
Ask HN: Do you curate links/bookmarks? - blader_johny
Would like to know how the tech community deals with bookmarks and links. They might just be read-later entries that you want to visit later on. Or could the links you have been collecting be a valuable resource? How would you share them?
======
artpi
I have two levels of content saving:

1\. Every article I will read, I'll drop straight into Pocket, to
highlight/read. I will never rea the article outright - this is important,
because some clickbait can find me in a "vulnerable" state. After this time
has passed, I'd delete it out of my Pocket without reading if I determine it's
not worth it. I delete about 40% of the stuff I intended to read. In pocket, I
would highlight heavily (I have pocket premium)

2\. All my highlights, notes from the books I read, my Tweets, articles that I
write and newsletters I send end up in my Evernote. This gives me the single
source of truth for the knowledge I am gathering. I can instantly search for a
figure from an article I've read 3 years ago. I organize it by topic and treat
it as a "Commonplace Book".

As such, this is not for organizing "Links", because I dont care about links.
I care about quickly finding the piece of information I've seen on the web,
and -of course - proper attribution.

------
ken
I’ve mostly given up, since web developers seem to have forgotten that URIs
should be stable. If there’s a 50% chance it’ll be gone when I go to look for
it, it’s not worth the effort to me.

This is like reason #17 why I wish we had a hypertext system (like we used to
have) that was separate from the application deployment system (that’s been
given to us).

~~~
jolmg
If it's gone, you can maybe/probably still use the URL to get the content from
an archive.

------
sh87
I usually send bookmarks to my separate email account. I add excerpts and
quotes from the bookmark that I find interesting, also helps with searching.

Every few weeks I conduct housekeeping on my email. This moves the good
bookmarks over to my personal git wiki or deleted. This ensures that every
bookmark I have gets visited at least twice. This also allows me to not
overthink before adding a bookmark without ending up with incomprehensible
huge lists of bookmarks that I never end up re-visiting.

I've learned over the years to keep this system simple. Understand and realize
that whatever bookmark system you use will eventually go away. If its good
enough, they will try to monetize, if not they will be forced to close shop.
Either way it gets killed, at least for me.

Another side note: not all bookmarks are equal. Some are just references you
want handy when you want to point someone to them, usually in an online
argument where response time matters. Some links have golden content on the
other side. You want to read, re-read, internalize and remember (spaced
repetition) this. Some are work related. Some are aspirational stuff you want
to get to in the future. So knowing what and why I am bookmarking something
was key to keeping it real.

------
rsapkf
I use Firefox Developer Edition as my primary browser and Firefox Sync to
store and sync bookmarks across devices.

I have made 95%(2000+) of my bookmarks public on GitHub[0]. I have categorized
them and host them on a public repository(110+ forks, ~1800 stars) and push
every week. I have also made the entire repo available as a GitBook with
search and export as PDF functionality.

[0] [https://github.com/rsapkf/goodies](https://github.com/rsapkf/goodies)

~~~
karlicoss
Looks cool!

Search (especially incremental) is very important, there's no way I'm going to
read through someone else's 2000+ bookmarks, whereas searching for topics that
interest me is feasible.

Wondering why you publish both gitbook and mdbook? I was planning to use
mdbook to release my bookmarks to public; gitbook development has stalled as
far as I understand.

~~~
rsapkf
I am learning Rust at the moment. I used to use that repo to try new things
out. For example, to play with GitHub's API(the github-gitlab-stars.md file
was created using a bunch of Python scripts, requests library), or learning
branching and pipelines(Currently I am using Travis CI to build mdbook from
another branch), etc. Initially, when I didn't know about GitBook or Static
Site Generators, I made a Django App with search functionality and stuff out
of those links.

------
karlicoss
Relevant discussion from few days ago: "Ask HN: How do you manage your
bookmarks?"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22105561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22105561)

I capture a lot of bookmarks into my org-mode and I don't spend much time
deliberately curating. Once in few weeks I go through captured bookmarks and
quickly assign a priority to each one (just a matter of pressing hotkey). Then
I sort everything by priority, typically ending up with 10-15 higher priority
ones that I would tag, put into my reading queue, refile etc.

Rest of it isn't curated and serves as my personal search engine [0]. Often
instead of searching in google I'd first search in my emacs and find some
relevant information in my knowledge base.

In addition, I'm working on promnesia [1], a browser addon that integrates
links in my org-mode files with my browser. E.g. \- when I visit some blog, it
would show me that I've got few blog posts from that blog bookmarked (along
with my private notes and annotations), which typically means that the blog is
worth exploring more \- when I visit someone's twitter profile it might prompt
that I've retweeted/favorited some of that person's tweets

[0] [https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-
search.html#personal_information](https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-
search.html#personal_information)

[1]
[https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia#demo](https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia#demo)

------
black_puppydog
I honestly stopped bookmarking for real when firefox introduced the awesome
bar. Just typing any fragment I recall into the address bar made them pretty
much obsolete for most of my use cases. Every time I'm forced to use chrome
for some stuff I am surprised how unusable the browser is without this
feature. I'm sure you can fix that with some extension or other but I don't
see why it wouldn't be a default.

------
joshuahughes
I've tried dozens of services through the years and have always come away
disappointed. I literally just want to store a URL and the page title — just
text will do. I don't want an overwhelming visual list of my bookmarks. I
don't want the page content scraped and stored. I don't need to share my
bookmarks (other than syncing across devices). I would like some easy way to
flag and clean up old 404-ing bookmarks. Simple categorisation or tagging. And
a simple one-click add-to-inbox plugin that'd work on all my browsers
including on iOS. And I'd like a good-looking UI — not an ugly mess like
Pinboard. And of course there should be a solid export interface so that users
aren't locked into some proprietary data structure.

As a product designer I'd love to sink my teeth into this problem but
unfortunately it's a dev-heavy project and that's outside my comfort-zone.

For now I'm sticking with my fallback solution — dozens of 'link dump' notes
in the Mac Notes app. It's searchable, lightweight, and flexible but a
nightmare to manage. There must be something better out there.

~~~
mrzool
> And I'd like a good-looking UI — not an ugly mess like Pinboard.

I’ve been using Pinboard for the last 10 years or so and I’m super happy with
it. Love the speed, the text-heavy interface and the high information density.
I love that it never changes. I use a separate app my phone (the website is
unusable on mobile) and it works great. I don’t need anything more.

~~~
irongeek
I would add that the API makes Pinboard even more powerful. Add to Pinboard
then use the API to do whatever you like. This can be as simple as a CLI curl.
If you understand the power of the Pinboard API you would appreciate it far
more.

------
jmstfv
I used to hoard bookmarks to never look at them again. It wasn't adding any
tangible value to my life, so I got rid of that habit.

What I'm doing now instead, is curating a set of links around some topics, and
sharing them publicly. The most portable way of storing and presenting them is
either an HTML page on one of my websites or a markdown file mirrored to
Github. That way I can be sure that my data isn't locked into some proprietary
format by an entity who might get _Incredible Journey-ed_ for whatever
reasons.

Here are my personal favorites:
[https://jmstfv.com/bookmarks](https://jmstfv.com/bookmarks)

And here's the curated list of businesses publicly sharing their expenses:
[https://github.com/jmstfv/open-expenses](https://github.com/jmstfv/open-
expenses)

------
jacobwg
I have a system of subscribing to RSS feeds and following accounts on Twitter
as my source of news and continuing education, starring/bookmarking/favoriting
items that look interesting, then returning later to read them - a two-pass
filter basically. I'll then remove items I've read if I don't plan to return
to them later.

In order to view all these saved links as well as share with anyone
interested, I created a website to republish them all on one page:

[https://savedforlater.dev](https://savedforlater.dev)

There's more info about the philosophy and implementation on GitHub, as well
as all the source: [https://github.com/jacobwgillespie/saved-for-
later](https://github.com/jacobwgillespie/saved-for-later).

------
frumiousirc
I use Emacs org mode capture and syncthing and org-protocol via Firefox.

On a page that I think may be useful I click a menu item in firefox which
activates org-protocol sending the URL to an Emacs server, starting Emacs if
needed. Emacs prompts me for some tags and then makes an entry in an org file
which I sync to all my computers, home and work, via syncthing. I'll then
either simply close the Emacs frame or if appropriate leave it open while I
read through the page and add notes to the org entry. Later, if I have reason
to revisit then I'll search on terms my brain is able to associate and that
hits on the tags, text or page title that were stored.

Scripts and configuration are propagated to different computers using Git via
a personal Gitea instance and vcsh/myrepo tools.

~~~
BetterDriver
That's a great setup! Would you mind sharing your scripts and configurations?

------
wgx
Not really. Long-form things that I want to read later, I put into Pocket [0].
Everything else I don't bookmark, I can just search for it later, or it's lost
forever like tears in rain.

0: [https://getpocket.com/](https://getpocket.com/)

------
jamil7
I built my own service and client as a hobby project to scrape and categorise
articles for myself. I realised throughout the project though what a
monumental pain scraping article content reliably is and have have spent less
time on it lately, I still dogfood it however.

------
piotrgrudzien
We built a free tool for exactly this:
[https://itemsy.com/](https://itemsy.com/)

You can save links in the web app, via email, browser extension or pull
automatically by integrating with a Medium blog or any RSS feed. Link
collections get automatically turned into an email newsletter that can be
personal, public or shared within a group.

We recently launched 'Picked for you' which suggests links you might find
interesting. Also, we launch new features daily so feedback and requests are
more than welcome!

------
AndrewDucker
Pinboard. Cheap, and works very easily.

~~~
possibleworlds
+1

The Alfred workflow makes capture and tagging pretty seemless.

Edit: just read the op properly, not after pinboard. I also would like a
visual manager mainly for design refs. I don’t personally use it but Are.na is
a cool platform for visual bookmarking of media alongside articles / sites.

------
nicholascloud
A couple of people have mentioned Evernote, which is a great product, and a
great service, with a great plugin for Chromium-based browsers (even Edgium!).
However, I love me some markdown, so I've started using Boostnote for my
actual "thought" notes. I like it quite a bit, and I've found a few tools that
help me "clip" articles from the web and turn them into markdown. So far, I
prefer `clean-mark` ([https://github.com/croqaz/clean-
mark#readme](https://github.com/croqaz/clean-mark#readme)), because it has
more consistent conversion and better meta-data generation, but I've also used
`hget` ([https://github.com/bevacqua/hget](https://github.com/bevacqua/hget)),
which, in my experience, is not as robust but sometimes catches things that
`clean-mark` misses.

------
abhishekjha
I have written a service where I store link, timestamp and addendum where I
can explain why I went to that link, and a counter for "if this link already
exists in the database" then increment. I save links when I have too many tabs
open so as to close them. This gives me a way to query on those links at a
later point of time in mysql command line. It has worked well so far.

------
mjgs
I use [https://linkblog.io](https://linkblog.io)

I have the custom domain feature configured so all my links are here:

[https://links.markjgsmith.com](https://links.markjgsmith.com)

Full disclosure - I’m the founder and lead developer, I haven’t launched yet
on HN but if anyone wants to try it out feel free to setup an account.

------
zorbash
I use and develop [https://tefter.io](https://tefter.io)

I tend to organise links in lists. Some examples:

* [https://tefter.io/zorbash/lists/ruby-rails](https://tefter.io/zorbash/lists/ruby-rails) * [https://tefter.io/zorbash/lists/devops](https://tefter.io/zorbash/lists/devops) * [https://tefter.io/zorbash/lists/elixir-resources](https://tefter.io/zorbash/lists/elixir-resources) * [https://tefter.io/zorbash/lists/web-development](https://tefter.io/zorbash/lists/web-development)

------
krick
Let's just say I'm seriously dissatisfied by how I deal with them. After
trying multiple variants I (once again) ended up basically just using Pocket
(which I hate and promise myself to replace by Wallabag or such, but... yeah)
for everything I'm going to read (removing permanently after it's done), and
just bookmarking everything I want to keep between history cleanups in my
address bar suggestions without sorting much.

I would like to use bookmarks more, assigning tags, using them in my planning,
but Firefox bookmarks just suck and I end up spending too much time without
any benefits. There were some external tools for that, but they aren't better
than a plain text file because of poor browser integration.

Anything that can be annotated and put into context ends up somewhere in my
*.md notes.

------
puntofisso
I hope this doesn't sound overly self-promotional, but I have a newsletter
with around 1500 subscribers (and a few Patreon supporters) which I started a
