

Show HN: clipboard.com, the best way to save anything online - Shalen

We are longtime members of HN and this is our only submission requesting feedback from the HN community on our product, Clipboard which we have been developing for the past year. Clipboard is a service to save anything online using a bookmarklet or browser extension (think Dropbox for content on the web). Clipboard is built using open source technologies, including Riak, Redis, NGINX, Node.js, and jQuery.  One of our core differentiators is how we preserve the visual look and functionality of the original source, which is evident in the sample clips from github here: clipboard.com/site/github.com and hacker news here: clipboard.com/site/news.ycombinator.com<p>We are still in private beta but we'd love your feedback. Visitors from HN can access and register on our site directly at clipboard.com/register?token=hn. You can also reach us via email at support@clipboard.com.
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mrmaddog
Very slick setup && service! My one question: are there any safe-guards
against people sharing sensitive information hidden in the html, e.g. user-
auth tokens (like the ones you can find in HackerNews up-vote links:
[http://clipboard.com/clip/LQjwmHJQNjxVAYYPgQzmbPAYrMjpkkHdOT...](http://clipboard.com/clip/LQjwmHJQNjxVAYYPgQzmbPAYrMjpkkHdOT5e))?
Is this even a practical security concern?

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lyime
For the lazy.

<https://clipboard.com/>

<http://clipboard.com/site/news.ycombinator.com>

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andrewljohnson
How much did you pay for the domain, and how was it acquired?

~~~
papercruncher
Clipboard seems to be what Gary Flake left Microsoft for. If he didn't happen
to own the domain already, I'm sure he had the resources to acquire it.

~~~
gwf
I bought it around January of 2011, when I knew I was going to move forward
with the concept. It seems kind of tacky to share the amount, but it cost
about 5-10x less than what most people guess, as the previous owner was
extremely reasonable.

~~~
andrewljohnson
What a silly response. It's not a tacky question, and you just don't want to
say for understandably selfish reasons.

The rest of the world would still like the data point.

~~~
mustpax
No one has an obligation to tell you about their private financial
transactions because you want a "data point."

~~~
evoltix
Obviously there's no obligation. It was just a smug move to decline to share
the price.

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rockmeamedee
This is cool!I really like the clipping interface. I tried everynote before a
while back and it didn't feel as good.

Just a side thing, you sent me two emails: An email confirmation and a Welcome
To Clipboard email. Would it be possible to join the two together, or forgo
the latter? I'm just tired of getting so much email.

It looks really good. You seem to have the potential for the
pinterest/delicious tagging stuff, but I don't know anything about that stuff.
Another rant: when you delete a clip, it just deletes and displays the empty
page, would be better if you went back to Home.

I wish you guys luck!

~~~
kenperkins
Thanks for the compliment and finding a good bug (deleting from a clip page).
I don't know why we didn't fix that sooner. Already rolled out a fix.

Regarding the welcome email and the confirmation email, we saw a hacker news
post that shared we'd have better success when the confirmation email had a
clear and actionable subject.
[http://clipboard.com/clip/LQiJMrYD7dhXX8DWhgOoKa8A2PHm_0fHaw...](http://clipboard.com/clip/LQiJMrYD7dhXX8DWhgOoKa8A2PHm_0fHawLe)

------
mnicole
Not sure if you guys are still reading this thread, but I've got an extensive
collection (3k+ images) that I've already stored up on Lookwork, in addition
to hundreds of posts on Snip.it.

Clipboard finally looks like an end-all be-all for these types of services,
but my problem with getting involved in yet another curation site is that I
have these thousands of posts with their own tags already. Will there be any
future efforts to allow the mass-upload / transfer of this content? I'd love
to use the site but I can't pull myself away from two other dedicated services
I've put years of effort into.

Edit: Actually, upon populating my feed and checking out the public posts, I'm
not sure how this is any different from Snip.it and how the content is any
better than the regurgitation on Pinterest or Piccsy. Also the layout is
really busy and turned me away quite quickly.

Snip.it's primary feed is at least dictated by staff members who have gone
through and vetted that the user's posts are substantial enough to warrant
showing them on the front page as a means of proving quality. Much like I told
the founders in the Piccsy thread, I think it is hard to launch a service like
this when so many exist and your content looks the same and is equally
unfulfilling. Piccsy's response was that users would do the legwork to enhance
their experience, and my retort was that users don't want to bother doing all
of this extra work when tomorrow another site like this will launch with
higher quality content and a better layout. Thoughts?

