[HN Gopher] Show HN: Free Plain-Text Bookmarking
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       Show HN: Free Plain-Text Bookmarking
        
       Author : vasanthv
       Score  : 122 points
       Date   : 2024-03-22 12:28 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (webtag.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (webtag.io)
        
       | piterrro wrote:
       | Yeeeears ago (around 2011/2012) I've built a simple bookmarking
       | app called Miitla (MInd IT LAter), you can still find references
       | to it[1]. I was focused on providing a simple bookmarking
       | experience with tags and such. Unfortunately, I was not motivated
       | enough to keep updating the project and in the end, I stopped. I
       | got a few thousand users, but at the time my day job was
       | generating nice income and I wasn't thinking about monetizing
       | Miitla.
       | 
       | To this day, I regret that I did not pursue it and transformed
       | into something bigger.
       | 
       | Congrats on the launch, what catches my attention is the
       | simplicity. Keep it like this for long enough and you will get
       | many users.
       | 
       | [1]http://ratemystartup.com/save-links-with-one-click-miitla-
       | co...
        
         | piterrro wrote:
         | Here is an interesting plot twist. At the time, one of Miitla
         | "competitors" was Kippt[1], I was impressed with their design
         | at the time and followed them very carefully. Turns out, Kippt
         | founder is Linear founder these days...
         | 
         | Persistence is the key.
         | 
         | [1]https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kippt
        
           | idlewords wrote:
           | I agree persistence is key! Oddly though the kippt homepage
           | doesn't seem to load for me.
        
             | piterrro wrote:
             | It has been discontinued given that Coinbase acqui-hired
             | the Kippt team (2 people)
        
       | hidelooktropic wrote:
       | It's hard to understand from the description what this even is.
       | Does it save your bookmarks in like a <ul> element? Is it
       | clickable? What does it look like?
        
       | accrual wrote:
       | I would like something like this but self-hosted. I have a
       | collection of .html bookmark files from over the years and would
       | love to consolidate them all into one place without having to
       | sync them to Google/Microsoft/3rd party.
        
         | TehShrike wrote:
         | Looks like the source code is all public, so self-hosted is
         | probably an option: https://github.com/vasanthv/webtag
        
         | joshka wrote:
         | https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab...
        
           | accrual wrote:
           | Thanks!
        
       | TehShrike wrote:
       | Sounds cool, but my bookmarks are too valuable to save on the
       | servers of someone I'm not paying a subscription to :-x
        
         | vasanthv wrote:
         | This is open-source, you can spin up your own instance.
        
           | quaintdev wrote:
           | Wish this had docker image. I don't want to install npm to
           | spin this up.
        
             | nickmonad wrote:
             | Create one?
        
             | copper-float wrote:
             | Just spin up an alpine Linux image with node preinstalled.
             | I got the server up and running in no time.
        
           | TehShrike wrote:
           | I appreciate that, but I prefer pay someone else to keep the
           | server up
        
       | severine wrote:
       | I currently use Firefox bookmarks, synced through my Mozilla
       | account. What would be the advantages for me if I were to use
       | Webtag?
       | 
       | Related: does anyone know if there's any limit to synced
       | bookmarks/history in Firefox?
        
         | hardwaresofton wrote:
         | Do you ever feel like Firefox is forgetting your bookmarks or
         | search is bad?
         | 
         | Not endorsing this project or any other, but from time to time
         | I'm a bit suspicious that firefox is dropping some links I'm
         | sure I saved/not surfacing some links I'm fairly sure were
         | related to my search.
         | 
         | Likely all in my head though!
        
           | metadat wrote:
           | The search is bad.
           | 
           | Example: If you tag one entry with "meta" and another with
           | "metaverse", then search bookmarks for "meta", you'll get the
           | union of anything containing meta. Particularly problematic
           | in the case of short terms like "ux", "go", or "c".
        
