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Show HN: A bookmarking tool designed to help synthesize your web research
- sawaruna 6y agoNot sure if this will fit the bill exactly, but have been looking for something like this to accompany knowledge base note tools like Roam, Obsidian, etc., since those don't work that well with web content IMO. Using Zotero at the moment, which is fine for something not web-based. are.na is maybe another similar service aimed at content beyond bookmarks. klobie looks good though! A couple of suggestions: I like the 'card view' of the board pages, but assuming one has a lot of tags, and many bookmarks per tag (or even many bookmarks for a single tag), I feel the 'overview' you get with the board page kind of vanishes and the individual tags take over. Something like a fixed height option for the cards that becomes scrollable would be nice. Alternatively, each tag becomes a separate page, with the bookmarks being listed once you enter the tag page instead of the board page, but not sure if you want that kind of hierarchical structure. Oh, and maybe a tighter column view might be nice!
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! I appreciate the feedback. I'm not familiar with all those tools, but yes, the idea here is bookmarks for now. I get what you say about boards with too many topics/bookmarks. I've been thinking of different ways to display information, so this kind of feedback is very useful!
- superasn 6y agoNice but I forgot my password during signup and now can't find a way to retrieve it. Where is the forgot password page because I can't find link for it on the login page either.
- te_ch 6y agoSorry for the inconvenience! I still need to implement that feature (I know, it's important). Would you like to sign up again using the same username? Please contact me at k at klobie.com and I'll make sure you can access/use the tool. Thanks!
- kvdr 6y agoLove it! Thank you for creating this. Is there a way to add the bookmarklet to my toolbar instead of having it on the bookmarks toolbar which I keep hidden. EDIT: Also can I get to my home page when I click on Klobie than clicking on my username? And can I tag bookmarks with topics under different boards?
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! I'm glad you find it useful! What browser do you use? Once you created the bookmarklet, you can move it to your e.g. "bookmarks bar" in Chrome and it's pretty handy (that's my current set up). I'll consider your navigation suggestion – any specific reason why you prefer to click on the logo to go back to your home page rather than the username? Any problem with the interface? Visibility? Each board has its own set of bookmarks and topics. If you want to save a bookmark to multiple boards, you'll need to do save it to each one of them. Sorry for that – this is at least for now, a copy bookmark function is an option that I'll consider. I'll be here if you have questions, or you may want to just send an email to the contact email (address here: https://klobie.com/help https://klobie.com/help) Thanks again!
- jeppesen-io 6y agoJust signed up, I ike it and will start using it A request: Make `topics` optional or ability to set a default topic(s)
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! I'll work on this soon, it's going up on my to-do list.
- vagsmith 6y agothere was an over-engineered tool called Surfmark which was trying to do the same a few years ago. the website still seems to be active. surfmark.com
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! I'll take a look, it does seem to be active.
- kanobo 6y agoGreat job, looks clean and useful! I think it'll help to put the site's favicon or some kind of visual differentiator next to each link so it's easier to scan when you're looking for a specific link.
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! It's a great idea. I've been considering something along those lines but haven't decided about the ideal way to implement it. But I think I'll have an update on this in a few days. Stay tuned! I appreciate the feedback.
- mooreed 6y agoLooks slick. What do the numeric figures mean at the top of a topic card? Things like 1b, 7b, 2.1bt and 11% and 17% Is there somewhere that explains those? Did I miss some internet wide naming convention ??? :)
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! Good question, I forgot to add that to the help section :) B = board t = topic b = bookmark bt = bookmarks per topic The percentage is the "coverage" received by a given topic in each board. If a board has 10 bookmarks and 3 of them are labeled e.g. "topicX", topicX's coverage is 30%. Totals may add up to more than 100% due to multiple topic assignments. It helps you figure out where you stand in terms of the information you collect. I sometimes have to e.g. research and compare a number of topics within a given theme (e.g. companies in nanotechnology), and I want to make sure I do enough digging on each one. I'm here if you have more questions!
- rjeli 6y agoLooks very nice. Relatedly, I wish I could automatically freeze and archive every single web page I visit, minus heavy media, possibly with very low quality images. I tried squid and the internet archive’s proxies, but MITM’ing myself is just slightly too annoying. There’s SingleFile[0] which does pretty much exactly what I want, ripping every single page into a self-extracting HTML+zip file, but it runs inside the browser so it adds a little delay after you navigate to a page, again slightly too annoying. Anyone have a recommendation for a seamless way to do this? Otherwise I’ll probably roll my own extension that pipes every URL to a local process that rips in the background with e.g. selenium. I wish there were a way to run fully privileged extensions in Firefox, i.e. in the browser context instead of the page... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/single-file/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/single-file/
- Arubis 6y agoIf you wanted to keep this off your local box, you could create a separate pinboard.in account, pay for their archival service, and script your browser to pin every URL you hit.
- sriku 6y agoZotero can store webpage snapshots. Not sufficient? I also sometimes print-to-pdf.