few years back to address a very personal issue of bookmarking/curation: I
realised I was storing tons of links which I never visited and forgot about,
but that certain links sort of stuck with me and I kept talking about them,
most of which related to data.

So I started sending them out as a curated list of a handful of links per
week, alongside a short explanation of why it mattered or a quote.

8 years later, I still sort of remember if I sent something, and I no longer
use bookmarks.

------
pythondashboard
i think that bookmarks will solve search. see my thoughts here:
[https://www.pythondashboard.com/articles/2020-01-23-search.h...](https://www.pythondashboard.com/articles/2020-01-23-search.html)

apologies for site not being done yet and article not fully fleshed out. but
the topic has come back many times now that i think i needed to share what i
thought about it.

to answer your question: we need to share and distribute our bookmarks in
GitHub. it works for developers because our search queries are keyword-based.

pocket, pinboard.in, etc. don't work because they feel like "todo" lists.

------
DyslexicAtheist
I use HN submissions as a better bookmark/log of what I've been reading that
day (or previous day). Usually post things I might want to revisit later.

I use browser bookmark folders only for links for private stuff e.g.
fun+memes, cooking, curated lists of _< FOO>_, ... Also I maintain markdown
files for documenting changes/tweaks and modifications made to various
machines on my network.

As a VI user I never looked at org-mode before. I'll probably do so in 2020
([https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode](https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode)).

------
memset
I built a tool to let me do this:
[https://www.homepagr.com](https://www.homepagr.com)

It is intended to replace the “new tab” page of the browser and works really
well!

When I first “launched” it had a minimal set of features and scratched my own
itch. I wanted to charge $12/year. However, I discovered that nobody even
wanted to pay $1 per month!

I’ve since created designs for a new UX, which is what you see in the
screenshots, and put up a landing page. All out of the startup playbook.
However, nobody has expressed an interest in the product, so I haven’t opened
up access for others.

------
wila
If the link has any value then I will put them in an internal wiki along with
the details on why they are interesting.

This makes them easy to find again at any later time due to mediawiki's
excellent built-in search facilities.

------
ryanmercer
There was a thread about this 6 days ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22105561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22105561)

------
DoreenMichele
I blog. I can't seem to get significant traction in terms of an audience, but
I very often can find some link I want for some reason because I blogged about
it. In cases where searching the internet or searching HN is failing me, it's
often been a huge relief to turn to my own writing and unearth it in short
order.

It's a primary reason I continue to run my big fat mouth on blogs the rest of
the world largely seems to have a yawning disinterest in most of the time.

------
m-p-3
I do curate my bookmarks, in the sense that I'm renaming them (the website
title is sometimes way too long and bloated, and I put tags on them to find
them where I believe they might be relevant (ex: note-taking, selfhosted,
e2ee)

If the website contains an important bit of info, I try to send the page to
the Wayback Machine so that it's not lost to time when the website eventually
dies, and I also copy that info in my notes (currently using Joplin)

------
rollinDyno
What I’ve found is that it really doesn’t matter which tool you use. There’s
many options that will allow you to manage your bookmarks, consider a simple
txt file.

The challenging bit is providing a sound enough structure so every item finds
a place almost organically. If it’s a simple list then it can take a while to
find a specific entry and if it’s too categorised you’ll run into a similar
problem. I like to use trees with symlinks.

------
kerrsclyde
I'm really careful with bookmarking now. I found a txt file backup of my
del.icio.us account from 2004, I couldn't find a single link which still
worked. There was some gold which I would have loved to be able to look at
again.

If something is interesting enough to keep I clip in into Evernote and tag it,
then I can be confident it will be there when I go looking for it at some
undefined point in the future.

