MacHeist

As I commented on your blog, I'd love to see something like that...maybe have a feature to add a bookmark bar that shows the top bookmarks? It would be nice because you wouldn't get generic stuff such as Google or other sites that everyone knows about already.

blazedragon555 wrote:

I'd be more than willing to work on a project like this. I'm a Cocoa Programmer (to some extent ).
It can be a Safari plugin (I despise Firefox, plus Safari lacks many plug-ins, so this would be a big plus for Safari users).
However, I have no ideas as far as naming goes.

Also, I'm going to camp for the next three weeks, so I'm not sure how available I would be to actually work on it.
I will, however, be taking a computers course at camp, so I'll be online most of the day and will be able to talk about it.

If you want, PM me, and we can discuss some details.

You would need a website for it, too, correct? Do you know how to create a website that could handle this?

blazedragon555 wrote:

It wouldn't be too hard. The main coding would need to be done within the plugin, and the actual website would be very simple, just some encrypted files on a server.

I would really like to see this go somewhere. I don't like using FireFox and I agree that Safari doesn't have nearly enough (good) plugins.

Right now I think the website would have to have a few things.

1) Be able to sign in as a user and view user profiles
2) sync toolbar bookmarks with user profiles and some sort of way to view the bookmarks nicely (need to come up with that)
3) rankings of most popular bookmarks

There is so much you can do, but I think that is the basics.

Farge, you could help for logo design/website design...
Do you have a portfolio?

Also blazed dragon, have you made any safari plugins before?
The plugin would need to be able to send information to the server every time there is a change in the bookmarks toolbar. That is really it.

I am working on finding a good website coder who can work with us....

NothngUpMySleeve wrote:

Just a preview to see how this plugin could benefit us:
http://www.macheist.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8207

Yes, this is exactly what the point is. Make sure you say in the thread that if you want to actually help make this concept of sharing toolbar bookmarks, come to this thread

I'd like to throw my name into the mix for website design, I'd love to help. I'm pretty solid with HTML/CSS and I'm pretty good at making logos.
Farge: Would you like any help? I know you have "dibs" since you got here first

I know java pretty well too, but I doubt that would be much help....

I can contribute:

Tutorial Videos (when it's done)
Ideas
Maybe some other stuff I'm not thinking of at the moment

MintCreation wrote:

Sounds like a great idea... I am just curious about something...
When one gets such a nice idea would it be wise to make a public blog about it? For some reason I would think it would be wiser to gather some people under some sort of NDA, but I reckon that's too late now...
But lovely idea - when's the beta out :p

Thought about this, but I will only make it private once I know it is being created, other wise I actually wouldn't mind if someone else creates it as long as they credit the idea to me. If not, I would sue them. I copyright my blog

I might be confused here, but doesn't del.icio.us (ahh I hate typing that domain), already let you view other user's bookmarks, see the day's most popular bookmarks, etc.?

I don't know what level of integration they have with browsers, but they at least do have a nice way of adding bookmarks to your account I think, if not sucking up all your current bookmarks.

But a question for everyone here - do you guys even use bookmarks? I personally don't, and I imagine average people who visit literally their webmail, a sports site and maybe myspace a day probably don't either... They're hard to manage as is, as most users just add bookmarks until it becomes an unmanageable mess, so it's really a hardcore user thing, except it's still a pain in the ass to keep things in check (as you noted).

I wouldn't be surprised if 95% of people don't even use them at all, and if the 5% who do never visit bookmarks they add again.

I don't really mean to be negative here, but my point is that bookmarks as they are really really suck. And hell, web browsers have a whole haven't come very far along since Netscape 1.0 a bajillion years ago. You should maybe develop this idea further, and really think about what's wrong at the core of bookmark implementation today, and start by fixing that. If you have a great solution, the best route to go would probably be a free to use web 2.0 site that integrates nicely with browsers to gain as much momentum as you can with member growth. So, good luck!

PS, I'm honestly disappointed Apple has done so little in innovation with Safari. Oooh, progress bar in the location bar, a new, trivially better way of managing bookmarks and super mediocre RSS.

phillryu wrote:

I might be confused here, but doesn't del.icio.us (ahh I hate typing that domain), already let you view other user's bookmarks, see the day's most popular bookmarks, etc.?

I don't know what level of integration they have with browsers, but they at least do have a nice way of adding bookmarks to your account I think, if not sucking up all your current bookmarks.

But a question for everyone here - do you guys even use bookmarks? I personally don't, and I imagine average people who visit literally their webmail, a sports site and maybe myspace a day probably don't either... They're hard to manage as is, as most users just add bookmarks until it becomes an unmanageable mess, so it's really a hardcore user thing, except it's still a pain in the ass to keep things in check (as you noted).

I wouldn't be surprised if 95% of people don't even use them at all, and if the 5% who do never visit bookmarks they add again.

I don't really mean to be negative here, but my point is that bookmarks as they are really really suck. And hell, web browsers have a whole haven't come very far along since Netscape 1.0 a bajillion years ago. You should maybe develop this idea further, and really think about what's wrong at the core of bookmark implementation today, and start by fixing that. If you have a great solution, the best route to go would probably be a free to use web 2.0 site that integrates nicely with browsers to gain as much momentum as you can with member growth. So, good luck!

PS, I'm honestly disappointed Apple has done so little in innovation with Safari. Oooh, progress bar in the location bar, a new, trivially better way of managing bookmarks and super mediocre RSS.

The reason this is different is because it would not share all of your bookmarks, only the ones in your toolbar. I certainly use my toolbar for bookmarks, it's simply the easiest place to put the websites I go to the most. Sharing these websites is the point of the site

phillryu wrote:

But a question for everyone here - do you guys even use bookmarks? I personally don't, and I imagine average people who visit literally their webmail, a sports site and maybe myspace a day probably don't either... They're hard to manage as is, as most users just add bookmarks until it becomes an unmanageable mess, so it's really a hardcore user thing, except it's still a pain in the ass to keep things in check (as you noted)./

I actually love bookmarks because I visit several sites and can't remember the addresses for them all.  (Especially the webcomics I read.)  I don't visit them all frequently, but I would say I use 75% of my bookmarks on a daily basis.  I use them mainly to mark good vendors for things I want, charity sites that I contribute to, blogs I read that aren't part of WordPress (my own hosting site), news sources that don't have RSS, Webcomics that don't have RSS, political journals which I have online subscriptions to, and of course sites I visit so often that pushing a button is easier.  (MH, LJ, games, bank, etc.)

I would be absolutely lost without them.

Although I agree that I would love to see Apple improve on the RSS capabilities of Safari.  I'm using Firefox right now because it beats Safari in RSS and plain old speed at the moment.