------
tarr11
I think that it's a very nicely formatted product. You've done some really
interesting things with laying out the content. That said, I have a few
issues:

Mobile - I often consume this kind of "clippable" content on a mobile device.
It's limited in usefulness since it's just a browser extension (which doesn't
exist on my Android)

Clipping UI - It can be frustrating to try and clip just the parts of a page
that i want. The clipping box moves around seemingly randomly. I'd expect it
to work similar to how a screenshot tool works, (a rectangular square on the
screen) but it appears to be scanning for parts of the web page and then
offering those parts as suggestions. This makes it difficult to just clip what
I want.

Readability - On the "pinterest" board view (sorry - that's how I think of it)
- the text is dramatically shrunk, and the headlines are often clipped. So
I've got no idea what some of the clipped articles are about, unless I click
them.

If there was a way to summarize the text instead of showing a thumbnail of the
whole thing, it might be more useful. That technique (thumbnails) seems to
work well on pics, but not on text oriented clips.

When I do click them, they appear in a lightbox view. The URL doesn't change
unless I click through again to another view. It'd be good to have a linkable
URL in lightbox views so I could share easier.

Nice work though, good luck with it. Also, I would love to hear more about
developing your site in NodeJS .

~~~
Shalen
Hi tarr,

Mobile - we've recognized the need for a mobile app so it's on the future
roadmap

Clipping UI - we have heard mostly positive feedback on the rectangular
clipping box. You could also use your mouse wheel to select desired portion of
the page to clip. Of course, this feature is not very discoverable (yet) but
it does make it very easy to clip.

Your points on enhancing readability for text clips and light box are spot on.
We have heard similar feedback in usability study and we will see what we can
do to address it while maintaining overall consistency and design of our
product.

Thanks for your feedback.

------
tagawa
A bit of feedback - the first thing I see is a message saying "you need to
create your account", which put me off. It would be nice if I could save a few
things immediately with an auto-generated temporary account, accompanied by a
"sign-up to keep what you've saved" message. Otherwise, it's difficult to know
whether it's a service I'd find useful.

~~~
kleiba
Couldn't agree more! Here's my feedback:

If I see a big page that tells me "first things first - you need to create
your account" before I even know what this site is, you lost me. The next
website is just a click away, or in this case, the closing of a tab away.

I've also tried the <http://clipboard.com/site/news.ycombinator.com> link
another HN'er posted here, and I get an empty page. Oh, right, that must be
because I'm using NoScript, but it would be nice if you had some kind of fall-
back for such a case?

------
eps
How is this notable? Not trolling, serious question. Whom do you see using
this and why would they not use existing alternatives?

~~~
psycho
What do you see as existing alternatives? I can say, there are Instapaper and
Pinterest, for example, but they both differ from this one.

~~~
tuxguy
Pocket (formerly Read It Later)

You need an ipad client, thats where a lot of content consumption happens,
especially long form.

One feature which i really like about Pocket, is it saves a parsed copy
locally on the ipad.

So i can "save"/ clip a bunch of links/articles, i want to read & then i can
read them later, even when i dont have internet access (e.g. on a tarin/metro)

Very impressed with the product. All the best.

~~~
Shalen
Thank you tuxguy. We currently don't have apps for iPhone and iPad but your
feedback is certainly useful and we will consider it for our future product
roadmap.

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btown
Pretty cool concept. I love the flowing endless canvas on the public page,
it's what I wish Reddit and HN had. If clipboard.com fails, you could always
pivot and pitch that component as a SaaS for aggregators and blogs, or
something.

Some UX suggestions: I sign up, and I said I wanted to follow music,
programming, and tech, but I get to the Home page and I don't see any way to
see others' content based on that subscription. Sure, I haven't clipped
anything yet, but you already have the content at Public, so why not show me
what you can do right away? Also, it's unclear that I need to click the Visit
button to visit a post. Think of Reddit Enhancement Suite: it shows inline
pictures, but if you click anywhere on the picture or on the link itself, it
takes you to the original source. Here, clicking the picture does nothing.

~~~
Shalen
Both are good UX suggestions and we will consider them. Thank you!