             | kbrosnan wrote:
             | Use the search filters.
             | 
             | > Add ^ to show only matches in your browsing history.
             | 
             | > Add * to show only matches in your bookmarks.
             | 
             | > Add + to show only matches in bookmarks you've tagged.
             | 
             | > Add % to show only matches in your currently open tabs.
             | 
             | > Add # to show only matches where every search term is
             | part of the title or part of a tag.
             | 
             | > Add $ to show only matches where every search term is
             | part of the web address (URL). The text "https://xn--ivg or
             | "http://xn--ivg in the URL is ignored, but not "file:///".
             | 
             | > Add ? to show only search suggestions.
             | 
             | You can select the search constraint in the dropdown if you
             | don't want to memorize the list.
             | 
             | https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/address-bar-
             | autocomplet...
        
               | metadat wrote:
               | I meant in the bookmark search, the search box which
               | appears after pressing cmd/ctrl-b.
               | 
               | This is still an interesting workaround, I'll give a
               | shot. Thanks!
        
           | anticodon wrote:
           | No, I definitely feel that Firefox is forgetting some of my
           | bookmarks. And the search is indeed awful.
           | 
           | I switched to buku and rofi-buku, which is more robust,
           | convenient and accessible solution. And not tied to a single
           | browser (I use several, for example, different browsers for
           | leisure and for work).
        
         | carlosjobim wrote:
         | Why should somebody try to convince you in either direction? I
         | can't see how it would matter to any other person how you
         | specifically choose to sync your bookmarks.
        
           | mapreduce wrote:
           | > Why should somebody try to convince you in either
           | direction?
           | 
           | Because we are on a tech website and as good samaritans we
           | want to help each other out by sharing the information,
           | knowledge, projects, tools or recommendations we have?
        
       | justusthane wrote:
       | Two thoughts:
       | 
       | - I like the no-nonsense landing page, but what I'd like _more_
       | is to be able to see what the product actually looks like without
       | having to sign up. At least screenshots, but a demo would be
       | nice.
       | 
       | - I'm looking to migrate away from Pinboard, but I like how you
       | can see all of a user's bookmarks (e.g:
       | https://pinboard.in/u:justusthane) unless they mark them private.
       | I get that the point of Webtag is it's private by default, but it
       | would also be cool if this was an option.
        
         | egonschiele wrote:
         | Just curious, why are you planning to migrate away from
         | Pinboard? I have been meaning to sign up for years.
        
           | blangk wrote:
           | Pinboard is pretty great, especially with a perpetual accpubt
        
           | asdefghyk wrote:
           | I plan on leaving. I am unable to download all copies of ny
           | bookmarks from my archival account. Have sent support request
           | about this never any response. Support requests are often not
           | answered. Google around , you will see plenty of other
           | complaints in my opinion.
        
       | jxy wrote:
       | If you ever used w3m, it uses a local bookmark file. Something
       | like this:                   $ cat ~/.w3m/bookmark.html
       | <html><head><title>Bookmarks</title></head>         <body>
       | <h1>Bookmarks</h1>         <h2>Searches</h2>         <ul>
       | <li><a href="https://www.google.com/">Google</a>         <!--End
       | of section (do not delete this comment)-->         </ul>
       | <h2>Time Sink</h2>         <ul>         <li><a
       | href="https://news.ycombinator.com/">Hacker News</a>         <!--
       | End of section (do not delete this comment)-->         </ul>
       | </body>         </html>
        
         | kbrosnan wrote:
         | Looks like a variation of the Netscape bookmark format.
         | 
         | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/...
        
       | dsp_person wrote:
       | > No limits on storage.
       | 
       | just need a BBD module (bookmark block device) and boom free
       | unlimited disk backups
        
         | ks2048 wrote:
         | About to encode my photo library as a set of
         | "data:image/jpeg;base64" URLs...
        
