Why should you consider using Pinboard?

As a long-time del.icio.us user I was quite surprised when I first heard about the rumors about its shutdown by Yahoo. As I dug further into it I came across their official blog post dated December 17th, and decided to wait sometime before making a move, figuring Yahoo would not simply shutdown the service without ample notice. This comment on Slashdot was eye-opening though, and after perusing some of the alternatives (Diigo, Historious, Pinboard.In) I settled with Pinboard.In and their archiving plan. I’m pretty happy with the choice and this article aims helping you make an informed decision. If you’re still not using tagged bookmarks, I’ll try to explain some of the rationale and why it’s a good idea to start using them.

Tags versus folders

I’ve lost count of how many different favorite files I had since I started using the web in 1997, across different browsers and operating systems. However, something was constant throughout this time frame: my favorites would inevitably get disorganized, no matter how hard I tried to find a sane folder structure to file them. Then from time to time I’d find myself refiling & reorganizing, only to have it in a mess a couple of months later. That’s when del.icio.us came in with the brilliant idea of tagging your links, instead of filing them into folders. Now that eliminates the need for finding a right folder to store that particular link. You just pick as many tags as you want, and when you want to find this link again, you just look for tags you might have applied to it.

Tagging in itself is nowadays a no-brainer, so the basic drill is the same as in delicious. One issue that I had with delicious though, is that a lot of what I bookmark are very specific pages, and in many instances, even with the massive multi-million user base of delicious, no tag suggestions would appear for them. This is generally the case with the bookmarks on statistical science. Sometimes I would tag them as ‘stats’, sometimes as ‘stat’, and when feeling more verbose, ‘statistics’ or ‘statistic’. I eventually standardized on plurals, so that reduced the number of tags referring to the same thing as only 2 (stats or statistics) but that was still annoying. Pinboard offers a bulk-edit feature that was perfect to fix this: this allowed me resolve all the tags conflicts I had in my archive.

Link Rot

It’s impressive the amount of link rot that you accumulate over you web life. It’s very frustrating when you remember you have a solution to a problem in one of your bookmarks, only to find that the bookmark is no longer available. In cases when you spot right away that you will need to revisit it or need to be sure that you will be able to use it as a reference, save an offline copy for safety right away. For all the other cases, Pinboard.In archiving feature is a life saver. For 25$ a year, they will store a full copy of every page you bookmark, together with all the dependencies necessary to render it (such as CSS files, images, flash). This is a clear advantage when compared to Diigo or Historious, as you can see in more details in their blog post: Bookmark Archives That Don’t.

Wrap-Up

I hope you were convinced that tagging is a much better approach than filing into folders for bookmarking. In any case, be it that you decide to use Pinboard.In as well, or keep with delicious or other on-line or offline bookmark archiving solution, remember to regularly back up your data. Currently Pinboard.In does not offer an option to back up the archived pages[1], but you can use the export facility (http://pinboard.in/howto/#export) to fetch a single file containing all your links, together with tags and notes.

[1]A feature to download archives for local backup is on their road map.

Instant Promotion

In the spirit of PinboardIn Christmas promotion, I’m offering a similar (albeit humbler one) until January 20th to the first 3 (three) libertarians to comment on this post, with a brief (not smaller than 30 chars, but not larger than 400 chars) description of why they hold this political position. The first three qualifying comments will be published on the website after proper vetting. The authors will receive the activation codes by e-mail. Please note that this promotion is fernandohrosa.com.br’s responsibility and the founders and maintainers of PinboardIn are not in any way associated with this. In case you have any questions or complaints regarding the promotion you should contact me through the contact section of the site, since PinboardIn won’t be able to help you with this. In case there are no qualifying comments posted and vetted by January 20th, the promotion will be canceled.

* Please note: LIBERTARIANS, not LIBRARIANS.

As a long-time del.icio.us user I was quite surprised when I first heard about the rumors about its shutdown by Yahoo. As I dug further into it I came across their official blog post dated December 17th, and decided to wait sometime before making a move, figuring Yahoo would not simply shutdown the service without ample notice. This comment on Slashdot was eye-opening though, and after perusing some of the alternatives (Diigo, Historious, Pinboard.In) I settled with Pinboard.In and their archiving plan. I'm pretty happy with the choice and this article aims helping you make an informed decision. If you're still not using tagged bookmarks, I'll try to explain some of the rationale and why it's a good idea to start using them. Tags versus folders I've lost count of how many different favorite files I had since I started using the web in 1997, across different browsers and operating systems. However, something was constant throughout this time frame: my favorites would inevitably get disorganized, no matter how hard I tried to find a sane folder structure to file them. Then from time to time I'd find myself refiling & reorganizing, only to have it in a mess a couple of months later. That's when del.icio.us came in with the brilliant idea of tagging your links, instead of filing them into folders. Now that eliminates the need for finding a right folder to store that particular link. You just pick as many tags as you want, and when you want to find this link again, you just look for tags you might have applied to it. Tagging in itself is nowadays a no-brainer, so the basic drill is the same as in delicious. One issue that I had with delicious though, is that a lot of what I bookmark are very specific pages, and in many instances, even with the massive multi-million user base of delicious, no tag suggestions would appear for them. This is generally the case with the bookmarks on statistical science. Sometimes I would tag them as 'stats', sometimes as 'stat', and when feeling more verbose, 'statistics' or 'statistic'. I eventually standardized on plurals, so that reduced the number of tags referring to the same thing as only 2 (stats or statistics) but that was still annoying. Pinboard offers a bulk-edit feature that was perfect to fix this: this allowed me resolve all the tags conflicts I had in my archive. Link Rot It's impressive the amount of link rot that you accumulate over you web life. It's very frustrating when you remember you have a solution to a problem in one of your bookmarks, only to find that the bookmark is no longer available. In cases when you spot right away that you will need to revisit it or need to be sure that you will be able to use it as a reference, save an offline copy for safety right away. For all the other cases, Pinboard.In archiving feature is a life saver. For 25$ a year, they will store a full copy of every page you bookmark, together with all the dependencies necessary to render it (such as CSS files, images, flash). This is a clear advantage when compared to Diigo or Historious, as you can see in more details in their blog post: Bookmark Archives That Don't. Wrap-Up I hope you were convinced that tagging is a much better approach than filing into folders for bookmarking. In any case, be it that you decide to use Pinboard.In as well, or keep with delicious or other on-line or offline bookmark archiving solution, remember to regularly back up your data. Currently Pinboard.In does not offer an option to back up the archived pages[1], but you can use the export facility (http://pinboard.in/howto/#export) to fetch a single file containing all your links, together with tags and notes. [1]A feature to download archives for local backup is on their road map. Instant Promotion In the spirit of PinboardIn Christmas promotion, I'm offering a similar (albeit humbler one) until January 20th to the first 3 (three) libertarians to comment on this post, with a brief (not smaller than 30 chars, but not larger than 400 chars) description of why they hold this political position. The first three qualifying comments will be published on the website after proper vetting. The authors will receive the activation codes by e-mail. Please note that this promotion is fernandohrosa.com.br's responsibility and the founders and maintainers of PinboardIn are not in any way associated with this. In case you have any questions or complaints regarding the promotion you should contact me through the contact section of the site, since PinboardIn won't be able to help you with this. In case there are no qualifying comments posted and vetted by January 20th, the promotion will be canceled. * Please note: LIBERTARIANS, not LIBRARIANS.

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