

Ask HN: Please review our new service - Zukmo - kumark23

We recently launched the alpha release of Zukmo, a service that is our attempt at solving Information Overload (http://www.zukmo.com).<p>If you come across any interesting content, you can add it to Zukmo with a single click using the browser button. It could be a bookmark, it could be an interesting person you see on Twitter, it could be an RSS feed or it could be your notes or to do list. We will process the content that gets added to Zukmo and make it easy for you to consume it on most devices.<p>The alpha release has the bookmarking component complete. Once a bookmark is added, you can search for it by using any term from within the content of the page.<p>Is this a service you that solves a problem for you? Any suggestions on features that will make the service more usable/attractive?<p>HN is pretty much our launch pad. We haven't publicised it much until now. Any feedback you could give is greatly appreciated.
======
BTBurke
I spent a few minutes thinking about why I would want this service. It wasn't
immediately clear to me what benefit it would provide over something like
delicious or just standard bookmarking features in your browser -- then I got
it... it indexes the page and lets me search for what I'm looking for later
using the full content, rather than just the tags I assigned or information
that can be found in the URL or page title. That's something you might want to
make more obvious for users that only spend 30 sec on your landing page. Bring
out the value proposition right away in simple language, rather than making
them wonder what the difference is between filtering, crawling, indexing,
recommending, etc.

~~~
kumark23
Thanks, BTBurke. Good point. Indexing the entire content of the page so that
you can search for anything within the page is a big part of what we do.
However, there are several other things we do that we were trying to show on
the landing page. For instance, we have an Easy Reader that shows only the
essential content of the page without any ads, headers, menus, javascript
etc.(similar to the Safari Reader/Instapaper Text View). The current version
of the landing page is an attempt at bringing out all the stuff we do/plan to
do.

You are right, though. We need to keep iterating on the messaging of the
landing page until it is obvious to users within a few seconds of seeing the
page.

~~~
notahacker
There's something nicely alliterative about the key things that your service
appears to help you do with interesting webpages: Save, Sync, Search, Share,
Simplify

~~~
kumark23
Cool. You explained in five words, what we tried to do with a hundred :-)

------
arb99
I don't use stumbleupon, but first thing i thought when I saw your page is
"wow thats a big stumble upon icon". And when i compared them, they are pretty
similar, just rotated.

~~~
notahacker
I agree that it's a little too similar, especially given that it's a related
concept. I'd make tweaking the logo a high priority.

------
vkalladath
How is this different from historious? I use historious and instapaper to save
bookmarks and read later, and I am extremely happy with the service. I might
jump in if your service provided features of both, ie: indexing my bookmarks
and making it available on my kindle.

Also do you provide bookmarklets instead of the firefox plugin? It would be
easier for those of us who use multiple machines and may not be able to
install plugins on all.

I do like the idea of indexing content other than just webpages, like youtube
videos, rss , twitter etc. Does your system handle Twitter and RSS updates
also?

I will be back with more feedback after I start using the service.

~~~
kumark23
Thanks vkalladath for the feedback. We are indexing the entire content as well
as have an Easy Reader that provides an uncluttered view of the page.
Providing support for Kindle is a good idea. We are currently working on
iPhone, iPad and Android apps. Will look into Kindle as well.

We do provide bookmarklets. Once you sign into the app, go to the "Account"
tab and you will see "Bookmarklet" option.

We do plan on adding Facebook and Twitter streams as well as RSS feeds.

------
kumark23
Clickable link: <http://www.zukmo.com>

------
blntechie
It looks promising. Some of my initial comments.

It imported the bookmarks from Firefox just fine. But the categorization of
the bookmarks is, sorry to be critical, but buggy. Examples I can say are,

1) Techmeme, Engadget, Techcrunch etc. pages not in Sci/Tech. 2) Cricinfo,
ESPN, ManUtd pages not in Sports. 3) A page on Microsoft and Cleartype was
placed in Entertainment!! 4) MSBuild tutorial on Health!

and so on. You need to fix this real quick I believe. As it's one of your main
selling point.

1) The Search lens image can be clickable. I atleast expected it to be.Only
way is to press Enter key. 2) If the search result don't return any results,
don't change the categories left panel from general to search specific.

Overall I like it and may use it.

Besides, are you associated with AdventNet/Zoho? Just wanted to check as you
have put a footnote for Vembu Technologies. Are they both related even? I
might be mistaken.

