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Wagbee - for when your projects have seasons.
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Posted by Ken
Jun 1, 2016 at 04:12 PM
bobmclain wrote:
>I sure do miss the days of
>ugly but information-rich websites for projects like these…
I miss them as well. I work for an agency that used to keep tons of reports and information available on our web site for the public, but we recently “updated” it and they pulled approximately 90% of that information saying that they only want to keep what is popular and mobile friendly. I can understand making that content front and center, but did they really need to delete the other information. A select number of people find that information useful, and I am sure would have been willing to dive deeper into the site to obtain it. Instead, they just removed it.
With all of these minimalist web sites being FOTM, I feel that we are entering the middle ages of data and knowledge storage, and that is not a good thing. As a student of history and architecture, I was always fascinated that we had the ability to build vaulted brick structures until approximately the 6th century, and then that knowledge/technique was essentially lost until approximately the 13th century when Gothic architecture began to appear. I always thought that knowledge was cumulative and that we always built on what we knew, but I am no longer surprised when knowledge is lost, and seeing these new minimalist sites void of any data just reminds me again how this could be possible in a day and age when storage has never been more affordable an people have drives in their homes that can store terabytes of data. It seems that one should never confuse quality with quantity.
—Ken
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Jun 1, 2016 at 04:16 PM
Ken wrote:
>Perhaps I am just starting to show my age with a preference for a web
>site with information, but I just find it hard in this day and age to
>keep handing out my email address just to obtain basic information? I
>am glad to hear that he is an accomplished developer, and perhaps the
>site is attractive to his target audience, but I just do not have the
>bandwidth for researching a program that I am not even sure that I need.
> I do wish him luck and hope that he is able to reach his target market.
>
On the Sign Up page, there is a link at the bottom to “Discover”.
You get a blank space, a menu, etc. Not sure what to do with it though.
I was able to open the Discover WagBee sheet with some information on it, but it is still buggy.
Pierre
Posted by Slartibartfarst
Jun 2, 2016 at 01:11 AM
Several of the cautionary/negative comments in this thread seem to be backed up by a visit to the website at https://wagbee.com/ - that is apparently also what is laughingly described as the “About” page as well.
The dearth of information about the service/product is hardly enlightening and presumably is not accidental (but one can never know what might have been in the mind of the page’s creator at the time).
Looking around at the “Discover” page (https://wagbee.com/c/incoming) seems to be even less enlightening. The only certain thing there seems to be a somewhat unfriendly TOS (Terms Of Service), but at least they are published up front.
My suggestion would be that, if you need to save web snapshots/pages, clippings, attached documents and files and notes on same, then put them in something like, for example:
1. Scrapbook: I give this web page searchable archiving tool a 5-star rating and have used it for years.
It is a Firefox-only extension which saves web snapshots/pages, clippings, attached documents and files and notes on same. Saved to the client in standard searchable html files. Web pages are copied faithfully.
However, Mozilla seems to be progressively disabling/killing Firefox, so I’m unsure whether Scrapbook could be recommended as a safe long-term option now.
Note that Scrapbook and Zotero (see below) both can provide the most faithful copying of web pages. That’s because they both use WebPageDump (http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/user/pollak/webpagedump/) for achieving pretty faithful captures of web pages and associated embedded links and meta-data.
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2. Zotero: I give this PIM a 5-star rating having trialled it for about 2 years.
Comes as a combined client and web-based storage servicem integrated with a stand-alone client tool that is a rather useful PIM (Personal Information Manager). Collection tools are extensions available for browsers - Firefox, IE, Opera, Chrome.
Blurb from the website at Zotero.com is a pretty accurate description:
Zotero is the only research tool that automatically senses content in your web browser, allowing you to add it to your personal library with a single click. Whether you’re searching for a preprint on arXiv.org, a journal article from JSTOR, a news story from the New York Times, or a book from your university library catalog, Zotero has you covered with support for thousands of sites.
Store anything: Zotero collects all your research in a single, searchable interface. You can add PDFs, images, audio and video files, snapshots of web pages, and really anything else. Zotero automatically indexes the full-text content of your library, enabling you to find exactly what you’re looking for with just a few keystrokes.
Note that Zotero and Scrapbook (see above) both can provide the most faithful copying of web pages and associated embedded links and meta-data. That’s because they both use WebPageDump (http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/user/pollak/webpagedump/) for achieving pretty faithful captures of web pages.
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3. Wezinc: I give this PIM a 4-star rating so far - it would be 5-star but I am still currently trialling it. It may become my preferred option.
Still under development and in beta, this PIM seems likely to challenge a lot of the older approaches. It is a PIM and GTD tool which also captures web content, files, attachments, images, notes on same, etc. It integrates with te Clipboard and also has a very nifty capability to mind-map any information collected. Well worth a look-see.
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I should perhaps point out here that what I describe as my “21st century Zettelkasten” (Refer: Microsoft OneNote - how to make it your 21st century Zettelkasten PIM. - https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=31755.msg393032#msg393032), OneNote is NOT the best tool for capturing entire pages for archive of of web content, so I only use it for capturing relevant web page snippets, embedded links and metadata into my notes.
Posted by MenAgerie
Jun 2, 2016 at 11:27 AM
Thanks for this Slartibartfast, I have used Zotero for years as my sole repository of scholarly references - it integrates nicely with Word for academic papers. I also store loads of pdfs in it - mostly to keep them associated with the bibliographical reference rather than as a way of using them for research work. I tried using it as a PIM, but never got it to work smoothly for me. Thus I was interested to hear that you use it for this purpose…could you give a brief rundown of how you use it - to inspire me to get me started down that road once again?
I also have Wezinc, and find its ability to suck emails out of GMail [despite Google’s security objections notwithstanding], along with the mindmapping aspect, very useful. Overall though I seem to have settled with the pure .txt benefits of ZimWiki, for the bulk of my notetaking and research storage [weblinks and snippets only].
Posted by Slartibartfarst
Jun 5, 2016 at 07:06 AM
MenAgerie wrote:
Thanks for this Slartibartfast, I have used Zotero for years as my sole repository of scholarly references - it integrates nicely with Word for academic papers. I also store loads of pdfs in it - mostly to keep them associated with the bibliographical reference rather than as a way of using them for research work. I tried using it as a PIM, but never got it to work smoothly for me. Thus I was interested to hear that you use it for this purpose…could you give a brief rundown of how you use it - to inspire me to get me started down that road once again?
I also have Wezinc, and find its ability to suck emails out of GMail [despite Google’s security objections notwithstanding], along with the mindmapping aspect, very useful. Overall though I seem to have settled with the pure .txt benefits of ZimWiki, for the bulk of my notetaking and research storage [weblinks and snippets only].
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In answer, as I wrote:
My suggestion would be that, if you need to save web snapshots/pages, clippings, attached documents and files and notes on same, then put them in something like, for example:
1. Scrapbook ...
2. Zotero ...
3. Wezinc ...
I was not attempting to discuss their potential as PIMs. That would be a wholly different post.
So far, the most useful PIM I have is described here:
Microsoft OneNote - how to make it your 21st century Zettelkasten PIM. - https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=0jmua047unft36lrnn30sbgp27&topic=31755.msg393032#msg393032