~~~
karlicoss
It's a problem indeed, although archive.org helps. Relevant read:
[https://www.gwern.net/Archiving-URLs#link-
rot](https://www.gwern.net/Archiving-URLs#link-rot)

------
caviv
Yes, of course I do. I collect bookmarks in many places. Easy to access every
day use bookmarks are in my Firefox bookmarks. Others are in my chrome browser
which I use for different browsing and the one I want to keep forever I use
[https://yabs.io](https://yabs.io) which allows me to search and tag
bookmarks.

------
wink
I used to do this for a few years:
[https://f5n.org/stack](https://f5n.org/stack) \- but my interests have
shifted a little and not too many people gave any feedback or indication that
they read it.

These days I just save them to Pinboard, like I used to, and sometimes go back
and find something I vaguely remember...

------
PaulKeeble
I use a self-hosted wallabag for long-form articles that I want to get back to
or are part of a particular string of research and it ensures I can always
read it even if it disappears.

Bookmark wise I mostly just use the standard bookmark manager. I have
considered a self-hosted syncing mechanism but I only have a few hundred
bookmarks, it is stuff I use.

------
ishanjain28
Yes, I do.

I put every blog, site I want to follow on my freshrss
instance(rss.ishanjain.me).

I use Reeder(on iOS) and FeedMe(on Android) to read those posts. When I like
something, I add it to Pocket where it gets archived and stuff and I can
revisit it later at any point.

I use Browser bookmarks to store interesting websites, Like tools, Stuff other
than articles basically.

------
thrivenow
We built a tool for this as we had the same problem. A place you can collect,
tag and share you links in a visual way. Right now it's only for articles,
videos (YouTube) and films, but will expand into other domains. Have fun, let
us know if I can help you navigate it. dean@discovereel.com
www.discovereel.com

------
StreakyCobra
I started to use [https://getmemex.com/](https://getmemex.com/) a few months
ago. It's working nice for now (locally stored, screenshots, text search,
include results in duckduckgo, ...)

Worth a try I would say, but I won't make a definitive recommendation for now.

------
invonto
Currently using Pocket to quickly bookmark important articles. Their simple
tagging system allows us to organize links by topic. We have a "read later"
tag for quick bookmarks and after reviewing content we will add a new topical
tag. Sharing with peers is easy as well.

------
dewey
[https://pinboard.in](https://pinboard.in) does exactly what you are asking
for, additionally it keeps an archive of the pages (Similar to archive.org)
and you can see public bookmarks of your "friends" on the service.

------
kuiro5
I use RSS to quell the internet firehose, specifically Feedbin (also great for
Twitter lists).

I do a fair bit of reading in Feedbin. Anything I read and want to save, I tag
and send to Pinboard. If I want to read it later, I mark it as such and also
send it to Pinboard.

------
DarkCrusader2
I use Inoreader's "Save to Inoreader" bookmarklet which lets you tag and save
the link which can be accessed across devices. Their search works well enough
on the saved links and they have a very generous free tier.

------
EuAndreh
You could just bookmark everything, and use tags for specific categories.

Maybe add a 'ril' tag for every thing you want to read later, no tags for
generic queue of things to look at, 'archive' for things you want to keep,
etc.

------
senorsmile
I use checkvist.com to curate. I have both links and saved information,
organized to multiple levels. I back up monthly. I have over 10,000 lines in
my straight text backup. I share this list with friends and acquaintances.

------
jlelse
I share some links on my blog:
[https://jlelse.blog/links/](https://jlelse.blog/links/).

Articles I plan to read later are saved in Pocket and archived after I read
them.