           | dsp_person wrote:
           | ah, been done haha
           | 
           | Show HN: BookmarkFS - Store files as Chrome bookmarks that
           | sync between devices
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32887863
        
             | apgwoz wrote:
             | I wrote a KV store on top of Bit.ly once:
             | https://github.com/apg/bitdb -- The "todo list" example has
             | a good description of what's going on:
             | https://github.com/apg/bitdb/blob/master/examples/todo.py
             | 
             | And I know of a generic blob store on top of (older)
             | Snapchat API: https://github.com/hausdorff/snapchat-fs
             | 
             | It's really fun to "exploit" APIs in this way to create
             | alternative uses.
        
       | tandav wrote:
       | It would be nice to have some sort of demo
        
       | fraencko wrote:
       | Small typo: The button on the bookmarklet page says
       | "bookmarkelet".
        
       | renegat0x0 wrote:
       | I wrote bookmark manager in Django.
       | 
       | https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive
       | 
       | You can self host it.
       | 
       | You can add RSS sources and auto import new links regularly.
       | 
       | It may not be stare of the art, but gets the job done.
       | 
       | Demo below, but may not be working when you look at it. It runs
       | on raspberry pi.
       | 
       | https://renegat0x0.ddns.net/apps/catalog/entry/11503/
        
       | avinassh wrote:
       | I love the homepage, simple and clean! Any screenshots of how it
       | looks for logged users?
       | 
       | I noticed it uses MongoDB. That seems like an overkill to me,
       | have you considered SQLite?
       | 
       | if you are open to taking feature requests:
       | 
       | - ability to add random notes
       | 
       | - any submitted link should be captured in archive / wayback
       | machine
       | 
       | - (complicated) search within the submitted links content
        
         | account-5 wrote:
         | Sounds like you're after zotero.
        
         | herdst wrote:
         | Why is MongoDB overkill?
        
       | huhtenberg wrote:
       | All attempts to create an account fail with "429 Too Many
       | Requests".
        
       | selmetwa wrote:
       | Really cool! I like that bookmarking seems to be making a
       | comeback. I really like the low-tech approach. It would be cool
       | if there was a social component to it as well.
       | 
       | I actually worked on a similar project centered around social
       | bookmarking; https://huntergather.website/.
        
       | thinking_banana wrote:
       | I'm curious, where and how is the information stored as part of
       | the service. Would be nice if you can share the deployment
       | strategy that is being used as it suggests the framework for long
       | term support.
       | 
       | Thanks and nice work
        
       | pwillia7 wrote:
       | I recently came up with a new way to bookmark with Logseq and
       | Raindrop that I like a lot --
       | https://reticulated.net/posts/a-better-bookmark-experience-w...
        
       | flanbiscuit wrote:
       | For a long time I wanted to figure out a way to organize my
       | "bookmarks" that I have scattered all over the place. I have many
       | many favorited posts on HN, I used Reddit's "save" feature, I add
       | videos to "watch later" or some other playlist in Youtube, etc
       | etc. I thought maybe I could one day unify all this into one
       | place where I can tag them so I know why I bookmarked them (I
       | have definitely sifted through pages of my HN favorites trying to
       | find something). At this point though, I have too much to go
       | through that the task seems daunting. But now that we have AI, I
       | have shifted my mindset to wanting to just feed everything to AI
       | and just have a chat interface where I can ask it for what I
       | want. I feel like that is the future of organization (at least
       | for me it is). Ideally it would be something self-hosted
        
         | jackthetab wrote:
         | Same here. I'm saving my pennies to buy a decent machine to
         | work on precisely that.
        
         | GGO wrote:
         | I use linkding for that? Have you tried it?
         | https://github.com/sissbruecker/linkding
        
           | DandyDev wrote:
           | Does linkding pull in your GitHub stars, Reddit saves etc?
           | That's what the parent wants to achieve. It seems linkding is
           | just a regular bookmark tool.
        