- totetsu 6y agoIts not to hard to stand up your own local network webdav server to sync zotero to either. https://docs.bytemark.co.uk/article/run-your-own-webdav-server-with-docker/ https://docs.bytemark.co.uk/article/run-your-own-webdav-serv...
- interurban 6y agoSaving every single page feels a little overwhelming to me, I open lots of pages looking for a piece of information or an answer to a question and many aren't relevant, many others are outright spam. That said, I use pinboard to save/bookmark links, and I paid for the archival account type which automatically stores the pages I save. There's a handy bookmarklet so saving a page is a one click operation.
- jsnk 6y agoThis looks useful. But I would like to confirm if it has "export to static file" functionality. It would really suck if I spent months accumulating data for some research, only to have the account banned or suspended, or the app shuts down.
- te_ch 6y agoIt actually has already an export function hidden somewhere :) But I had to disable it temporarily. So, yes, it'll definitely have it back in a few days. Question: are CSV exports ok? Any other format you'd prefer? Thanks for your feedback and interest!
- indit 6y agoFor me, markdown will be a great option. Since it would help for deveolping research or blog notes.
- dhet 6y ago+1 for markdown. For me as developer (and for others as well I'm sure) markdown has become second nature for taking notes. BTW, great work, te_ch! Do you have any plans for monetization? I can definitely see myself paying a few dollars a month if I end up using it enough.
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! I really appreciate the feedback. No plans for monetization yet. If you decide to try it, I look forward to receiving more feedback and feature requests!
- te_ch 6y agoInteresting, thanks! May I ask you what's your field of research? Or is just personal, general web research?
- te_ch 6y agoThanks for the feedback! Would you rather have the entire board with bookmarks, notes, etc. all in markdown keeping the structure (cards, etc.) or just the list of bookmarks in markdown?
- asimjalis 6y agoI like the app. One thing that did not work well for me was the requirement to enter a topic. I want to quickly bookmark a page and move on. Why is topic required?
- te_ch 6y agoGreat point. I wonder if you use bookmarking to save URLs "just in case"? When you are on mobile, and then return to the website when you have more time for that? Any other use case? In my use case, it's a matter of organization. But totally get what you say, classifying things into buckets is extra work. I'll consider options to address this but, would adding a topic "later" be a temporary solution to you? Then you can edit bookmarks' topics as you please, but they would initially appear under the same card corresponding to the topic "later". Thanks for the feedback!
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoCongratulations on the launch! Although 'synthesise' has broad meaning, I think organising the bookmarks this way helps to fetch our bookmarks when needed e.g. A need gap - 'I forget my web bookmarks quite often'[1] was posted on my problem validation platform which I think this tool can effectively address. Did you have the intention of solving that problem when creating this tool? Then I would suggest improving the copy in the home page from 'Synthesise' to something on the lines of - 'Don't forget your bookmarks again, get them back when you need it'. Also, an address bar integration which brings results from Klobie first could serve the purpose better IMO. [1]https://needgap.com/problems/57-i-forget-my-web-bookmarks-quite-often.-internet-organizing https://needgap.com/problems/57-i-forget-my-web-bookmarks-qu...
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! Great points. My specific use case is doing initial, exploratory web research to work on company, industry and market analysis. This initial phase requires reviewing many sources and identifying the "important bits" that will help structure the main project. I take notes for that, at the bookmark, topic and board (theme) level. I get what you say, the wording of the one-liner maybe doesn't reflect all possible use cases, or even properly describe my own! I'll consider options for this. The idea of address bar integration is terrific. Thanks again for the feedback!
- lachlan-sneff 6y agoAny chance of being able to host on my own server?
- cel1ne 6y agoJust a tip, if you want this to become internationally used: "Klo" means "toilet" in german.
- sdoering 6y agofor me the first German association was "klobig" that could be translated as unwieldy. not sure if this is better, though.
- squallstar 6y agoI was one of the tech founders of a start-up called Cronycle which made a similar (but more advanced) tool many years ago: https://www.cronycle.com/ https://www.cronycle.com/ I don't know if I can still recommend the product but for the years I used to work there I know we built an amazing product. --- A few years ago I also made a bookmarking tool expanding links which is open source and free to use: https://fragments.me/ https://fragments.me/
- te_ch 6y agoThanks for sharing these!
- im_dario 6y agoNice :) Do you have any plan for paid subscriptions?
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! No plan for subscriptions. I look forward to receiving more feedback if you use it (feel free to reach out directly to me).
- donbale 6y agoFantastic work, I have been looking for something like this. I have started using it and it works great, just a little feedback: In Chrome when entering a new bookmark I have to click back in the box once a topic has been entered and I wish to add another, which is annoying. It would also be great if the title was auto populated via the URL and then leave it to the user if they want to customise this.
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! I really appreciate your feedback. Re: title: it actually is auto populated when you bookmark a webpage with the bookmarklet AND the webpage has a title. Let me know if I'm missing something here. Re: topics: yes! You are absolutely right, I'm fixing that asap.
- qwerty456127 6y agoI want to feed URLs to a service which would assign relevant subject tags automatically. Can it do this?
