Pinboard
11 February 2017I’ve been messing about with computers since 1981, on the internet since 1997 (yes, even that is 20 years!) and so it was a surprise to find, by chance, a bookmarking service that made sense to me. Tags: I know what they are, but the things never clicked until a week-and-a-half-ago. I’ve used GTD (Getting Things Done) in various forms in a personal and to a lesser degree work capacity, but this is different.
Pinboard.in has been around since, I think, 2009. It has a mature, sensible interface; maybe one that takes a time to master, but it works well. Apart from when it doesn’t.
I signed up for an Archive account, one that costs a yearly fee of USD$25 and entitles the user to practically- unlimited, searchable, taggable bookmark storage. The Archive account is an extension of the Basic and gives full text search within the pages the Pinboard system crawls then archives. Sounds impressive.
I say ‘sounds’ as I’ve not yet had the opportunity to test the full-text bit. It simply didn’t work for me and another new signup. After a week of no response to my 2 emails, several tweets, it emerged that Pinboard’s hard drive was full. Oops, what bad timing!
Ok, the support could easily have been better, but the site owner has generously offered a small extension for the trouble I’ve had.
The good news, I spent time checking that the bookmarks could be exported in non-proprietary formats and, crucially, reimported. And I’ve spent time tagging like crazy.
And here are the fruits of my labours, a bit of a mess for now, but eminently usable: