Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I don't use browser bookmarks but I do use bookmarks through pinboard.in: https://pinboard.in/u:jcrites

With a paid feature called an archival account, Pinboard stores an actual copy of each bookmarked article, kind of like your own private Wayback Machine. It provides full text search over these articles.

I frequently save articles that I read so that I can refer to them later. It doesn't happen often, but once in a while I will desire to access an article that I read a few months or years later, and I find Pinboard well worth the value for making it possible for me to actually identify the article and retrieve its content regardless of whether the original link is still around.

I find this especially useful because it is my habit to collect citations for various facts. When I find myself making a claim in conversation, I really want to be able to access the original source where I learned about the fact, and provide the evidence to back it up. Or to review the source to confirm that my memory of it is accurate. Or sometimes I want to share a useful article explaining some topic with a colleague or friend.

I do occasionally use the browser bookmarks a sort of clipboard or working set, for 5-10 links at a time. I use Google Chrome and it syncs bookmarks between my devices.



Nice set of pinboard bookmarks :)

I only have two Firefox bookmarks really.

1. Tag something as to-read in my pinboard (i.e. keeps them private by default) [0]:

  javascript:q=location.href;p=document.title;void(t=open('https://pinboard.in/add?later=yes&noui=yes&jump=close&url='+encodeURIComponent(q)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(p)+'&tags='+encodeURIComponent("%s"),'Pinboard','toolbar=no,width=100,height=100'));t.blur();
I add a keyword 'pi' to the bookmark and then just type

  pi tag1 tag2 
and it saves the current page to pinboard

The other one was a brief exchange with Eric Meyer about a quick way to search from your address bar on the wayback machine [1]:

  https://web.archive.org/web/*/%S
Again add a keyword 'w' and then just type in your address bar:

  w example.com
[0]: https://pinboard.in/u:ianchanning

[1]: https://twitter.com/meyerweb/status/762686867695210498


It also does fulltext indices of PDF files, which is pretty awesome if you read a lot of CS papers. It's become my cryptography research search engine for that reason.


I can't believe the PDF fulltext search works. Must be a rare alignment of bugs across search engine, PDF parser, database, and website.


That's really nifty, but also seems something that can be hacked in a day. Create a script to fetch the articles contents, and reformat it into a index that can be searched.

I like the idea of pinboard. I want to copy it. But, I also want to be lazy.


Pinboard is $11 for a year. There are a million things I'd like to cobble together and I'm happy to cross one off my list in exchange for $11.

I wish there were more services like Pinboard - useful, inexpensive, reliable. Too often it's a pick-two situation.


To each their own :)


No argument on that from me.

The other part of the equation for me is that $1 / month seems like the correct price for a useful service. I think Pinboard has something like 20,000 users. If they are all paying $1 / month (I have no idea if they are), then it feels like a sustainable business.


It's something like that (I'm not being coy, I just haven't run the numbers). It comes out to $200K/year on ~$15K of operating expenses.

More people should run niche sites! A vanilla Flickr reboot, for example, is a livelihood waiting to happen.


Image hosting is so much heavier


Other than the archival for $25, I don't see what I'd pay for that my own bookmarks don't already get me.

And the archival itself is likely only useful for stuff other people have already archived anyways; in the rare instances I find something I definitely want to ensure I have a copy of, I can usually find a way to get a copy onto my local machine and NAS.


That's a little like saying you don't subscribe to Amazon Prime because you don't shop at Amazon.

Nobody is suggesting you subscribe to a service that provides no value.


Is there any browser add-on that will display the public Pinboard tags for HN stories? I guess a pointer to how to get this via whatever API would be helpful too.


I've done it the other way around, but feel free to have a look for pointers: https://github.com/toyg/hackercreep


This might be a silly question but did you add all those tags on the right or is that done automatically by pinboard?


The tag cloud is generated automatically but when bookmarking a site you have to add them. Pinboard does suggest tags that you can quickly select though.


I wish Pinboard would make the next step and build a recommendation engine.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: