Yahoo Bookmarking Updates
Posted on October 27, 2006
3 Comments
Yahoo! updated their Bookmarks app earlier this week. Still called a beta, but a lot more interesting than it used to be and worth a look if you’re looking for a place to just store bookmarks.
What’s somewhat interesting to note here is that this shouldn’t be confused with “social bookmarking” (something I’ve written about a time or two in the past). Yahoo! already has a horse in that race by the name of del.icio.us. This new one isn’t social. In fact, the online help points out that your bookmarks are secured by your Yahoo! id and password. Social or not, it sure is easier on the eyes than del.icio.us will ever be!
Getting started is easy. You can import from exported bookmark files or, of course, del.icio.us. If you have the Yahoo! toolbar going, you can bookmark sites from it. Fortunately, for those who aren’t craving new toolbars, there’s also a bookmarklet feature (found here if you’re logged in). Of course, you may also add bookmarks directly from the site, but that’s a bit primitive. I tested the del.icio.us importer and it seemed to work just fine. I even have a pretty tag cloud.
Bookmarking a site is a bit odd. I should mention that I only tested with the bookmarklet — perhaps the toolbar option offers more. You can specify a folder, or you can specify some tags (up to 5) or you can specify both. On the plus side, for folks who haven’t quite made the switch to tagging, categorizing by folder is a nice, if somewhat limiting, option.
Folks who like to use lots of tags are going to be disappointed for a few reasons. First off, the limit of 5 per bookmark. Secondly, there’s no indication of tags you’ve used in the past. Thirdly, if you inadvertently re-bookmark a site, it’s just like starting over… there’s no indication that you’ve already used this site and your previous tags are not displayed.
Viewing bookmarked sites is nice. By default they’re displayed in a nice list not unlike BlinkList. There’s a thumbnail image of the link and then the link title with folder and tags listed below. Click the title and you go to the site. Click the icon and you go to an “edit” page where you can adjust tags/folder and see a cached view of the page. At first that seemed rather goofy to me, but I adapted after a few mis-clicks. The caching is definitely handy. I just expected that clicking a site’s thumbnail would take me to, you know, the site.
Bookmark searching is impressive. It seems to search by both folders and tags, along with title and notes. I can’t prove it, but it almost seems as if it searches the cached content as well? I definitely like the search.
Ultimately, I have to take a pass on this one. It’s nice. It’s easy on the eyes; in fact I’d say it’s downright attractive. Definitely better than the predecessor. Performance was great and hey, it’s Yahoo! so one would hope the data won’t just disappear some day. But the bookmarking process needs to be a bit more mature and polished before I’d consider switching over. If I have text hilited on the page to bookmark, I just expect the bookmarking process to pick that up for the notes field. If I’ve already bookmarked a site, I assume the bookmarking dialog will show me my previous tags. And only 5 tags? I’ll pass.
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3 Responses to “Yahoo Bookmarking Updates”
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The default view is indeed not unlike BlinkList. I guess we are flattered. I hope you will stick with us. We have a lot more exciting improvements in the works that we are excited to start rolling out over the coming few weeks and months.
Mike
This comment has nothing to do with Yahoo Bookmarks. I just wanted to thank you for the incredibly swift (and excellent) help you provided in getting my blog permalinks fixed over on the WordPress support forum.
I humbly bow to your knowledge and geekness!
Great blog BTW!
Mike - I’m sticking with you guys for a bit yet.
Jay - You’re welcome — and Thanks!