lesson is that MarsEdit lacks a history view, at some stage older Items are deleted. I have to checkout what Ecto does here.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • application • type • blog • bookmark
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Extending my checklist

I started using my MicroContent Client checklist, with a look at a bookmarking service (not named as it is still in alpha). The service in question gets only 17 points out of 87 points. This implies that many functions that client users take for granted do not exit in the service world.

However I need to extend the checklist for service specific things, so things might grow better. I am pessimistic however.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • service • type • bookmark
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WebNoteHappy Use Cases

Now that I have been using WNH for many weeks, it is a nice moment to describe I actually use this MicroContent Client. Why is this application more useful than the standard bookmarking feature in a web-browser? Case 1 - Attention Recorder I started using WNH as an attention recorder. Each day I read many news items in my news browser NNW. For some items I have to go to the web-browser in order to read the full item. Some items I read in total, some I read only the title and some I like to comment on. I translated this behaviour in a blogging procedure. The items that I do not read will not turn in action. The Items that I do read will be stored in WNH and sent to delicious and to my own bookmark blog. I do the same thing for Items that I want to comment on. However these will be published one of my other weblogs. To accomodate this flow I creates an Applescript, which taks the information from the browser stores it in WNH, sends it to delicious and creates an new item in MarsEdit. So WNH has only a small role in the whole. And it turns out that I hardly go back to WNH to see what I bookmarked. So not a real need for WNH for me in this case. (although while writing this I thought of a new case). By the way I also have the attention recorder Onlife running, but as yet I did not find a good use for it. Case 2 - web-page analysis I am not sure whether this is a good title, but I use WNH for a kind of web-page analysis. Let me explain. I do genealogy research into my family name. One of the sources for this research is the Internet. This is especially useful for finding living family members. Those that have already died can be traced in the paper archives. So regularly I scan the web using a search engine for new web-pages. Each web-page will be stored in WNH with text around the family member copied in as webnote and tagged with the first names of the family member and a formal ID taken from my genealogy app Reunion. In this process WNH helps me to check whether I already looked at a page or not. And it helps me to see what pages I have on certain family members. I would like to have an archives function in WNH as web-pages have a tendancy to disappear. Recently I added Sandvox to the mix. I started redesigning my family web-site (leene.net) with Sandvox. Sandvox allows me to take bookmarks from delicious and put them on a web-page in Sandvox. So now I have web-pages where I show all recent family bookmarks, web-pages with certain family bookmarks (using the unique ID) and family bookmarks which I can not designate to a person (unknown). This all makes heavily use of tags and it is where WNH plays a vital role. I use it heavily to add bookmarks and synchronise with delicious. And also important it is the first time that I actually use delicious.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • type • bookmark
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Ma.gnolia

Had a look at Ma.gnolia. I read a bit negative and a bit positive note. So why another bookmark service?

Is does not seem to offer something for me, which will make me switch. In fact I miss the API. It is time these kind of services will accept bookmarks in a feed-format. I do not want to submit my bookmarks to all those site. Well, I imported my delicious bookmarks into the service (at least I think, they have not yet turned up). The interface is nice, but uses to much space for one bookmark. And the bookmark thumbnail is plainly wrong. I like the short link: a permalink for a bookmark! Is the rating useful? I am not sure about the social thing. There are already to many of those and I surely get my daily info-shot already.

[Inspiration Preoccupations]

Categories/tags: client • service • type • bookmark
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Bookmarks and webpages

When looking at various bookmark client manager, I realised that they use different approaches to the referenced web-page. For me a bookmark is foremost a reminder of something interesting out there. I might add some comments why I found it interesting and some tags so that I can find it back.

Some Clients offer the possibility to view the web-page that is bookmarked. And one notices a problem right away. The original page is gone. In that case the value of creating a bookmark is not high. I should have archived the web-page. And indeed there are Clients that do this. I guess that is a good option in the case one values the information on the web-page.

Sometimes however one creates a bookmark for remembering the site. The site is then the bookmarked object. And then the user should have the option to open the site in a browser. Even then an archive of the web-page might be useful for quick reference. And maybe thumbnails of the archived web-page are useful.

