New LQ Site goes BETA - Social Bookmarking
 

As I mentioned here and in the latest LQ Podcast, we have been working on a new site that allows you to not only share, tag and annotate the Linux and Open Source sites you frequent, but see what everyone else is sharing, tagging and annotating. Sort of a random stream of consciousness or instant snapshot of what is important to the community, right now. I am happy to announce that the site is now in full public beta. Head over to http://bookmarks.linuxquestions.org/ to start entering your links. Keep in mind that it is still beta, but most functionality should be there and things are reasonably stable. Feedback and bug reports are welcome and encouraged. Let us know what you think. If you are currently using the LQ bookmark system, we've added links to easily migrate to the new system.

http://bookmarks.linuxquestions.org/

--jeremy

Its great :D

but why don't the tags be a little centralized so that there wont be alot of tags with the same subject (e.g: commandline , command-line )

and why can't i login with my username and password , doesn't it use the same username and password for LQ ?

Great Jeremy! :D
Thanks for the constant innovation - keep up the good work :D

heema- I assume it is like the wiki- you have to sign up again- but it is really simple.

jeremy- this is great. I like it. I assume that with all the key tags it will be really searchable. :) heema- that is why you need to put in seemingly redundant keywords- it's like meta tags on a website.

titanium_geek

Big request:

spell check. On the body would be fine. Like in the forums.

titanium_geek

Ditto on the spllchk :D . Some of us really need it. Also, is there a check in place to prevent multiple entries for the same link? That could quickly become a problem as so many users have similar bookmarks.

Great idea though. Keep up the innovation Jeremy, this site continues to get better each month. :cool:

RE same/similar bookmarks- perhaps this could be a good thing? then you could see popular links? Is there a way to search for the most popular bookmarks/sites (ie, number of hits OR number of bookmarks)

I really really like the bookmarks thing! hey, perhaps we could start a thread (or even include it here) on recommended bookmark tags. For instance, I think guide, howto and tutorial should be included if the site is a guide howto and tutorial. There should be a tag included if the site is distro specific (ie, Slackware) and distro specific tags should be caps.

titanium_geek

Correct, multiple people having the same bookmarks is all part of the social aspect.

--jeremy

Cool! Great work. Now we can see Linux only links :D

We've fixed the couple remaining known bugs and have made some other additional changes. Keep the feedback coming. I also added a "Bookmark @ bookmarks.LQ" link to the bottom of each thread, which will allow you to quickly and easily bookmark any LQ thread.

http://bookmarks.linuxquestions.org/

--jeremy

man! that's awesome! (link on bottom of thread)

I'm really excited to see it grow. its almost like the "lazy man's wiki" because there is no formation of articles, but still is a mine of information. Infact, I'm tipping that this time next year the bookmarks will be the same size, if not bigger than the wiki. The wiki is great, and I think it will grow to, but bookmarks are so EASY it's fun.

titanium_geek

See this page for information on how to add a bookmarklet to your browser which will make it extremely easy to add any page to the site. The help doc isn't update yet, but also not that setting the tag to @private will mark the bookmark as private.

--jeremy

A couple of additional items.

* You'll notice your profile now has a "LQ Bookmarks Username" field. If you fill this in you'll get a link to your bookmarks in each post.
* If you are using the current LQ bookmarks system you will notice we've setup links for you to easily migrate your links to the new site. Please do so ASAP. We'll be removing that functionality from the site 30 days or so after the LQ Bookmarks site gets out of beta (which should be soon).

--jeremy

Jeremy I added a few entries to the social bookmarks. This is a great idea. Especially the tags should be a powerful tool for searching once the database grows bigger.

I've also added "bookmark this page" type functionality to LQ ISO and the LQ Wiki.