         | bsnnkv wrote:
         | Your initial want is pretty close to I ended up creating for
         | myself for all things text-based with https://notado.app. I
         | ended up ditching my old stuff in Instapaper, Readwise and
         | Pinboard back in 2020ish because it didn't really fit the data
         | model[1] (content-first rather than link-first) and since then
         | I'm very happy with how everything is archived[2], organized
         | and shareable[3] in Notado.
         | 
         | I still think it's possible to go incredibly far with a good
         | data model, fuzzy search, automated tagging and feed
         | publishing.
         | 
         | [1]: https://lgug2z.com/articles/the-bookmarking-data-model-is-
         | wr...
         | 
         | [2]: https://lgug2z.com/articles/notado-07-2023-update/
         | 
         | [3]: https://lgug2z.com/articles/using-rust-chrome-and-nixos-
         | to-t...
        
           | mronetwo wrote:
           | Looks great. What's up with Kullish? Seems to be down
        
             | bsnnkv wrote:
             | Naturally, the release I push before making a comment here
             | is the one that takes down the website. Back up now :)
        
         | al_borland wrote:
         | What I never understand about the chat interfaces is how I'm
         | supposed to browse? With something like bookmarks, I sometimes
         | go through my old bookmarks and find interesting/useful things
         | I forgot all about. If it's all in AI, behind a chatbot, and I
         | forget about something, how do I know to ask for it?
        
           | flanbiscuit wrote:
           | Yes, true. Maybe there's a happy medium where it can auto-
           | tag/organize them for you but also provide the chat
           | interface, giving you the choice to browser or ask. I don't
           | want my links to just be ingested by AI and disappear. I
           | think being able to see them somewhere as well is important.
        
           | hahajk wrote:
           | Readwise has been really good for me to remind myself of
           | highlights I made years ago. I set aside 30 minutes in the
           | morning to go over a few highlights and write. I think that
           | adding a "random bookmark" every day would be a good idea.
           | Most of the time you say "huh, I forgot I had that" and
           | forget it forever. But once in a while it comes at the
           | perfect time. (Or a few days before/after the perfect time
           | would still be nice)
        
         | hawski wrote:
         | If I would ever be bothered enough to invest time in getting to
         | know existing or making my own bookmarking system I would just
         | like for it to cache the text from a thing I want to bookmark
         | and offer a nice full text search over the whole archive. I
         | think that, the HN's favorite, Pinboard has something like
         | this.
         | 
         | I would think about going one step further and having a full
         | text search over my whole browsing history with a way to
         | penalize or remove certain hosts. Then I would love to augment
         | my web searches to also include things from my archive.
         | 
         | I feel I would have a much bigger utility out of this in
         | comparison to thing through AI, though I get it could be also
         | beneficial. However AI, I believe, is costlier to run. A nice,
         | properly indexed, full text search probably could run on a
         | phone at least for a private archive.
        
       | 911e wrote:
       | No GDPR mentions, cannot delete account easily :-(
        
       | oneeyedpigeon wrote:
       | When I try to sign up I just get "something went wrong please try
       | again"
        
       | jrm4 wrote:
       | Hey folks, another option that I've settled on (after messing
       | with shaarli, shiori and a few others) is Buku.
       | 
       | Usually I really like plain text instead of dbs, but the killer
       | here for me, I realize, is that I'm not tied to any one method of
       | input OR output. Mainly, I do adding through a bookmarklet, and
       | retrieval through "bukuserver," a self-hosted web thing. But
       | also, I have the option of the command line (for bulk adding) as
       | well as browser addons and other things, and (I use Syncthing) it
       | doesn't matter "where" the db is, either on my machine or hosted
       | on a vps.
       | 
       | https://github.com/jarun/buku
        
         | burgerrito wrote:
         | Interesting:
         | 
         | - Shiori (Kan ) means bookmark in Japanese
         | 
         | - Buku means book in Indonesian
        
       | idlewords wrote:
       | "Free unlimited bookmarks. No limits on storage."
       | 
       | No way that could backfire.
        
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       (page generated 2024-03-22 23:00 UTC)