> So movie theater > movie at home for most people.
I'm really wonder if that's true for most people. Sure, there are people that would rather watch in the theater, but there are also people who'd rather hold a hardcover to read.
I'm not sure that the movie analogy works all that well from the position of either the article's author or your parent. For years theaters have been losing their edge as their experience degrades with price increases and the addition of advertising, and people's home watching experience continues to improve with bigger TVs and easier access to media.
But even so, theaters have been amazingly resilient to the digital age. I'd chalk this up to the fact that they provide a shared social movie-going experience that's not quite something you can replicate at home (i.e. it's something to go do with your friends), and in some cases, you want to see certain hits with a certain timeliness so that you can talk about them at school/work/with friends.
Hardcovers are just not like this at all. Even if you'd compare them favorably to an ebook, you'd be hard pressed to find one person on Earth who would say that they provide a superior experience over a paperback (except that they look more handsome on a bookshelf). They are, and always have been, quite simply a way for the publishing industry to squeeze a few extra dollars out of consumers who were willing to pony up the money so they could read a book early. This is exactly the sort of wrinkle that you'd expect to be ironed out in the Information Age — people's tolerance for this kind of profiteering decreases as access to media broadens.
The article's author is right that diminishing the edge of hardcovers is certain to cut into the margins of bookstores like his own, but he's wrong that it's a bad thing (directly). It might cost him money, but it's better for literally every single book buyer.
> Hardcovers are just not like this at all .... you'd be hard pressed to find one person on Earth who would say that they provide a superior experience over a paperback
I like hardcovers better than paperbacks. They are easier to read, larger usually, they stay open with less force, they don't break as easily.
The printing is higher quality, the paper is brighter.
There is a thing called (I think) a trade paperback which is a hardcover quality book with a paper cover.
For "todo list", marking something as Read Later works perfectly. Lots of bookmarks app do this and it's most convenient to view them by creation date.
For reminders, Mochimarks lets you set explicit reminders on every bookmark or note. The notifications can be viewed in the app, show up through the extension, and are emailed to you. You can snooze the alerts too.
I have a concept to add a feature to track if something has changed on the site since the last time you visited, but it's not implemented.
Mochimarks has a rest api. It has lots of sorting options too (creation, last visited, total visits, interest, and reminders.) It's made bookmarks a lot more useful for me.
I thought about this a lot... so this'll be long. I thought of how bookmarks were used and came up with:
- Things you want easy access to, but have annoying URLs, like your company's wiki page (Solved by Favorites/Bookmarks Bar or Dashboard)
- Things you want to finish looking at later (Solved by Read Later / Reminder)
- Things you want to keep track of, like blogs (Solved by Read Later / Reminder)
- Things you want to be able to find later (Solved by Full Text Search and Tags)
- Something you might want to see again, but not anytime soon (Solved by Personal Archive)
- Something you simply liked or are favoriting (Solved by Personal Archive)
- Note taking / Research (Solved by Tags and Boards)
- Idea inspiration (Solved by Tags and Boards)
- Things you want to show other people (Solved by Social)
- Things you want to get for yourself (Solved by Wishlist)
- Things you want other people to get for you (Solved by Wishlist)
My main problem with using bookmarks was that I rarely went back to them. Normal bookmarks are essentially a personal archive and google search usually finds things much better.
I realized there were a lot of bookmarks I'd like to go back to, I'd just forget about them. Maybe I'd like to read something when I got home from work, or maybe I wanted to check back in a week for an update (or release date), or I wanted to keep a list of items to show someone later (usually funny videos or gifs.) It was pretty difficult to do that no matter how I organized my folders or tagged things.
I eventually built my own bookmark site (https://www.mochimarks.com/landing) with all the features I wanted. The main features (apart from the expected tagging/full text search/browser integration/notes/etc...) were settable/automatic reminders, wishlists, and recommendations. Wishlists let you rank bookmarks. Recommendations could be new stuff from friends or the app could recommend that you look at stuff you liked that you hadn't visited in a while.
After having my app for a while, I've found I use bookmarks a lot more. I mostly use reminders and have a few stuff pop up to check each day. Reminders are killer for me. But when I'm bored I like to sort my wishlists. I don't use tags much... I really only use #Programming, #Interesting (usually really good articles), #Funny, #Music, #Blog, and #ArtBlog. I'll use the recommendation features to check on my blogs and to share links with my friends. I use Read Later a lot, but rarely actually go back and read things later. But when I do, I'm really glad the feature is there.
I've been working on a bookmarking app with a feature that reminds you to revisit bookmarks (either algorithmically or manually via a schedule.) It also has built-in wishlisting and a bunch of other stuff I always wanted out of a bookmark app. Bookmark apps are a really crowded space and I have no idea how to advertise something with so many alternatives, I built this app because I always wanted these features I couldn't find elsewhere.
I can appreciate the reminder feature. I always thought that something like that would be useful if combined with an archiving tool for short notes, quotes or text snippets: Here's the quote you saved last year on this day ...
I use a paper notebook to sketch out diagrams and sometimes make todo lists. I like to use the notebook during useful meetings too, I feel like it's less distracting than a computer.
Hi, creator here. I made Mochimarks because I found that recently, I wanted to go back to certain links at certain times. For example, I'd want to go back to a kickstarter on the day it was ending. Since I resolved to make an online bookmark app anyway, I decided to make my dream bookmark app and add a bunch of features I'd always wanted to have. My focus is to make bookmarks more actively useful. While there's more stuff I want to do, Mochimarks is ready for beta and I would really appreciate some feedback.
Mochimarks has configurable reminders, wishlisting, bookmark ranking, opt-in sharing, and can recommend bookmarks it thinks you might want to read again. Mochimarks also has the features you'd expect from an modern bookmarking website, including tags, read later, full text search, responsive design, and lots of sorting options. I've tried hard to pay close attention to security and privacy. I'm still working on batch editing bookmarks.
The easiest way to interact with Mochimarks is via its chrome extension. Otherwise, there are bookmarklets. I know the online bookmark space is crowded, but I've personally found the features I've added really useful. Thanks!
I've just started playing it and like some of what you've done. One thing I've been looking for is easier to assign tags. Like drag and drop tags onto new bookmarks. Have the system suggest tags based on how other tagged the same website or page. Or even do statistical analysis of the webpage to suggest tags.
Also are you doing this as a toy project or is this a business?
Thanks for checking it out and thanks a lot of the feedback! There is a suggest tags system in place right now, but it relies on crowd sourcing and there aren't many users right now. I've considered doing some statistical analysis, but I've been focusing on other features first.
I plan to charge once I'm done with the beta, but it would be more of a side business. It started out as a toy though, so who knows what'll happen long term.
If you use the "suggestion" sorting, it will recommend some links it thinks you should look at again. It bases this on several factors, like the interest level, tags, creation date, last visited date, and last modified date. It does a lot of time decay. I'm still tuning the algorithm, so it should improve as time goes on.
I think there should be a point to address running out of memory. If you just keep adding images/animation/videos, eventually the site experience will be bad.
In this case, it might be easier to describe sending letters in a secret code to your friends. Even though the mailmen can read everything on the envelope, they can't read anything inside.
I'm really wonder if that's true for most people. Sure, there are people that would rather watch in the theater, but there are also people who'd rather hold a hardcover to read.