
The question we're all wondering about Pinboard - santoshalper
How many new subs did they pick up from this debacle? Maciej is a pretty transparent guy, and I for one am dying to know. This was the best trolling based marketing scheme I have ever seen. Somehow, he got some very rich people to simultaneously:<p>1. Get egg all over their faces
2. Give him an inordinate amount of free publicity
3. Donate 20k to a worthy charity.<p>Fucking brilliant.
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mercer
Brilliant indeed! I'd been a fan of Maciej's writing and I was somewhat aware
of pinboard, but never bothered to sign up. But after following this highly
entertaining _and_ , IMO, worthwhile situation, and after reading tptacek's
endorsement [1], I immediately got a 'premium' archive account. I'm probably
not the only one...

I do wish there was a demo version or free trial though. I think many people I
knew would be happy paying users, but there's no way I can convince them to
get an account if they can't try it out first.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442595)

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tptacek
The premium archive accounts do full-text search of PDFs! If you bookmark lots
of papers, this is incredibly useful.

I have Pinboard set up as a search engine shortcut in my browser, so I type
"pin isogeny" in my URL bar, I get a list of papers about curve isogenies.
It's pretty great.

There are probably just a couple features Pinboard would need to be a pretty
useful collaborative research tool.

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dctoedt
Thomas -- any thoughts on Pinboard vs. Evernote or Pocket, both of which I've
used for quite awhile? (My Google-search results didn't seem especially
helpful.)

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tptacek
I don't use Pocket or know much about it.

I have an Evernote account, which I use as a replacement for the OS X Notes
app. Evernote is not especially convenient as a bookmark manager.

Pinboard is extremely inexpensive and very good at doing the one thing that it
is good at and then just getting out of the way. It's fast, and it's always
just hanging around as a browser bookmarklet.

If you're used to things like Evernote with a lot of fit and finish polish,
you're going to be a little shocked by Pinboard. If you stick with it a couple
days, though, you're probably going to end up appreciating Pinboard's design.

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tptacek
I don't think the intention was to get egg on anyone's face.

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pw
Nor would I call it a "trolling based marketing scheme."