- te_ch 6y agoHey thanks for asking. That's not an option though, at least for now :) But do let me know if there is any other feature that could help with tagging in the meantime!
- known 6y agoYou can bookmark this javascript:void function(){var e=window,a=document,b=encodeURIComponent,c=e.open("https://archive.is/"+b(a.location)+"%26title="+b(a.title),"td_popup","left="+((e.screenX||e.screenLeft)+10)+",top="+((e.screenY||e.screenTop)+10)+",height=510px,width=550px,resizable=1,alwaysRaised=1");e.setTimeout(function(){c.focus()},300)}();
- hundchenkatze 6y agoSure, but the value added by klobie is by organizing and presenting the bookmarked sites in a useful way. Take a look at the sample board https://klobie.com/v/8oqy1eg/coronavirus https://klobie.com/v/8oqy1eg/coronavirus
- neovive 6y agoThis looks great! There seems to be a renewed interest in bookmarking services. I've experimented with a few options over the past few years and recently settled on the Notion web clipper. Although Notion doesn't have all the features of a dedicated bookmarking service, the ability to save everything to a table that you can tag, add notes and filter is nice. I will keep Klobie in mind as an option.
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! I'm glad you found a bookmarking tool that works for you. But please don't hesitate to reach out to me directly to discuss what features would make you consider using klobie. Cheers.
- slowkow 6y agoDiigo has been active since 2006. It works well enough for me. https://www.diigo.com/ https://www.diigo.com/ > Diigo is a multi-tool for personal knowledge management dramatically improve your workflow and productivity easy and intuitive, yet versatile and powerful
- tsieling 6y agoAh another round of 'guess the password policy'!. Try a password. No, it needs a capital letter. Next try, No, it must also have a symbol. I moved on after that. If this is the UX of setting up a password, I'm not up for the rest.
- te_ch 6y agoThanks for the feedback and sorry for the inconvenience! The sign-up page actually does include the password requirements: "The password must be at least 8 characters long and include upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols." In sum: * 8 chars long minimum * include all of these: upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols I do realize that such a combination of characters is somewhat hard to remember compared to simpler passwords. I'll consider options to simplify all this. I appreciate your feedback.
- tsieling 6y agoI feel pretty dumb, sure enough it's right there. Pardon my error I glanced right past that. Positioning the text with the password field would likely help, and/or include all rules in the error message, not just the one that's violated.
- te_ch 6y agoNo worries, your feedback is helpful! I hope you have the chance to try it then :)
- zikzak 6y agoI keep getting an error with the username and finally inspected the validator. I think you could be applying your pwd validation to the username field but I could be wrong, anyway I figured it out eventually.
- te_ch 6y agoThanks for your feedback! Please contact me (k at klobie.com) if you still encounter any issue when signing up/logging in.
- veleventh 6y agoOMG. When will someone make a free Pinboard clone and that's enough
- juskrey 6y agoBookmarking does not work. Saving every page of the slightest interest to me, even if I don't read it immediately, was one of the best things I took as a habit. (Using Evernote for this)
- weswpg 6y agoerror upon verifying account: 2 validation errors detected: Value at 'username' failed to satisfy constraint: Member must have length greater than or equal to 1; Value at 'username' failed to satisfy constraint: Member must satisfy regular expression pattern: [\p{L}\p{M}\p{S}\p{N}\p{P}]+
- te_ch 6y agoHey sorry for this, the bug was fixed already, please go ahead and try it :) Thanks for reporting!
- ghostbrainalpha 6y agoGreat Job on the example board. It totally sells the idea. I wonder if you could tie in with Googles related search terms to get suggested ideas to further research and fill out your board?
- te_ch 6y agoThanks! A connection with Google search does sound interesting! I'll look into it. Feel free to contact me directly if you try the app and have questions.
- cuttyhuddy 6y agowe've actually made something similar. Have a few unique workflow features for switching and searching as well. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blink/jgnbmndipgkkiedmlkpkonbppmfjjial https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blink/jgnbmndipgkk...
- laybak 6y agoBeen working on a similar tool: https://getrumin.com/ https://getrumin.com/ Does the bookmarking, along with a visual canvas for editing the relationships. Feedback welcomed :)
- CharlesMerriam2 6y agoFYI... Chrome only; no Firefox.
- te_ch 6y agoThanks for your feedback. Having trouble with Firefox? Something specific?
- zikzak 6y agoI'm late to the party but do you have tips for adding pages quickly on mobile? The boomark I created in the desktop Chrome client either isn't syncing or isn't available in mobile Chrome (Android).
- te_ch 6y agoThanks for the feedback! The bookmarklet should actually work on both desktop and mobile. Please consider that bookmarking on Chrome (Android) requires you to type the name you used when creating the bookmarklet into the browser's address bar to bookmark a web page. You may want to reach out directly: k at klobie.com if it still gives you a hard time.
- CarlosMoz 6y agoReally useful. Great project!
- te_ch 6y agoThanks!
- caviv 6y agoA bit confusing. Me myself I prefer to use https://yabs.io https://yabs.io - like good old del.icio.us