Thing #18 - Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

Discovering Web 2.0 tools is what we've been doing this entire time, but we've obviously barely dipped our toes in the water. I didn't get very far down the list before discovering Clipmarks. It's not surprising this caught my attention, because I've been playing around with Google Notebook, but I'm a bit frustrated with some things about it. A tool that assists me in clipping, saving, organizing, and sharing web information could really help me out. I'm going to explore and use this some, then I'll complete this post.

Well, now I've explored Clipmarks for part of Friday and all day Saturday and I'm really frustrated. Not only have I not found my perfect and forever new 2.0 tool, I could have spent all of those hours playing with a wonderfully useful tool had I chosen better. But, therein lies the paradox. You don't really know what you're going to love until you invest enough time in it to find out whether or not it meets your needs! Reminds me of all those years I spent dating...

Clipmarks is a good concept. Instantly clip and share useful or interesting things found during web browsing. That's a great thing, because there's always something cool. The problems I've found are these:

1. You cannot "share" more than 1000 words, though you can save more privately for personal veiwing. Seems like a lot of words until you start saving them! So, why not just use social bookmarking instead? But, I think the articles are archived or copied for viewing even if the website is no longer maintained, though I'm not positive about that.
2. The clip viewer size is limited to three choices, so I couldn't make it as large as I preferred for my own viewing. You can, however, click to go to the original web page.
3. The help menu stinks. It isn't searchable or comprehensive.
4. It isn't as versatile as Google Notebook for my purposes, but it's easier (seemed more reliable because I can't get GN to appear every time I need it - probably user error but I haven't found the solution yet) to use overall.
5. It isn't intuitive and again, the help menu stinks.

I haven't given up on Clipmarks yet due to the time invested in it, but if it works out the way those former boyfriends did, I'll be kicking myself!

Update: I tried four times to get the two small paragraphs I clipped from a web page to show correctly in the viewer. For some bizzarre reason, it kept chopping off part of what I'd clipped, even though it was under the 1000 word limit. I think there's a glitch somewhere. Of course, this issue isn't addressed anywhere in the "help" menu. Interstingly enough, though you're limited to a very few 1000 words, pictures don't appear to count as anything. I saw one post that contained eight. Go figure.

I won't be using this in my library.