Web bookmarks are badly in need of an overhaul. Sure, they’re fine for jumping to the dozen or so sites you visit on a daily basis, but they quickly become unwieldy whenever they’re used for research purposes. Folders of bookmarked job listings or apartment openings on Craigslists become practically useless as you frequently need to revisit them to remind yourself why you bookmarked them in the first place.
Tonight sees the launch of SimplyBox, a San Francisco-based startup that allows users to clip portions of websites in a visual way, overcoming some of the shortcomings of traditional bookmarks. SimplyBox is currently available as plugins for Internet Explorer and Firefox, with a Safari version on the way. The site will go live at 6 PM PST tonight.
To use SimplyBox, you hit the “Box and Save” button in the browser toolbar, which turns your mouse arrow into a targeting cursor and displays a series of “boxes” at the bottom of the screen. After highlighting the portion of the page you’d like to save for later, you drag it into the box you’d like to store it in. The whole process is very intuitive and only takes a few seconds.
Clicking on the toolbar’s SimplyBox logo brings you to your profile page, where you can access and sort through each of your boxes. Clippings appear as large images that clearly show their contents, and can be displayed in a desktop view (where you can drag them around), a list view, or a grid. Users can also add comments to each of the snippets.
In practice, the plugin seems to work well, especially when conducting research across a number of sites. For example, house hunters could easily use the service to keep track of the homes they’re interested in, clipping photos and summaries for future reference. The site also allows users to share their boxes with friends, so they collaborate on a single project. Finally, the toolbar includes a “box and send” function that sends snippets in Emails as image files.
SimplyBox’s biggest flaw is that its snippets are simple images – they don’t retain any of the functionality of their original source. If you were to snap a clip of a YouTube video, it would only appear as an image, and you’d have to visit the linked page to see the video itself. That said, it’s still a big improvement over simple bookmarks.
There are a number of other “clipping” tools available, including Sazell, Diigo, and to some extent, Safari’s Webclip.
Cant load the site. What is up Simply?
They say they’ll be live at 6PM tonight
there is simply nothing on that page……
Evernote has the bookmark overhaul pretty well covered.
Saw a company at DEMOgala last week demoing a clipping service that shows live content (not just images) — Orchestr 8 or something like that
Also trying to get it to load, maybe too much traffic. In meantime, Microsoft has something I find more powerful and intuitive (it does capture metadata etc. for example) though it’s only a prototype. “Research Desktop” http://tinyurl.com/3lc8ev
is this like MSFT OneNote?
And why should we care?
And what IS the business model? (and should care about that?)
Jing is great for clipping. UI is totally transparent, it’s cross platform, free, works with anything you see on your screen (not just Web content) and suffers from the same lack of metadata as SimplyBox.
Its possible that the bookmarking market can now segment. Maybe reporters will like to use simplybox for its ability to store images and links, while programmers prefer Jing for picture commenting, and academics will use something else.
I’ve definitely suffered with the job/apartment problem, but I hope that’s not their niche. There’s certainly a pain there, but there’s also a high acquisition cost for customers who only need your service for a limited time. Also, people who are moving between jobs/homes probably aren’t all that easy to monetize.
been using clipmarks for a while now. It helped me while taking php 5 tests online. I has able to clip all the questions to study them later. Very useful.
http://www.clipmarks.com/
Interesting idea for cropping web pages but as you say the content’s media type should not be lost in tansition. Sazell provides support for the content’s underlying media type e.g. videos are playable inside the snapshot widget.
There is a Snipping Tool from Microsoft that does exactly the same thing. What i’d like to see is the snippet retaining its functionality. Like if I snipped a real-time stock quote, i want that real time to continue functioning. That’ll be cool.
Microsoft Snipping Tool does not link you back to what you snipped; not quite the same…
I downloaded the application and started using it this evening and I have yet to see something this easy to use for grabbing and sharing pieces of content from the web.
One of the Seedcamp Finalists, deepmemo, is also doing something like this. Might be worth a look: http://www.deepmemo.com/
Evernote is also a fantastic tool.
The software is asy to use, easy to install and works flawlessly. Amazingly helpful for storing and finding information. SimplyAmazing!
Thank you miss SimplyBox VP of Marketing. Now can we just draw attention to the fact that their numerous addons that do this or similar for firefox:
I like Fireshot and Scrapbook.
SimplyBox should be called SimplyS*x. I’ve tried it 2 times and it’s crashed my FF browser each time. (Thank goodness for the recover tabs function.) And I would have no idea how to use it if it weren’t for Jason’s description. Intriguing concept, but the product and marketing execution has much to be desired. Moving on…
Wow, doing the selection portion of this kills my CPU. The drag is really slow. (and it killed Pandora…I LIKE Pandora. Why do you want to kill it?)
Oh well, cute toy but not yet ready for the real world.
=C=
The social (sharing) part looks interesting/promising, but I’m not so sure about the annotation bit. How many photos do we annotate?
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Zotero yet, the greatest tool for academic research!
Cool app and I liked the sharing stuff, but I’m going to wait for Safari support.
This is very cool…but needs work. It stalls my powebook numerous times.
Great idea!!!
the clipta.com toolbar keeps your video searches organized. Its simple and allows you to download the videos you like to your computer. You can then upload them anywhere.