I consider myself an avid reader of “stuff”. It’s mostly stuff from the internet. But have you ever had that problem where you remember that you read something in the past but can’t remember the details or even how to find it again? Yeah, that’s normal.
I employ Pinboard as an assistive service to help alleviate this issue. I also use Pinboard as my reading library now that there are some very good apps for the service.
Pinboard is four years old this week.
It’s hard to believe there are only 23,000 users. Maybe that’s actually a good thing. But I like this bit from Maciej:
Total revenue from signups and archiving has been far steadier than I expected from a web project, which by nature tends to be spiky. This comes as a considerable relief, since it means I don’t have to hunt for a new brand of champagne or truffle oil every other month.
I’ve reached a point where I keep Pinboard open all the time. But I get stymied by all of my Safari tabs and windows, so I decided to create a Fluid browser for Pinboard.
First, create a new Fluid application:
You can use the default Pinboard icon for the app or find a nicer one. Brett has a very nice one that I am using. This is the icon you will see in your dock.
Pinboard.in is well known for being an anti-social bookmarking service. The addition of default private bookmarks is inline with that philosophy and I think it’s a great idea. About half of my 10,000 bookmarks are private. The other half, I make public to anyone that is bored enough to look through them.
Side Note The majority of my private links are work related. The second most common private links are personal projects I'm working on that I'm not ready to share.
Nice updates to Pinboard search this week. You can now search bookmarks by user or network. This comes on the heels of the new Privacy Lock feature from last week.
Pinboard is great because it’s simple and effective. But I like these small improvements that fill in the cracks.
One thing I enjoyed with Google Reader was an IFTTT trigger that automatically added my Google Reader starred items to Pinboard.in. Until something better comes along, I’m back on Fever Reader and want the same luxury.
The first thing to do is to get the feed of the 30 most recent saved items from Fever. It’s right there in the preferences. Right click and copy the link.
Next, head over to IFTTT and create a new recipe that retrieves the RSS feed you just copied and creates a Pinboard bookmark.
Pinbrowser is a new app by a new developer. It does one simple thing: It allows you to browse the public Pinboard.in feeds. Take this review with a grain of salt, because I’m flattered to be included as one of the default feeds.
Pinbrowser strong suit is knowing what it should be. It’s not trying to be a Pinboard.in bookmarking tool. It is strictly a browser. It comes pre-configured with the Popular feed, one tag feed and (surprisingly) my feed.
It’s become a thing for me that when I don’t have a weekly sponsor, I post Pinboard tips instead. Let’s continue the trend.
Pinboard is wonderful, but on iPad I really prefer a native app. The best app I’ve used is Pinbook. Here’s why:
Quick Add From Pasteboard Pinbook immediately detects a new URL on the iPad pasteboard when launched and then offers to add a new bookmark. But it’s smart about it.
