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Do you track yourself? Do you check, what you are reading, and verify your own progress? Some time ago I started thinking about my problems with Google search,
by renegat0x0 4y ago
Do you track yourself? Do you check, what you are reading, and verify your own progress? Some time ago I started thinking about my problems with Google search, and was inspired by other project to write a program for myself.
Throughout my life I have found many resources worthy of my time, but which I have lost, or forgotten about. I wanted to change that. I wanted to be able to look back.
I have started my project in Sept of 2023. The core functionality is: to store, browse, and search for links. Additionally I added RSS sources as sources, so every hour I ping sources to check if there is anything new, and I expand my database. Does that replace Google search? Nope. On the other hand it expanded my horizons.
I found most of RSS aggregators lacking:
- some provides ability to bookmark entries, but some do not allow to insert links manually
- some do not provide ability to tag links
- some are on-line, and I strongly prefer local NAS web apps
- most do not provide clean ability to search link database (as it may involve heavy operations)
I found Google search lacking:
- 10 pages each with 10 links for a searched keywords is not enough. If I write 'covid' into google search I would be expecting millions of links in results, from variety of sources. Even Fox news, even daily mail
- I have results curated by big tech, I prefer to curate output myself
What I have found about archive.org:
- it is slow and unreliable
- does not store RSS sources often enough
- author of RSS program objected idea to make requests to archive.org, as there could be many instances of RSS programs, which could be a problem for archive.org
In the process I have realized that I have written something similar to reddit, or digg. That is only resemblance on the surface. The link in this topic is the data. I am interested in links. I would really like to be able to import data from other uses, to see what is interesting and important for them. I like the idea of fediverses, and distributed mechanisms. I think that it could also work for search results.
Can everybody benefit from the links I have stored? I do not know. I know for certain that I am interested only in some topics, and some other people might looks at the world from a different perspective, therefore my links 'could offend them'.
Every day bookmarks and yearly repos are updated.
Projects:
- https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database - bookmarked entries
- https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database-2023 https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database-2023 - all captured links in 2023
- https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database-2022 https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database-2022 - all captured links in 2022
- https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-rss-feed https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-rss-feed - my humble app that I am using, which captures the links. I think that the idea could be implemented in any env (php, as plugin to nextcloud etc.)
My database is getting bigger and bigger, and I found that RSS is not a best place for my data, as written in https://www.jefftk.com/p/reverse-rss-feed https://www.jefftk.com/p/reverse-rss-feed. Therefore commonly everyday, has its own directory, with data in it. I am using JSON for storage, or markdown for github preview.
Inspirations:
https://www.tdpain.net/blog/a-year-of-reading https://www.tdpain.net/blog/a-year-of-reading
https://zanshin.net/2022/09/11/automating-a-reading-list/ https://zanshin.net/2022/09/11/automating-a-reading-list/
https://dkb.io/post/google-search-is-dying https://dkb.io/post/google-search-is-dying
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8P6MTOQlyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8P6MTOQlyk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI3GVw2JSEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI3GVw2JSEI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT7_SxJ3oSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT7_SxJ3oSI
Currently I have 674912 links in my database in total. Only 4009 of them is bookmarked. Some of them have tags.
I hope you liked enjoyed this information, and maybe I have inspired to also to create something new. Good luck.