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I currently have 13,229 bookmarks in Pinboard.in. They are all cross referenced with multiple useful tags and I add maybe 3+ every day. Google is a poor substi

I currently have 13,229 bookmarks in Pinboard.in. They are all cross referenced with multiple useful tags and I add maybe 3+ every day. Google is a poor substitute because it gives me pages of results for what I need and they may or may not be any good. I may have to search again. I may have to click through 4 or five pages before i find one that's useful even though i've been to a useful one before. Searching in my bookmarks gives me ones that are KNOWN useful, AND because of Pinboard's archival feature they are still available even after the site has disappeared. I bookmark things _I_ find useful and things I think will be likely be useful to the people in my circles. Then when a friend says "hey is there a good tool for x?" I can say "yes, and here's a link to it" even if i don't use that tool. Or, i can link them to full pages of useful bookmarks on a topic. So yeah, I have thousands of curated links of _useful_ things and pieces of information that are on the internet or _were_ on the internet. I use it daily. I share links with others regularly. I'm constantly thankful when i can read the content of that blog post I bookmarked that described X better than anything currently out there... but no longer exists on the internet. It's also great for research. I can make a new tag for some topic I'm gathering info on (maybe competitors for a future project) and when i am ready to start processing that info i have a whole list of easily accessible links to go through. re "is it a service people need anymore?" Note that the reason the thing that started off this discussion exists is because enough people are paying him money to use Pinboard.in that he was able to spend unknown thousands of dollars on Delicious for the SOLE purpose of shuttering it and putting it in read-only mode. He probably got some users who transferred their accounts to Pinboard.in out of the deal, but that wasn't his primary goal by all accounts.

Chirael 6y ago
Yeah, active Pinboard user as well, coming from del.icio.us a number of years ago. Have 35,549 bookmarks in Pinboard as of right now, will almost certainly be a bit higher by the end of the day. Definitely a personal knowledge repository. I can't tell you how many times I'll be talking to someone and say, "You know, I read an article about that a few months back... let me send you the link" - really useful. I also like when I save a really good link and see that others have linked it too, and then I can explore what else those folks have bookmarked with that same tag; it's a great way to find other high-quality pages. Kind of "social bookmarking" :)
- hhsuey 6y ago
  I think you're right. However, personally, I can - 95% of the time - remember a few words from the page that allows me to search it on Google. 95% is conservative figure. I honestly don't remember the last time I couldn't find something. Might have been a year ago. Furthermore, it's usually much more accurate to simply search your own browse history. Granted, one might need to delete the history or that can get large, but I usually only need to search for something within a year of the last retrieval.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    Google search quality has been in freefall for a while and I'm never sure if the "Verbatim" button will still exist on my next search. I have zero faith in the repeatability of a Google search, especially with a delta of months. Also my memory is perfect, I can't remember anything I have forgotten.
  - idlewords 6y ago
    One thing I've learned from running a bookmarking site is that people have vastly different experiences and practices with re-finding stuff online, which sometimes makes it hard not to talk past one another. It turns out the way we remember, find, and re-find stuff is very idiosyncratic, and the success of it depends a lot on the subject domain.
hhsuey 6y ago
Thanks for sharing. Random thoughts/questions: How do you compare this with using Google Chrome's ecosystem with bookmarks? Or any other browser with bookmarks stored in the cloud? Is there any plugin that can allow search results in a browser's address bar to show the bookmarks from pinboard.in?
- masukomi 6y ago
  chrome's bookmarks aren't available to me across browsers, and I can't use tags to search them. They don't load any faster than Pinboard's either (which is kinda mind-boggling). not having them across browsers makes them a non-starter (ditto for Firefox plugins) Not having them across accounts makes them a non-starter (work account vs personal account). Not being able to tag them and thus find the thing that i remember the associated categories / taxonomy of but not the specific name of is a non starter. With tags i can say "it was a thing that ... was in ...Go, and ... did something with the cli and...." and have a list of viable things. Doing that with just google is searching for a needle in a haystack. In those case I'm searching for a needle in a handful of hay, on a nice clean desk.
  - hhsuey 6y ago
    Nice. Makes sense! Thank you!
ybbond 6y ago
I tried pinboard archival account but decided to request refund because it uses iframe, which prevent my annotating tool to work (Memex 2), also prevents full text search for Medium posts. Other aspect that I consider is the lack of nice iOS app. Now I use Raindrop.io, and eventhough the iOS app is not that great, but it allow full text search for Medium account. My question is, can you check Pinboard's archival account feature on whether it still use iframe, and whether you can do full text search on Medium posts? Thank you!

Chirael 6y ago

Yeah, active Pinboard user as well, coming from del.icio.us a number of years ago. Have 35,549 bookmarks in Pinboard as of right now, will almost certainly be a bit higher by the end of the day. Definitely a personal knowledge repository. I can't tell you how many times I'll be talking to someone and say, "You know, I read an article about that a few months back... let me send you the link" - really useful. I also like when I save a really good link and see that others have linked it too, and then I can explore what else those folks have bookmarked with that same tag; it's a great way to find other high-quality pages. Kind of "social bookmarking" :)

hhsuey 6y ago
I think you're right. However, personally, I can - 95% of the time - remember a few words from the page that allows me to search it on Google. 95% is conservative figure. I honestly don't remember the last time I couldn't find something. Might have been a year ago. Furthermore, it's usually much more accurate to simply search your own browse history. Granted, one might need to delete the history or that can get large, but I usually only need to search for something within a year of the last retrieval.
- mulmen 6y ago
  Google search quality has been in freefall for a while and I'm never sure if the "Verbatim" button will still exist on my next search. I have zero faith in the repeatability of a Google search, especially with a delta of months. Also my memory is perfect, I can't remember anything I have forgotten.
- idlewords 6y ago
  One thing I've learned from running a bookmarking site is that people have vastly different experiences and practices with re-finding stuff online, which sometimes makes it hard not to talk past one another. It turns out the way we remember, find, and re-find stuff is very idiosyncratic, and the success of it depends a lot on the subject domain.

hhsuey 6y ago

Thanks for sharing. Random thoughts/questions: How do you compare this with using Google Chrome's ecosystem with bookmarks? Or any other browser with bookmarks stored in the cloud? Is there any plugin that can allow search results in a browser's address bar to show the bookmarks from pinboard.in?

masukomi 6y ago
chrome's bookmarks aren't available to me across browsers, and I can't use tags to search them. They don't load any faster than Pinboard's either (which is kinda mind-boggling). not having them across browsers makes them a non-starter (ditto for Firefox plugins) Not having them across accounts makes them a non-starter (work account vs personal account). Not being able to tag them and thus find the thing that i remember the associated categories / taxonomy of but not the specific name of is a non starter. With tags i can say "it was a thing that ... was in ...Go, and ... did something with the cli and...." and have a list of viable things. Doing that with just google is searching for a needle in a haystack. In those case I'm searching for a needle in a handful of hay, on a nice clean desk.
- hhsuey 6y ago
  Nice. Makes sense! Thank you!

ybbond 6y ago

I tried pinboard archival account but decided to request refund because it uses iframe, which prevent my annotating tool to work (Memex 2), also prevents full text search for Medium posts. Other aspect that I consider is the lack of nice iOS app. Now I use Raindrop.io, and eventhough the iOS app is not that great, but it allow full text search for Medium account. My question is, can you check Pinboard's archival account feature on whether it still use iframe, and whether you can do full text search on Medium posts? Thank you!