
Introducing Thumbprick [video] - mtgentry
https://thumbprick.com
======
rickhanlonii
OP: I think this is great. I've been looking for something lightweight that
will keep my bookmarks better grouped and organized almost like an enhanced
bookmarks bar without cluttering me with features. At first glance this seems
like a real solution to that problem, and it seems to do it with good design
in mind. I signed up and I'm going to give it an honest try before making any
judgments on it.

HN: the negativity in this thread should be embarrassing.

You think the name will turn people off? Who cares. It's not your product, and
no one is polling you for your opinion.

You think it's another bookmark synchronization tool? So what. Everything is
just another something.

You think there is zero info on the homepage? Wrong. Theres a video that tells
you exactly what the product offers in under a minute.

You think that 95% of the time went into the video? You have no support for
this claim. It's a beta anyway.

None of these comments are constructive and it seems to me that they are only
offered as a way for the poster to satisfy some self-aggrandizing superiority
complex. Keep that garbage on reddit.

OP, don't let these comments discourage you. You may be onto something here.

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pm90
You know, its better for the OP to get a train of all the possibly negative
things that (s)he can get here on HN which might be helpful in making the
product better. At the very least, it will make him/her well prepared to
answer such questions when asked by others. So while I agree that many here
may have a "self-aggrandizing superiority complex", that may not be such a bad
thing.

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jdp
This looks pretty cool, I'm a happy Pinboard user but my bookmarks toolbar is
still full of stuff I want to check later on but don't want clutter up my
Pinboard with. I was able to sign up and install the Chrome extension, but
clicking the extension's button on my toolbar does nothing. No login dialog or
anything, nothing at all happens. Then I tried to see if I could play with the
web interface, but there's no link to login on the home page. So I went to the
signup page, guessed the login URL from there, and was finally able to log in.
The interface is nice, if a little finicky. Deleting items and collections is
not intuitive, overriding right-click in a web app is awkward. There's also no
hover indicator when you're dragging a link onto a collection, so if you miss
somehow Chrome redirects the tab to the URL you just dropped onto the page.
These problems aside, I like the idea behind it and I hope you keep plugging
away at it.

~~~
mtgentry
Yeah sorry about that, it is a little buggy! After installing, just go to
google, then click on the icon in your browser bar and it should work.

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japaget
If you can't or don't want to watch the video, Thumprick is a browser
bookmarking service like Google bookmarks or pinboard.in.

Tag line: "Thumbprick: A Better way to bookmark"

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undoware
This is a beautiful, visionary optimization of something that desperately
needs work. Bookmarks are a hilariously shitty way of organizing knowledge,
and without them, you only have information.

Yet. The problems addressed aren't the problems I have.

I'm wondering what kind of UX research was done putting this together. To me
it looks like the research was hyper-focused, and didn't give the subjects
enough scope to ask questions or bend the research away from optimization of
kinetics and ask about their deeper goals, and this has inflected the goals of
the product itself. I think this happens often in UX research, as well as
psychology and sociology. (The three are related.)

For example. "Subject files bookmarks 0.5% faster" is not an interesting goal,
but it is _very_ easy to measure, which is why UX research often degenerates
into wild local minima chases.

It feels _good_ to get technical on a problem with a nice clean metric, it
feels disciplined to value gains measured in a single percent or less. It
feels like progress. But it can be little more than a distraction if there are
bigger gains left on the table; worthy goals passed over because of the
difficulty characterizing them and hence of evaluating the outcome of an
attempt to achieve them.

To me, this is a shining example of how you can do everything right and still
get it not quite right. That's the sort of thing that tells you your theory of
how something works (UX innovation, in this case) can come apart from
practice.

We sense this as an absence of insight, like the creator of the software
didn't quite understand how we want to be with it.

That said, thumbprick shows promise, and insight is overrated. This is a near
miss that could easily become a hit, check back soon.

~~~
mtgentry
Thanks for your thoughtful feedback!

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lie07
I like this, but would love it if it would just take all the bookmarks i
currently have synced in my Chrome and let me manage it that way. Will be
watching this product for its future updates.

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mtgentry
Invite code for my HN friends: unicorn

~~~
johnmurch
Awesome - thanks will checkout!

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rjv
Regardless of the product itself, I think the name alone is going to turn
people off.

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ben1040
Not wanting to watch the video, I was initially thinking this was some kind of
diabetes management service based on the name.

~~~
mtgentry
A fair point. In my excitement of finding an available domain, perhaps I tried
to force the name :P

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DanBC
I have "cocks" as part of my name. This can cause havoc with some electronic
systems (a Google page wouldn't allow me to submit feedback because my Google
account has "cocks" in it. A weird bit of suboptimality) so have you
considered the fact that some sub-optimal systems will hinder your product?

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rjsamson
Wow - this looks really really awesome - I've been looking for the ideal
bookmark management tool for what seems like forever but nothing seems to feel
quite right - from what I've seen so far this looks to hit closest to the mark
for me - great work!