~~~
kumark23
Thanks blntechie for your feedback.

The categorization of bookmarks was started with a set of seed urls. It will
get better as more and more pages are categorized through it. We will continue
to fine tune it.

Good points about the Search lens and about changing the left panel when there
are no pages found for the search terms.

We are part of Vembu Technologies. Sekar Vembu, our CEO was one of the
founders of Zoho. Vembu Technologies was founded in 2004.

------
auxbuss
Problems here on Ubuntu/Firefox. No problem with the account set-up. No
problem with the Firefox plug-in install.

When I try to add this page, I get the "Adding this page..." but after a few
seconds I get another window that has "Zukmo" at the top in large text, but
the window is not large enough to contain further text. This latter window
disappears after a second or less.

I think the window is asking me to log-in. But I am logged in to Zukmo.

One further thing. Forcing an icon into the status bar without the option to
switch it off is a show-stopper for me. It's a decision that doesn't scale. If
every plug-in did this, then the status bar would be a mess and its usefulness
reduced.

~~~
kumark23
auxbuss, we haven't yet tested on Ubuntu. Will do that. Also, do you happen to
have a script blocker on it, like no-script?

Option to switch off is a good idea. We will add it soon.

------
mahmud
I consume more information offline than online .. I think.

Plan to make this a desktop utility as well, something that integrates with
the desktop that allows you to right-click and "Zukmo" any given file. Even if
you have to fake it by copying files to a temp directory and later sync them
with your servers (why? better keep it private on users' machines.)

You will need integration with (MS|Open) Office sometime in the distant
future.

Call Insync and see if you can integrate with their clients:

<https://www.insynchq.com/>

P.S. Nice clojure-like logo :-)

~~~
amackera
This is totally off-topic, but how do they make the text on their webpage look
so good? Is that a CSS thing?

~~~
photon_off
If you're referring to the white shadow of the text, it is indeed css.

    
    
      text-shadow: 1px 1px 0px white;

~~~
amjith
Thank you for the tip. I've always wondered how to make the fonts look
engraved on the page.

~~~
photon_off
You can also specify more than 1 shadow. You can add a light shadow below, and
a dark one above, to achieve an "embossed" effect:

    
    
      text-shadow: -1px -1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,.4),  1px 1px 0px rgba(255,255,255,.4);

------
desigooner
When I tried to confirm my email, I get redirected to:
<http://zukmo.com/register.html?err=rk_invalid>

Also, If I try using the twitter button on that page to login, It throws the
following error when it redirects to
<http://www.zukmo.com/twitter?oauth_token=_____________>

"java.lang.NullPointerException"

~~~
kumark23
Did you click on the confirm email link twice? The first time you click it,
the email is confirmed. The next time, we should show a message saying your
email is already confirmed. But, we have a bug that doesn't show the message
and redirects you to the register page.

We will recreate this issue and get it fixed ASAP. Do let us know if you are
unable to login.

~~~
desigooner
thanks. seems to work now.

Any plans on using the structure of one's bookmark files to tag bookmarks
being imported?

I've got a ton of folders categorized properly viz. A Scripting folder with
sub folders like PHP / JavaScript / Python etc. Would love to see those
translate out to tags ..

------
luxative
Search works well. Yes, the auto-categorization needs some tweaking, but I
don't see that as the key benefit. Automatic indexing of destination content -
that's what's really useful about Zukmo. The comment on highlighting this
benefit is quite relevant in this context!

