Gimme Bar – Saving me from bookmarking hell
My thoughts about my first couple of weeks with Gimme Bar…
I recently found myself with thousands of bookmarks saved in my firefox browser. I just kept bookmarking stuff without really reading it or filing it… Everytime i opened up the bookmarks panel, i got a little despondent at seeing all these bookmarks unloved and just sitting there doing nothing, reminding me of how much time i don’t have these days.
So, when Gimme Bar came along i was hesitant, but hopeful (as i have already tried google bookmarks, delicious etc.). Now, after a little while of using it, i have ditched Firefox with all its bookmarks and started from scratch with Safari (I have kept firefox, in case i need something from before – i’m just not using it) .
It feels great. A clean start. So i have all my super important day-to-day sites saved in Safari bookmarks (ready for syncing with iCloud) and then everything else is going into Gimme Bar. How i use the information once its there remains to be seen, but i keep going there, and its nicely organised and visual. I think it can only get better too, once more people start using it and it matures as a fully integrated web app.
Probably the best thing about it is that you can save a video, rather than the whole page that its embedded in, or a quote, or a typeface, or just a picture… you get it. And then theres the Dropbox integration. It backs up all the stuff i put there into my dropbox at the click of a button, so it goes that little bit further than other cloud apps, in that i don’t feel that if all goes pear-shaped, then i have wasted my time or lost everything. I think its also just replaced iPhoto which i used not for my own photos, but pics saved from the web.
One minor thing that i don’t like is that it takes a fair few clicks to open up a web page you have saved and open that URL. So, if i have a collection of 10 web pages, i have to click on each one to find its weblink… would be easier, to have those links on the thumbs too. Like the thumb rollovers they have on http://siteinspire.com/.
But, i keep sending feedback (they have made it easy) and it is just a beta version, so we’ll see how it goes. For the future, I can see it integrating with the browser much more for adding, recalling and searching and also an iPhone app, so i can really begin to use it properly… I really need to check out the social aspect of it as well, and discover some people with interesting stuff to share.
You can follow my Gimme bar stuff here: http://gimmebar.com/user/leeharding or you can just check out one collection, like amazing photography http://gim.ie/pW8 - my collections are still in their infancy, and i’m trying to grow them slowly and organically, rather than just dumping anything for the sake of it. So i don’t end up like i did before…