bookmark

Yesterday Clipmarks added a new feature called ClipCasting. Like the name would suggest, it's a way to syndicate whatever content you've bookmarked using the proprietary Clipmarks toolbar. In this case, Clipmarks has opened up its service beyond just letting users link to bits of bookmarked Web material, and putting everything in a small widgetized container that can be added to blogs and social networking profiles. Readers can quickly jump back and forth through stories and note individual clips they like, or favorite the entire thing. Incidentally, the previous iteration of the site, which created a separate page for each piece of bookmarked content, is now called "classic view," with the ClipCast pages taking the spotlight.

To supplement the embeddable version of the widget, there's a new Facebook app that accomplishes the same thing, albeit with less installation work on the part of the user. It'll denote any new piece of content that's been added to the ClipCast in the user's new minifeed for others to see. Likewise, if your friends have the app installed, you'll be able to keep track of whatever bits of content they've bookmarked. Compared with Facebook's standard sharing feature, ClipCast is better in that you can view the content right in the widget without having to venture off the site. It's also nice because your friends don't need to install the app to see the items you've shared.

As a content creator, services like Clipmarks are a mixed blessing. It's a super simple way to share stories with other people, but at the same time it takes potential visitors away from the original article, and moves the power to pick out what bits of content are published away from the original author. I still think Clipmarks has done a great job with ClipCasting. On the surface, it's a lot more approachable than some other bookmarking services that rely on text links alone.

We originally checked out Clipmarks back in late February. Since then, it got snatched up by Forbes Media, which noted that many of its editors had been using the service internally as a way to track and share Web content. Also worth looking at is eSnips, which has a toolbar that lets you grab and share page clippings, along with Yoono (review) and Diigo (review).

I've embedded a ClipCast:

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My dad is a staunch user of MyHQ, which lets you organize your bookmarks in little clusters of text links. While it's highly functional, the service hasn't been updated since mid-1999. Regardless, the big draw is its simplicity, portability, and near-instant load time, which is where Web start pages can really shine over standard browser bookmarking systems.

I've taken a look at quite a few of these sites over the past year, and one I think is good enough to pass my Dad's test is Symbaloo, which like MyHQ is incredibly simple to set up. It also runs fast. Instead of going the route of showing you a live page preview, a la Opera's Speed Dial or Only2Clicks.com (review), Symbaloo lets you organize a smattering of your favorite links in a giant, rectangular grid. Depending on your display resolution, Symbaloo will scale itself to fit, along with providing quick and easy identifiers like site logos or icons to help you organize your links visually. In the center of it all is a search box that can be replaced with about two dozen various search tools that sit beside your bookmarks. You also can manually add more from a provided directory.

In addition to search tools and bookmarks, Symbaloo has a page that puts together links of the top news stories on Yahoo and MSNBC. While this isn't an entirely novel concept in and of itself, the way it's been implemented with stories getting real estate depending on their suggested importance is neat. It reminds me a lot of AOL's Mgnet news service, which launched in July, although with less usefulness considering the stories aren't coming from your saved bookmarks

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Forbes Media announced Wednesday that it has officially acquired Clipmarks.com, a social news site that operates by enabling members to "clip" and share parts of Web sites rather than simply bookmarking them. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Clipmarks CEO Eric Goldstein will stay in his post.

The acquisition will serve primarily to enhance Forbes' online news content, apparently. "Forbes.com editors use Clipmarks technology across the Forbes.com site, clipping and posting content from other Web sites that they think site users might be interested in reading," a release from the … Read more

Hooeey is a new bookmarking and tracking service for your browsing habits. You install a small toolbar in your browser, and it will quietly keep tabs on all your tabs, including which sites you're going to, how long you're staying at each one, and when you're doing it. At the same time, Hooeey adds a social networking layer, letting you share specific sites with others, both on the Hooeey network, and other, larger social bookmarking services like Del.icio.us and Reddit. The goal is to let you centralize your favorites, and make them easier to share … Read more

Google is sneaky. It has quietly launched a new service that lets people share bookmarks. It is called Google Shared Stuff.