------
cowjar
I built a search engine that searches content from all of my bookmarks and
links. When I find a good site, I just add it.
[https://cowjar.com](https://cowjar.com)

------
jbillow2000
I use Bookmark OS which let's you share and collaborate on folders of
bookmarks [https://bookmarkos.com/](https://bookmarkos.com/)

------
bloogsy
I've used pocket for many years to collect articles and web pages that I want
to read later, and kept using it almost by default when Mozilla took it over
and integrated it into Firefox.

------
gremlinsinc
I use Joplin, and make my own awesome lists. Sometimes I'll just use their
webclipper app to clip parts of pages for my own 'doc' system for things I
want to remember.

------
kavapebumazh
Not really but usually i send them to me in my chat in telegram

------
segmondy
I do, but what I noticed is that I rarely reopen them, so I use a random
bookmark opener to open a random bookmarked item everyday.

------
buboard
i m not "the tech community" , but i created my own:
[https://pinplz.com](https://pinplz.com) . I use it to store things to read
later or lists of things i m searching for.

How it differentiates: single click save - keeps track of the referer if
possible - show a QR code - keeps a cached copy

------
kirubakaran
Check out my [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/)

The main reason behind my building Histre is the idea that we throw away a lot
of the signal we generate while doing things online and this can be put to
good use for ourselves.

Bookmark management is just a special case of knowledge management. What you
really need is a knowledge management tool that is easy to use. You'll get a
ton of other benefits too.

As it is right now, Histre aids the casual online research we all do (ie the
explore -> filter -> decide loop). For example, it removes friction in taking
notes on links you're looking at, with free-form tags that you don't have to
create first and other such niceties that add up. And it easy to group notes
into notebooks and share. In short, when you have to look at a bunch of links
for something (decide on AirBnB, people to hire, material for your next blog
post, etc) Histre makes your life easier. But this is just the starting point
for what Histre intends to do.

IMHO the biggest problem with apps like Evernote, Notion etc is that it
becomes digital hoarding, and not a knowledge base. And the knowledge base
focused apps out there involve a lot of manual upkeep, which almost never
happens, especially at work. Things start out okay and quickly fall into
disrepair. I'm differentiating from the other note taking apps by
automatically putting together a knowledge base (grouped by topic etc).

One idea I'm excited about and I'm working on right now is: Histre
automatically fetches updates from the websites you visit, ranks the websites
with things like lack of ads / referral links and ranks the new posts with
your 'revealed preferences' of what you tend to actually read from the list of
updates previously shown etc. Personally I think this is will be what replaces
social news sites, which are too sensitive to people who bother to go upvote
on /new and has to cater to the lowest common denominator.

Automatic Upkeep (WIP): Histre detects links/notes related to your existing
notebooks and offers to update those notebooks with the new links and notes.
This is similar to how Google Photos suggests new photos for your existing
albums. This solves the upkeep problem. Currently people create knowledge
bases with good intentions and it becomes stale and useless quite fast.

Exports: I'm working on org-mode exports, as I'm an Emacs user myself. Other
export formats coming soon.

Integrations: There is Hacker News (import and optionally share your upvotes)
and Telegram (take notes using the Telegram app) integrations now. I'm working
on Twitter next (lists of Twitter profiles -> follow all / block all).

~~~
swozey
Commented this elsewhere but this is cool so I'll help exposure; "This is
cool, I'd dig a $2-5/mo unlimited account for 1 person/team with the same
unlimited settings." Personally I just want something like this for myself, I
was really surprised I couldn't share a Pocket list/tag publicly when I tried.
IE, I have tags on "how to contribute to X project" which has a ton of
bookmarks I'd like to allow public contributors/confluence to read without an
account.

------
mmerlin
Pinboard.in and/or Trello

------
iamarsibragimov
I use Notion for this kind of stuff. Free, crossplatform and easy to operate

------
gppk
I created a Google Sheets with a few different pages.

------
BogdanPetre
Raindrop.io

------
0xD15E45E
pocket + pinboard