------
thomseddon
Striking resemblance to Slash7's Charm logo: <http://charmhq.com/> ?

~~~
gwf
We worked with the awesome Jackson Fish Market for the logo about a year ago.
Someone pointed out the Charm logo to me later on, and I thought it was best
to just live-and-let-live, since the two services have no similarity. I know
that we came up with logo independently, and I can only assume that given
their reputation that they came up with it independently as well. So it goes;
stuff happens; you move on.

That said, I like our logo and I think it makes sense in that the union of the
heart and paperclip strongly relates to the act of saving. But I don't quite
get the Charm logo; for me, it doesn't really connect to what I understand
their product to be. In any case, it's all good.

------
jenndox
I've been using clipboard in the beta for a while now, and there is a lot I
like. I have a few people I work with who also use it, and my biggest piece of
feedback is that while it is very handy for me and for creating "boards" of
things I can show someone, I still don't feel like I know how to use it in a
team or company setting. We end up clipping similar things or tagging almost-
but-not-quite the same way, and in the end I don't have a way to coordinate
across accounts on a team.

All that being said, I love sharing design samples with Clipboard when I am
kicking off a project with a customer. It helps us scan the landscape and
discuss the early plan. So it is useful for work, but I'd love if there was an
easier way to collaborate. Or are there features I should be using
differently?

~~~
Shalen
Hi Jenn, today, you can share and collaborate on your private or public clips
with your friends by typing “@” in the annotation box and completing on their
username. The shared clips will then appear in the "Shared" tab for both of
you. I agree with your feedback overall. We do intend to make group
collaboration easier and intuitive in the upcoming product roadmap. Thanks for
sharing.

~~~
tuxguy
This was not clear to me.

@ followed by their fb &/ twitter username ?

OR their clipboard username ?

~~~
Shalen
their clipboard username.

------
kjhughes
I like the concept and that there's depth behind the glitz. Hopefully users
will progress along the path from savers (useful initially in its own right as
a bookmarking service) to sharers (more useful as more users join).

Here are some observations on sign-up and initial use:

Sign-up: Feedback for good field input shows check mark with FF 12 but missing
font square for IE 8 and Chrome 21 dev.

Sign-up: Too soon to ask me to access my social accounts. We just met. No
trust established. At least it's optional, though.

Sign-up: Bookmarklet installation guidance is slick.

Operation: Clipping via bookmark bar works very well. I like the subpage
selection interface.

I'll have to play more to appreciate it all but wanted to get an initial
reaction out for you. Nice job.

~~~
tmont
What operating system were you using when you couldn't see the check mark?
Were you on a native Windows OS or inside a VM?

Also, glad you liked the bookmarklet installation nags. :)

~~~
kjhughes
Native Windows XP for all three browsers mentioned (which I have to pull up
all too frequently during dev myself, unfortunately).

------
gcr
Nothing happens when I click the "Request an Invitation" button.

Edit: There it goes, but it took a few seconds. Also, when I mashed the button
four times, four "Email Address" boxes popped up:
<http://i.imgur.com/Y1s9q.png> At least give me some indication that
something's happening if you must delay like that.

Edit 2: Same thing happens when I "Submit" my email address, again with no
indication that you got my address except for an unfriendly "Invitation
already requested for....." message.

I'm on Luakit (which is just webkit, like chrome)

~~~
Shalen
looking into it.

------
dazbradbury
This is excellent, I particularly enjoyed the interactive bookmarklet
installation - simple, but really powerful!

This idea (or similar concept) was actually proposed to me my brother a few
years ago, looks like you've executed it really well. I probably should have
listened to him at the time!

One bug/missing feature: You don't seem to preserve custom fonts in the
clippings - which means the formatting isn't quite preserved either.

Eg. Compare the full site, to the clips, at
<http://clipboard.com/home/openrent.co.uk>.

------
rudros
UI note -- it's annoying to have the annotation box at the very bottom of the
page preview popup. Often, I will try to clip only the top potion of a page,
however, due to the div structure, I will end up with a really long clip. This
means item view is relatively useless at it involves too much scrolling.
However, in tile view, I can't edit the keywords. When I click to open an
item, I'm stuck with scrolling to the bottom of this very 'tall' clip to get
to the annotation box.

------
estacado
Is there a way to save all the stuff you on your clipboard offline? I am
looking for something like this, but in a local software kind of way, not a
webapp. These new startups' survivability are very unpredictable and I don't
want to lose all my info if the site goes bust. It's the top thing that's
stopping me from committing myself to your site.

~~~
Shalen
We currently don't have the functionality for users to download and store
their clips locally but it's a fair request and we will consider it for our
upcoming product roadmap. Thanks for requesting.

------
nshankar
I am trying to figure out if this site is any different from del.icio.us
(earlier) to pinterest and so.cl (so... yesterday), which consumes a lot of
energies on something that was already there some years back. Just a good user
interface? It may not be enough to keep us on it longer. Thanks for a bonus to
HN users, though.

------
lewisflude
I can't think of a comment with any substance cause I'm about to go to sleep,
but I'll check back in the morning.

This is something I would like to share with the ~150 journalists I manage if
it's any good.

Nice to see you guys here on hacker news!

Goodnight! (from the United Kingdom)

~~~
Shalen
Thank you for the kind words. My email is shalenATclipboardDOTcom if you want
to discuss further.

------
paulovsk
It's a beutiful service, but I still can't see how to make good use out of it.

It seems to me a Evernote-ish within your network. I'll keep using for a while
and, in the case I come up with any feedback, I'll share with you guys.

Thanks for a bonus to HN users.

------
tzury
Impressive!

Every corner I turn I sense the effort, thought and joy things were made with.

a question though, who produced your animation video? I am curious as we are
also planning to produce an animation video for promotion for our product.

~~~
ActVen
At the end of the video it says animation by Grumo Media.
<http://grumomedia.com/>

~~~
tzury
Well, I guess the habit of no staying seated when credit lines start running
from the movies theaters affects the way I watch videoclips on the web...

------
devgutt
There are so many bookmark services...Something that I'd like to see is a
bookmark based in a goal or objective. Something like, I'm learning Lua and I
want to save a bunch of links that I won't need afterwards when my goal was
accomplished.

~~~
Shalen
Clipboard is more than just a bookmarking service. You can clip and save
individual parts of the web pages including text, pictures, videos, flash
applications and even bookmark. You can also create public or private clip
collections for interesting topics using hashtags. For example,
clipboard.com/tag/jquery lists all public clips tagged as #jquery.
clipboard.com/Mati/jquery lists all public clips by user Mati tagged as
#jquery.

------
vivekaggarwal
This is quite an awesome app. Although, I've been using Springboard service
for quite sometime and has served it's purpose for me. Although the UI
components can be a bit clunky at times, it definitely is not that bad...

------
recroad
I've been using this service for a couple months now, and I like it. Not sure
if it's possible, but a context option (right click) would be really nice.

Also, I want to see what others who saved this web page also saved.

------
BPm
Saving a long page gives me the "unresponsive script", like this one:
<http://ruby.railstutorial.org/chapters/modeling-users#top>

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robotmay
I like it. The interface feels a little laggy to me but that might be because
I'm using phone tethering at the moment. I see it as an odd mix of Pinboard,
Pinterest, and Evernote; kinda what I was looking for.

------
llawliet
For storing and remembering stuff I think Evernote is more or less the best
option. The social aspect of Clipboard seems to be the same thing as Pinterest
too.

I really like the UI however, very attractive.

------
erengy
Just a minor issue: The default clip titled "Browsing Clips" lists tabs as
"Home, Shared, Publish", where the last one should have been "Public".

~~~
Shalen
Thanks for pointing this out. We made this typo and are fixing it soon.

------
iamben
It's quite pretty, I like it. Assuming it works sort of like Pintrest?

Huge plus points for the domain name, it's great.

------
dc-tech-fan
I see you are using Node and Express on the frontend - what other Node modules
are you using or found useful?

~~~
markruanedawson
We use a whole bunch, some of the main ones:

\- async => helpful async library <https://github.com/caolan/async>

\- nodeinspector => node js debugging in a nice webkit UI
<https://github.com/dannycoates/node-inspector>

\- riakjs => for talking to Riak: <http://riakjs.org/>

\- knox => S3 helper <https://github.com/LearnBoost/knox>

\- optimist => helper lib for writing command line node apps (no more bash :)
<https://github.com/substack/node-optimist>

\- mocha => unit testing node code <https://github.com/visionmedia/mocha>

\- emailjs => email helper <https://github.com/eleith/emailjs>

\- uglifyjs => code minification <https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS>

~~~
kenperkins
I've actually been curating this set for a little while.
<http://clipboard.com/ken/nodejs_modules>

------
psycho
Looks nice - I'll try to use it and share my opinion in a few days.

------
rmATinnovafy
What about privacy? How do you approach that?

------
adityar
I'm using this already and I just love it!

------
BPm
support for gravatar would be nice

~~~
Shalen
We have had requests for gravatar from other users too so we will consider it
for our future product roadmap.