To get started, you drag an "Email/Share" button to your browser toolbar. When you click on the button, you have the option of e-mailing the link or a preview of the Web page you are visiting to someone, sharing it on Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Furl, Social Poster or Reddit, or posting it to a Shared Stuff page.

You can keep track of bookmarks that your Gmail contacts have shared and see popular links, as well as … Read more

Del.icio.us, the hugely popular social bookmarking service, has finally unveiled its new look. It's the biggest visual change the site's had since its launch in 2003, and the result of nearly a year's worth of work. Besides a face-lift, the service has undergone several enhancements, both in how you browse new links and search through them. Of course, this new site isn't open to everyone. In classic Web 2.0 form, access is limited to a select few in the form of a beta preview the Del.icio.us team is using for feedback before rolling out the changes to everyone.

The site first announced its intentions of a massive re-design in early February, and just a few months back noted some fun statistics about their usability testing lab, which had apparently used more than 2,000 Post-it Notes to organize observations about the re-design. This may not sound too impressive, which is why I'd recommend taking a look at this picture, which gives me headache just to look at.

The first thing you'll notice about the new Del.icio.us is that the name has forgone its dots to simply be known as "Delicious." Besides making it easier for newbies to pronounce, it's also a departure from its roots of a small, independent Web site who was one of the first to pioneer the gloriously cheesy domain name hack, a practice that's even led to a startup that figures them out for you. The other thing you'll notice is that there's more emphasis on tags, and tagging in general, as they've been given a much more prevalent look and presence throughout the site.

The real change, however, is in search and navigation, which have both been streamlined and made faster. The old Delicious search was a tad on the sluggish side, whereas the new search is noticeably faster. The results have also been improved to show you who was the first to save it as a bookmark, along with pushing the tags out to the side in case you feel like drilling down by genre. The navigation now features drop-down menus to let you quickly drill down to various parts of the site, skipping an extra page view or two.

When it comes to actually creating new bookmarks on the Delicious site, the process is like Miss South Carolina: pretty but slow. Despite the advances in page design, you still have to navigate through two separate pages to add a new link via URL. I prefer the newer trend of opening up a lightbox pop-up to let me enter in information, and then getting shot back to the page I was viewing before. There's a handy bookmarklet to add whatever page you're visiting, which is actually the fastest way to add new content to the site short of clicking a site-integrated "add to Delicious" button, but the current system is still prohibitive for batch link uploading.… Read more

The bookmarking and reference service I use most is adding a show-and-tell slideshow feature. Diigo lets you mark up Web pages, then share and export your notes. Its new WebSlides, in closed beta testing, will enable you to create narrated presentations of Web pages that you've saved and annotated.

Diigo is meant to be more practical than something like StumbleUpon, a fun way to discover new sites. Diigo Vice President Maggie Tsai touted Diigo WebSlides at the Office 2.0 conference today as an ideal tool for teachers. Her demo showed off handy-looking recording and playback controls for making … Read more

How do you deal with all the clutter on the Internet? A new Web site that launched on Thursday purports to help you separate the wheat from the chaff with a directory of popular sites for various search categories, but there doesn't seem to be much to it.

The site, which sports the cutesy name of Cludr, features a Google search box and a list of 18 categories including "dating," "health," "investments," "music," "news," "shopping," "search" and "Yellow Pages." Behind the links are … Read more

A new site named fooWHO grabbed my attention earlier today. It pitches itself as a delivery service for links and stories that are "just for you." The site bases this presumption off of a rather lengthy personality test that you fill out at your leisure, consisting of questions in a dozen different categories, ranging from arts and entertainment all the way to your taste in automobiles and their transmissions. The remainder of the service is very similar to Reddit, with a front page of popular stories and a pool of submitted links that can be rated up or … Read more