--jeremy

bug report and feature request:

using firefox on an Apple laptop (panther 10.3) a new problem- the text box seems to hang off the coloured areas. Also, longer words don't seem to word wrap on the "body" text box, which is really annoying.

what about searching for most popular user (by hits) and most active user? (by number of bookmarks)

cool stuff.
titanium_geek

We'll look into the first part of your request now. As for the second part, it is being coded as I type this.

--jeremy

I'm unable to reproduce this using FF on a Mac. Can you send me a screenshot?

--jeremy

yay! (re second part)

*feeling stupid* I can't seem to get grab to make a jpg- it's a tiff and to see if anyone has something similar:
http://www.freewebs.com/titanium_geek/bookmarksbug.tiff

titanium_geek

titanium_geek,

Can you do a shift-refresh and see if the problem persists? A change we made earlier in the day should have actually address this. Thanks.

--jeremy

ok- going to "edit" a previous bookmark- its fixed. and making a new bookmark- it's fixed.

thanks jeremy! oh yeah- can you elaborate on the popularity thing?

great to hear it's out of beta.

titanium_geek

Elaborate how? Right now the feature allows you to see the most popular URL's. It will also be able to tell you the most popular URL's by tag in the near future (actually, it can do so now, but it's not built into the front end yet).

--jeremy

what are the "rules" for popularity? is it hits? # of entries? ?

titanium_geek

It's based on the number of people that have bookmarked that URL.

--jeremy

The popular list is sorted by the number of entries - see "x entries for this link" below each one:
http://bookmarks.linuxquestions.org/linux/popular

any plans for most popular by hits?

love the tag function- and the fact that you took away the case sensitivity.

david_ross- you are the LQ coder am I right? great job, and thanks.

titanium_geek

We don't actually track outgoing hits.

--jeremy

I think you should make the tags on the right list in order of number. Not alpabetical. The more links under the tag, the higher it comes.

The tags on the right are listed by popularity on many pages (including the main page). When you are viewing a page such as a user page, it switches to alpha, which in the context should be much more useful.

--jeremy

OK, I saw just now that they were ordered by number in other places. But anyway, one thing that bugs me is that there are two lists with my tags. If I want to add an entry I do not want to scroll down because of a list of tags above the forms. There is already a list with my tags on the right, why have one more when I want to add an entry? If you must have the tag-list on the add-entry-page, please put it after the forms, so I do not have to scroll. It is kind of annoying.

Regards.

The tags on the add/edit page have been moved below the form. To clarify, the links on the bottom will add that tag to the form when clicked, while the tags on the right are links to each tag and are part of the standard sidebar.

http://bookmarks.linuxquestions.org/

--jeremy

OK, that's great. Are the tags searchable, or is there a reason why they are not? Saw that at least in the searchbar at the right you only search by subject. Or am I wrong?

EDIT: I just understood what those ++/-- etc was. But I am not sure if they work properly. If I pressed ++ I saw only one tag, but when I changed to -- I still only saw one tag. Should it be that way?

Regards.

1) tags are indeed searched.
2) The + and - is working as expected. When you hit + the first time it will only show tags with 2 entries for instance (more popular as the tooltip indicates).

--jeremy

Ok, but I checked the search (the one on the right, is there any more searchbars?) and I searched for the word "opensource" and only found one. Although freshmeat.net is tagged with "opensource", and it did not appear. And I then tried a search for "freshmeat" but nothing came up, maybe because freshmeat is called "freshmeat.net" and the search is not doing partial searching?

And now I saw that the -/+ works, but the reason why I thought that it did not work before was because I was using the +/- on the "Add entry" side where the number does not change.

Regards.

There is only one search, but the search is context sensitive to where you are. IE. if you are on your userpage, it only searches your entries. Try your search again from the main page.

--jeremy

Just one word: AWESOME!!!

Thanks Hammett.

--jeremy

Ok, then I know. But that thing with the +/- on the "add entry"-page, shouldn't the number change there just as it does on the right panel?

This will be fixed ASAP. Thanks for the bug report.