~~~
kumark23
Thanks. We will rework the messaging on the landing page and other pages.

------
wazoox
Looks interesting. I'll test it.

Just created an account. First comment :

    
    
      * it would be nice if the account creation page was SSL'ed.
      * The Firefox extension is a nice touch. I'll tell you how it goes, too.

~~~
kumark23
Thanks wazoox. Do keep the feedback coming.

You're right. We should move the account creation page under SSL.

~~~
CWuestefeld
You asked for it ;) Sorry if I seem critical; it's intended to be
constructive.

I imported my Firefox bookmarks. You've captured all the bookmarks themselves,
but you seem to have discarded all other metadata, including (a) the
hierarchical structure, and (b) tags and description. This is really
unfortunate, particularly because your auto-categorization code seems to show
a high degree of .... shall we say, creativity?

It looks like the only way to access this saved stuff is to actually visit
your page. There's no way I can access it through the browser itself (as I can
with bookmarks today). While you do have a FF extension, it doesn't seem to
provide a means of accessing those bookmarks, only a way to add new ones. It
may seem petty, but the need to open your web site to access a bookmark is
enough extra rigmarole that I'm not going to bother.

As mentioned in another thread yesterday, I'm not going to log in using
Facebook. It requires exposing my friends' identities, and I don't feel I have
the right to make that choice for them.

For that matter, I'm never, ever, going to choose the option so that my new
entries are posted into Facebook. Bookmarks (and other notetaking) is a tool,
like turning a screwdriver. While I might post to a social site about the
project I'm working on, I don't post about each screw I turn.

~~~
kumark23
Thanks CWuestefeld. Yes, we did ask for it :-) That is why we love HN and the
constructive discussions here.

You raise a very important point. We did discard all the heirarchical
structure and the tags. Our initial thought was that tags and folders are not
needed as we can search for a bookmark based on terms we remember from the
content of the page. However, the fact is that there maybe additional data in
the tags and folders and descriptions that may get ignored. We are looking at
way to add this data into our index so that it isn't lost.

We are planning on adding the search within the browser extensions. That would
make it easy for you to search your Zukmo account without visiting the site.

About signing in through Facebook, it is just an option some users may find
useful. They don't have to remember another password. Personally, I find the
Twitter sign in option as I don't mind giving out my Twitter credentials. So,
we decided to provide all three options: Your own email id/password, Twitter
or Facebook.

------
desigooner
Also .. The chrome extension's text overflows and could be confusing. You
might want to look at that.

<http://cl.ly/c3f4661fe6f0ff3f3857>

~~~
kumark23
Thanks desigooner. We will be fixing it in the next build.

------
twelch
Do the bookmarks become public for others to read? I don't like letting
everyone know what I read, for reasons of competitive advantage.

~~~
kumark23
No. All the pages added to Zukmo are private to you. Unless you take some
action to share them, they remain private to you.

If you want to share them, you can explicitly share them via Zukmo. We also
provide options to share the bookmarks on Facebook and Twitter.

------
auxbuss
A couple more items. There's no option to disable Twitter once enabled.
There's no option to delete your account.

~~~
kumark23
Thanks, auxbuss. The option to disable Twitter/Facebook after they are enabled
as well as ability to delete your account are in the to-do list.

------
Maro
Does it do PDF? PPT, DOC?

~~~
kumark23
YES. We index most of the common document types. The list includes: Text
(.txt) HTML (.html, .htm) XML (.xml) PDF (.pdf) Word (.doc) Excel (.xls)
PowerPoint (.ppt) Visio (.vso) Outlook Archive Files (.zip, .tar) OpenDocument
(.odf) Java (.java) Rich Text Format (RTF)

More info at <http://www.zukmo.com/faq.html>

~~~
randomtask
Nice. The thought of ".java" being a common document type made me smile. Guess
we know what it's written in ;)

