Comments for [Stumblings in the dark]

Comment on Bookmark syncing and tagging by Peter

Peter — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 05:03:14 +0000

I like browser sync because I like to have my bookmarks appear in my URL bar as suggestions and suchlike…

Comment on Bookmark syncing and tagging by Mike Lynch

Mike Lynch — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 04:09:08 +0000

Looks like I jumped ship from Delicious/Firefox at the right time, because that's what I used to use, and it was great.

I had been keeping all my bookmarks in Delicious for a few years now so brower sync isn't an issue for me, but I can see how it would be.

Comment on Bookmark syncing and tagging by Peter

Peter — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 01:52:26 +0000

Ah cool, well yeah I like the look of Pinboard, but couldn't use it (or wouldn't) unless it synced with my browser's bookmarks. That's the key, and I see that it does with Chrome, but I really prefer Firefox for extensibility still. There are just a bunch of things I can do for user experience & customizability that Chrome won't allow.

Unfortunately Pinboard just doesn't have a comparable FF extension to Delicious's one, but Delicious's one is exquisitely broken at the moment (it works, but frequently b0rks the net connection, ramps up CPU and then proceeds to crash the browser – yay!)

But there's not really an open Firefox bookmark sync service of any sort – Firefox Sync itself is very closed (they want it that way), and in any case not really compatible with other browsers etc. Xmarks have plugins for most browsers plus (really crap) iOS apps, but because they have no API, services like ifttt are no use.
This is the key in the end – no API, nothing doing. In the end Xmarks is still the best solution, simply because it syncs my bookmarks and tags across all platforms without crashing the browser like Delicious.

Meh, I say! Meh.

Comment on Bookmark syncing and tagging by Mike Lynch

Mike Lynch — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:20:55 +0000

I migrated from Delicious to Pinboard after the big OMGYahooDeth scare earlier this year. I used to use Firefox's live bookmarks feature for customising bookmarks in browsers – I have a bunch of dedicated tags like b_work_admin or b_${CURRENT_PROJECT}.

I'm getting almost the same functionality in Chrome with Pinboard using "Pinboard Bookmark Bar Sync".

One thing that's been helpful is IfThisThenThat (http://ifttt.com/) – which I'm using to backport Pinboard bookmarks to my Delicious account. It's a very handy way to sync lots of different webservices.

Overall, iOS support for bookmarking seems to suck.

Comment on Autechre are coming! by Peter

Peter — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 03:05:10 +0000

Mark has seen them – in New York! I will alert him to this comments thread.

Comment on Autechre are coming! by Stu

Stu — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 03:03:13 +0000

That's funny Nick, I'd assumed that you'd seen them too! I remember you telling me I should go to ATP as well, I'd just assumed that there was an Autechre performance there. Where's Mark then? I'm pretty sure that he has actually seen them play.

Comment on Autechre are coming! by Nick

Nick — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:36:07 +0000

very very excited! even in a couple of years in europe with them playing gigs all over, i still haven't seen them (although i saw gescom when autechre curated ATP. that was weird, almost a non show visually, with one of them hiding under tables most of the time…).
nice article. i remember it well from the first time around – one of the first times i had read much about their technique(s).
interesting to look back now and see their interest in physical interfaces (before "physical computing" had really hit off)…. also the comment on the nord – "the fact that it didn’t quite sound analogue, just didn’t come into it. " – these days the analogue craze isn't really there (not in the same way for sure), and i can't imagine anyone bothering too much how close a soft-synth was to the "real thing"… digital is more embraced perhaps? or just how things sound, and how things are done… whether in laptop or machine.
will be keen to see what sort of rig they play with, but of course i'm much more interested in hearing & experiencing their live sound at last – whatever they use!

Comment on Autechre are coming! by Stu

Stu — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:57:19 +0000

I'd just assumed that you'd seen them at some point, surprising that you haven't. I got my ticket for the Melbourne show yesterday, now I've got work out how to get there. They had a feature on the venue website where after buying a ticket it could automatically work out how to get to the show by public transport, didn't work for my address though ;)

Comment on The internets are hard for some people… by Michael

Michael — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:48:09 +0000

Can't remember the exact number, but Google reported that a reasonable percentage of searches could have been typed into the address bar directly to get the desired result.

Comment on The internets are hard for some people… by Jessica

Jessica — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:37:43 +0000

Yup, I've seen some pretty strange behaviour from people whose jobs are basically un-doable without the internet and who you'd expect to know how these things work. You're 100% right about the address bar. I've seen more than one person make a habit of typing the address they want into Google and then click through.
For these people Google *is* 'the internet' and they are clinging to what little they know for dear life!
As a member of Gen Y who took to the internet like a duckling in water it's hard to realise that this impersonal, context-sensitive mode of communication is inherently abstract and thus as confusing to people whose existence is inherently material and concrete as their communication is for me.
But there it is: we all communicate differently. And some people really are going to continue being really bad at the internet…