--jeremy

this is very cool. :cool: i don't see the link to migrate my current bookmarks, though -- has it been removed already?

one comment i would make is that -- coming from a technical writing perspective -- the help instructions in the post-beta version could be fleshed out a little and clearer for the user. for example, it gets confusing when you click the "help page" link and get sent back to the very same page. at first i was like, wtf? that first part above the "bookmarks.lq help" box that talks about dragging the bookmarklet should be integrated into the actual help, imo.

btw, what is a bookmarklet? that's explained later, but it's confusing in the beginning if you don't know what one is. the person could be looking around for a button or an icon or something. it might be better to say something like, "this link to the bookmarklet" (which i think technically might be more correct anyway?).

then when you go to drag the link, there are three of them: one to "my bookmarks," one to "post to bookmark.lq," and the "popup" post to bookmark. which one do i drag? because newbies to bm.lq are probably there for the first time, just to get help, it seems safe to assume they don't already have any bookmarks. so imo that first link shouldn't even be there. at first i thought it meant go back to my regular lq bookmarks. then when i clicked it and i went to my bk.lq page (which obviously had no bkmrks), i got even more confused about what the other links did.

it might be better if the help page were in step-by-step format to guide people through the process and get them to actually do it. "step 1: drag this link to your toolbar, or add it to your browser's bookmarks. if you want to use the popup feature instead, use this link.

step 2: when you're at a site that you want to add to your LQ Social Bookmarks, click the bookmarks.lq link that you just added to your bookmarks or toolbar.

then explain what will happen when they click the link: "you will be brought to the LQ form, enter what you want, press save, and the bookmark will be added to your LQ social bookmarks and you will be automatically brought back to the page you were on," etc. i mean, that is very cool anyway, it might as well be described so people can go, "hey, that's cool!" :D then step 3 might be where the link to your own bookmarks comes in, explaining how you can edit them, etc. step 4. migrate your current bookmarks, and so on.

also, what are tags? there is no explanation of that feature at all. i can kind of guess what they are, but what about all the ++ and --? that seems confusing and should be explained, imo.

another feedback i would give is that it perhaps seems a little counterintuitive to have to re-register and login for the bookmarks if you're already logged in to LQ. it seems to me that most people coming from LQ will probably just use their LQ identity for the bookmarks anyway. maybe that's a programming or database issue or whatever, i'm just speaking from the user's perspective.

what about the font? it's so huge! i'll have to say, that's one thing that also turned me off to the wiki. it's very jarring to go from LQ or most websites to the huge font of the wiki or bookmarks. and i have my browser set not to use other fonts! somehow it's overriding that.

anyway, this is great feature -- groundbreaking, actually. i don't know of any other site, linux related or not, that is doing this kind of shared or community bookmarks thing (though i haven't been keeping up with the blog world lately, maybe they have something?). i think it could really catch on and be big. thanks for making a great resource even better. :)

If you go to:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...okmarks.php?s=

There should be a link below each bookmark saying "Migrate to bookmarks.LQ".

I'm really not sure why it is called a bookmarklet, I can only assume because it isn't a link to static page, it changes depending on the page you are viewing.

The tags are like categories that can be used to group and search the bookmarks. I'd agree that more of this should be in the help page. jeremy, what about a quick FAQ at the bottom of the help page?

We actually looked at the fonts lately and thought any existing issues had been cleared up. Which OS/browser are you using? Is it possible for you to upload a screenshot somewhere?

okay, now i see the migrate, under each entry, thanks. i was looking for a single link to do a migrate "en masse."

here's how the fonts are looking:

lq and most of web
lq bookmarks and wiki

i'm using mozilla 1.7.8 on arch current, and ff 1.0.4 on slackware 10.1. i have all browsers set to bitstream vera sans, 12 on arch, not sure what it's set to on slack, as that's a 1400x1050 and it might be set to 14. but it's the same on each: smaller fonts for most things i go to, then i go to the wiki or bkmarks, and they're bigger.