bookmarking
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Pocket's Explore tab adds more reading suggestions
Pocket is one of the slickest bookmarking services for reading on the web, but its strength was never discovering new things to read. Starting today, it's hoping to fix that with a new Explore tab at the top of its homepage: type in what you're looking to read about, and off you go. Trending stories will line up alongside articles that other users have substantially saved. Related topics are also included, if you really have some hours to kill. The feature is in beta at the moment, but Explore doesn't require a login. You just... browse. Possibly forever.
Betaworks acquires Instapaper, promises continued development
If you're the sort who likes to catch up on web articles through a dedicated reader app, you're likely familiar with Instapaper and its lone creator, Marco Arment. His solo work makes for a cohesive experience and a great story, but it also involves a lot of strain -- enough so that Arment is selling majority control of the app to Betaworks, the owner of Bitly and Digg. Thankfully, this shouldn't represent a classic acquire-and-absorb deal that ultimately kills the original brand. Arment says he'll remain involved as an advisor, and the takeover is arranged with promises that Betaworks will add staff and continue building the read-it-later tool. While neither side has said just where they'll take Instapaper with more resources, there's a real chance that competitors like Pocket will feel some added pressure.
iPad corners 22 percent of ebook market, iBooks gets iPhone version and PDF reader
Apple has just announced that the iPad has collected 22 percent of ebook sales since its launch and is about to get new features too. A PDF viewer is going to be thrown into the iBooks app later this month, and will be accompanied by new bookmarking and note-taking functionality. Yeah, they're basic enhancements at best, but we're still trying to wrap our minds around this idea that Apple is already responsible for nearly a quarter of all ebook sales. Then again, as Steve points out, a cool five million of the darn things have been downloaded in the first 65 days of the iPad's availability. Update: Seems like even five mill ain't gonna be enough for Apple, which is set to massively expand its iBooks user base by bringing the app to iPhone and iPod touch users. You'll be getting the same note-taking, same bookmarking -- same everything -- just on a smaller screen, and at no extra charge. Users will be able to purchase a book on one device and then consume it across the full range of iDevices, with bookmarks and progress getting synced across the ether.%Gallery-94570%%Gallery-94595% Check out more from WWDC 2010 in our liveblog!
SayAgain - an audio bookmarking app
A few weeks ago we covered the Bookmark app, a subsystem for playing and bookmarking audio books. I was quite impressed with it, but some comments dinged it for not playing in the background when the app is closed. It also only handled audiobooks and some felt it would be more useful if it covered any audio file in your iTunes library. SayAgain [iTunes Link] is another bookmarking app which solves both of those problems, but not nearly as well or as elegantly. It is compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch and requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later. It sells for US$1.99.One of my pet-peeves is that many apps give you no instruction on how they work, and SayAgain is one of those. When you run it you are presented with a lined screen titled 'Annotated Media'. To the left is a + button and to the right is an edit button. Now what? Clicking on the developer link in iTunes brings you no help, only a description of what the app does. Nowhere in the app is an info button to bring some direction. But, one might say, it's intuitive. You don't need help. I say, nonsense. Everyone comes from a different level of experience and assuming intuitiveness is a bad assumption. Bookmark, on the other hand, gives full instructions and a tutorial right inside the app.SayAgain is a generalist audio bookmarking app, allowing you to add bookmarks to any audio file in iTunes. This is quite useful since you might want to bookmark a story in podcast or even a great drum solo as well as a place in an audiobook. There are two ways to use it. Either play something in iTunes and then run the app which will display your audio file as Now playing, along with the name of the song or file. Or you can run it without playing anything and hit the + button which brings up iTunes. Leaving the app doesn't stop the audio, a major advantage. To add a book mark you click the star (which in other apps means favorites), and you'll get a window with a keyboard and buttons to 'Set start marker' and 'Set end marker'. On top of the screen are buttons marked back and play. Read on to see how well it worked.
dead.licious - bookmark verification made simple
Online bookmaking systems are all the rage these days (I certainly rely on nothing but Pukka, delibar and Quicksilver's del.icio.us plugin now), but what if, while amassing your library of 'marks, some of them go dead, are taken down or otherwise disappear? dead.licious might just be the tool for you, as it's a utility that checks each of your links to see if at least something is still there.It isn't quite everything it could be, however, as the author lists a number of improvements already on the list: Support for 10.3.9 and maybe 10.2.8. E-mail me if you really, really want this tool for 10.3.9 and I'll see what I can do to expedite the process along (donations wouldn't hurt either). Faster checking of websites by checking several at once instead of one at a time. Keychain support so you don't have to type in your username and password each time. Determining which websites have been added since the last update and only checking those. Editing bookmark information and submitting the changes back to your del.icio.us account. With this in mind, a discussion of whether dead.licious should even be called a 1.0 app could certainly be warranted, but instead of getting nit-picky over version guidelines, why not give it a whirl and submit some feedback (and a buck or two while you're at it) to show the dev you care.