Any idea when beta invites might start going out? Chomping at the bit to give
it a try!

EDIT: Just saw the invite code below - thanks!

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Spone
Nice video!

Seems quite similar to the Tab Groups feature in Firefox[1]. Is it the reason
Firefox is not supported yet? Could you point out the pros of Thumbprick,
compared to Firefox Tab Groups?

[1] [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-organize-
tab...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-organize-tabs)

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adamb_
Whoa... I've seen minimalist product pages before, but I think this one takes
the cake.

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avighnay
A nice focused product, targeting a problem that every browser user has. The
question is how big a problem is this? It would be great if it can analyze the
links and mine some value out of it

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homersapien
Zero info on homepage = not interested.

~~~
wikwocket
In their defense, it's a fantastic video.

But yes, at LEAST show the tagline prominently on the page, and preferably
have an elevator pitch right there too. You have 2 seconds to tell people what
you do and why they should care. Don't waste it with "Here's a video, we're in
beta, invite only, have a good day!"

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tmikaeld
Why force it to sync to the cloud?

Not sure i wan't to exchange my private bookmark collection with a cloud i
know nothing about, without any privacy terms or even company information.

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orclev
So it's another bookmark synchronization tool? Looking at the page it seems
like firefox isn't supported, and neither is ( _shudder_ ) IE. Not that that
last one is much of a loss, but lack of support for Firefox basically makes
this dead to me. There's also the issue of support for mobile browsers which
is pretty important (and probably the hardest problem to deal with).

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mercer
I see no reason to move away from OneTab as a way to manage my huge backlog of
links, as well as a few starred and/or named 'groups'.

That said, I really like the presentation and Thumbprick seems like a nice
idea. I just don't see the need right now. Anything that is more important
than what I use OneTab for, I store in Notational Velocity.

Maybe look into OneTab for some extra inspiration?

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tomdepplito
I really like the minimalist design and I would totally use this but for some
reason, I'm unable to drag links into collections on Chrome. I drag the link
into the collection and I get redirected back to the original page but nothing
ever gets added.

Also, I would love a way to easily delete or move multiple links at once.

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blorenz
It seems that 95% of the time was spent in making the video rather than
building the product.

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aashishkoirala
Neat idea. Couple of comments: 1) Maybe include some text to go with the video
on the landing page. 2) The name made me think of a glucometer, not bookmarks.
JS.

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goodwink
Oh, the whole page is a flash video and I have no idea what this might be or
why it would be worth my time to allow flash block to play it?

...Back

~~~
robin_reala
The about page doesn’t show anything either.

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giarc
Off topic question here - what software is made to make videos like the one
featured on thumbprick.com homepage?

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Jack000
not op but I'd venture to guess after effects/flash for the 2d bits (it's what
I'd use). It'll be impossible to tell without the creator though, there's
loads of software for animating 2d graphics.

~~~
giarc
Thanks for your response, it was what I was looking for. I wasn't looking for
the program for that specific video, just simply how these 2D videos were
made.

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jason_slack
I can totally see this helping me with my 2,618 bookmarks and currently 313
open tabs....

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hnriot
you really need to change the name - not sure about here in the US, but
anything with "prick" in it to any english schoolboy is giggle-worthy.

~~~
jason_slack
I think some in the US might laugh at "prick" by itself but "thumb prick"
would be fine.

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bliker
I liked it at first, but it seems like too early beta,

\- I cannot log in trough the extensions (on website it works fine)

\- Font rendering of Chrome on windows is really crummy for custom fonts. Bug
[1]. You can fix it by doing some custom font-face config [2] Screenshot [3]
(Check the "C" contour)

\- You are missing side padding on your input elements, and it is driving me
nuts.

[1]
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692)

[2] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10953037/google-
webfonts-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10953037/google-webfonts-
render-choppy-in-chrome-on-windows)

[3] [http://i.imgur.com/VuLQwE4.png](http://i.imgur.com/VuLQwE4.png)

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Severian
Horrible name for this type of product.

That being said, the ONE feature I want from a "better bookmark manager" is
some sort of natural language processing feature. I want the manager to scan
the page in question, add the relevant tags, and categorize it AUTOMATICALLY.
This is the one killer feature that would actually get me to pay real money to
support the product.

All of these alternate bookmark managers seem to only be unique in the UI, not
in the backend. Syncing across multiple-browsers is commonplace, and nowadays
a given. Give me something to really make my life easier, such as automatic
categorization.

I want this because I have upwards of 200-500 bookmarks at any given moment
that are not categorized. The all sit in one giant list. I like to hit Ctrl-D
and save. Later, when I get the time, usually on weekends, I'll try to go
through the list and categorize and add tags. I like the way Chrome and
Firefox's interface for bookmarks work, I don't want to change them. I would
like however an end to the tedium of actually figuring out where a particular
URL sits in my mind-map.