One should however take care in not mixing the functionality of a bookmark manager and a web-browser. A bookmark manager can manage much more than just web-page bookmarks. One can think of any MicroContent Object here. But maybe I am too puristic here.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • general • type • bookmark
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Mystickies

This service provides another way to look at bookmarks: stickies. When visiting a website a user can create a sticky with a description and tags. This information is then stored at the service. This is just like bookmarks. What I find interesting however is that when one revisits the site, one sees the stickies one has created. Thus ones memory is refreshed. I like this feedback.

[Inspiration eHub]

Categories/tags: client • service • type • bookmark
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WebnoteHappy

WebNoteHappy, created by Luis de la Rosa, allows a user to manage his bookmarks. It features a three pane interface with View-, Items- and Lists-pane. A bookmark Item is called a webnote and it consists of fields like title, description, tags, source and date. The application has smart and handpicked lists.

The application can import from Safari, del.icio.us and xbel. And the application can export to xbel and a bookmark file. Through a global hotkey a user can enter new Items from a web-browser or NetNewsWire.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • type • bookmark
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xbel

I have been playing a bit with XBEL. This is a format for creating bookmark-lists for exchanging purpose. So I create a xbel version of my bookmark blog. And that worked out pretty well.

I was subsequently able to import these bookmarks into WebnoteHappy. So I have now another way of saving my bookmarks.

I did not check very extensively, but I would like to add tags into xbel in some standard way (if there is any). At the moment I use the metadata-tag of xbel.

By the way I could have generated a standard (Netscape) bookmark list for ex- and importing as well. But that will be next experiment.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • format • type • bookmark
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MicroContent clipping

I had a look at the ClipMark service. It allows users to create bookmarks for pieces of web-pages (the clips). Each clip is copied with the created bookmark.

I played a bit around with it and especially with the Clip It function that the Firefox extension offered. This extension allows a user to recognise parts of a web-page such as images and and paragraphs. Interestingly it also recognises div-elemenst on a page. Thus I was able to point to an entire MicroContent Item on my web-page and clip the whole thing. Even more interesting was the fact that it attached the corresponding permalink to that clip. How did it do that? It was the right thing to do. So in some sense this service allows to clip MicroContent Items. That would be a great service.

[Inspiration Om Malik]

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • service • type • bookmark
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Browseback

Browseback is a client (on the Mac), which allows a user to browse the history files of his web-browsers. The application supports the most important browsers on the Mac.

The most interesting thing is however how the list of url's in the history files are presented. Each link is presented as a fairly large thumbnail. The thumbnails are show on the screen as a stack, where each item in the stack is slightly shifted. When one puts the mouse over an item, the thumbnail is shown with it's related data.

A nice new way to present and browse a list of MicroContent Items. Naturally one must be able to present these items as images. Also nice to see that this application acknowledges the Items in the history list as MicroContent. In this sense these Items can be compared to bookmarks.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • type • bookmark
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Yahoo Shoposphere

A funny name, but yet another product bookmarking service. The Shoposphere itself is a search service where a user can search into the picklists created by users of Yahoo. A picklist is a list of products selected by a user. A user can add a comment to a product, but no tags. It is easy to copy (reblog) a product to your own list. The nice thing about this is the fact that it can be used for any product-url in the Yahoo comparison shopping service.

The user can create multiple lists (categories), such as the wish list, the owned list, etc. Any list can be published to other Yahoo users and thus turning it into a pick list (my example (stupid URL by the way)). Any picklist is also available as RSS-feed. Viewers of a picklist can add a comment to the list. And a picklist can be rated (yes/no) as well by other users.

I see Items on a Yahoo list as a bookmarks. The user can only supply a description per Item and the rest (product-url, date, author) is done by Yahoo. The various lists can be seen as categories, which limit the scope of the bookmarks on a list. The picklist itself seems to be a MicroContent Item as well. One can add comment and simple ratings to it.

[Inspiration Richard McManus]

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • service • type • bookmark
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Amazon bookmark service

Various people around the blogosphere noted that Amazon introduced tags. I did not see it yet on Amazon.fr, so I headed over to Amazon.com. Near a product-item a user sees a field where he can enter a tag. This tag is however something personal and really is more like a bookmark. This means that the user can see which tags he used for which products. The user can thus create a list of Products, a bookmark list. For Amazon a bookmark just consists of this tag and the related Product. A user can also set whether the bookmark is private or not. There are no titles, no descriptions, no feeds, no permalinks.

[Inspiration Richard McManus]