Widget Watch: Ma.gnolia Ma.rker
Who says del.icio.us should have all the fun in the social bookmarking arena? Ma.gnolia is one of many competitors which takes a decidedly more human approach to the social aspect of online bookmarking, offering discussion forums, themed groups, user spotlights and more. While we've blogged plenty of ways to leverage del.icio.us, it's nice to see more more tools for other services like this widget for Ma.gnolia. The Ma.gnolia Ma.rker allows you to easily post links, customizing all the standard elements like descriptions and tags, along with rating the link before you send it off. The one catch the author didn't specify is which browsers this widget can work with; I don't personally have a Ma.gnolia account so I can't test it, but if any of you readers take it for a spin, let us know if it works with anything other than Safari.
Widget Watch: add this - a social bookmarking widget
The add this widget is a lightweight and customizable tool that will help you bookmark every TUAW post websites to some of your favorite social bookmarking and news sites (I think it might also be the smallest widget ever, too). Upon installing, you need to chose a background color and one of three social services (with more on the way): del.icio.us, digg or Shadows. It currently only works with Safari (with more browsers also on the way), but it unfortunately doesn't pass any selected text to the bookmark submission (like many of the available bookmarklets), so I hope that's on the todo list as well.For now, add this shows a lot of promise, and it's probably one of the handiest and out-of-your-way tools for getting your social groove on. Grab it over at DashboardWidgets.
Pukka 1.3
Everyone's favorite social bookmarking site, del.icio.us, is great and all, but is lacking when it comes to quickly bookmarking sites as you browse. That's where Pukka comes in. Instead of being taken to a page on the del.ico.us site, as one would if using the default bookmarklet, Pukka pops up a sleek little interface on top of the page you want to bookmark, just as if you were bookmarking within your browser. Just enter a few tags, a description, and viola! Recently updated to version 1.3, Pukka now supports private posting, so you can bookmark all those "questionable" sites without fear that your friends and family will see them and disown you. Release 1.3 also introduces full AppleScript support. Pukka is available as a Universal Binary download from Code Sorcery Workshop.[via Hawk Wings]
AOL refreshes Netscape as social news site with a twist
AOL yesterday relaunched the aging Netscape.com as a social news site (yea, like digg) but with a professional journalistic twist. Check it out. Anyone can sign up, submit and vote on interesting stories from across the web in a wide range of categories from politics, money, television, technology, health and even 'do no evil'. Going above and beyond the social news bookmarking concept, however, is a staff of journalists, including TUAW's own C.K. Sample III and Fabienne Serriere, who will follow up on some of the stories and dig deeper by nabbing interviews, posting related links and keeping users informed as the situation develops (on a side note, we finally figured out why C.K. and Fabs gave us that 'we'd tell you what we're working on, but then we'd have to kill you' bit a while ago).Why are we telling you about all this since it isn't specifically Apple-related, you ask? Well, we should probably tell you the project was headed up by Weblogs Inc.'s CEO, Jason Calacanis. Granted, Weblogs Inc., including TUAW, are owned by AOL, but we could still call it crummy if we wanted to - fortunately, that isn't the case. We think it's a great concept that you should go have some fun with. Still, if you're looking for some Apple-specific details before you fire off a flaming comment, how does 'full-Safari compatibility' work for you? In fact, I think the site actually looks surprisingly better in Safari than Firefox.
Flock releases 0.7 beta
Finally, after months of small alpha version bumps, Flock, the social web browser based on Firefox, has unleashed a 0.7 beta with a whole slew of updates, improvements and bug fixes. Along with a site re-design, check out their blog entry for a thorough rundown of what's new and what's still on the way.This beta-worthy version has been a long time coming, and my copy is downloading as I write this. In case you aren't familiar: Flock has Firefox at its core, but includes a ton of features and capabilities built around the concept of using and interacting with the web - not just surfing it. Features like built-in blogging, uploading to/keeping tabs on Flickr and integrated del.icio.us bookmarking are all on the feature list. It's quite a slick browser if you've been looking for a solid, integrated tool for both browsing and participating in the web. Check it out.[via Download Squad]