The Outsidr

A few months ago I began beta testing a new visual search engine called SearchMe. In a nutshell, SearchMe mimics Apple’s CoverFlow format and responds to searches with tiled snapshots of webpage results. “This is an interesting and (almost) unique service offering,” I thought to myself, “but it’s inefficient for this purpose.” In the context of searching the internet, query results are theoretically going to be web pages that the searcher has not seen before. As such, presenting the user with snapshots of webpages in the search results only means that the eye has far more real estate to cover before the brain can use the data obtained. “Where this type of product might be useful,” I thought to myself, “would be some type of integration with my bookmarks.”

At the time I envisioned some kind of visual enhancement to the Zotero Firefox plug-in I use and love. This would be a much more useful implementation in my opinion; visual memory is an extremely powerful capability of the mind. While SearchMe is a counterintuitive use of visual memory (creating new visual memories will slow the path toward obtaining desired information), a visual bookmarking tool would be quite intuitive (invoke visual memory to accelerate a common function; in this case bookmarks). As is often the case, someone came along and did it much better than I would have. Enter Only2Clicks.

My Zotero-like solution where a user would capture a snapshot of a current webpage and store it locally isn’t a bad idea per se, but Only2Clicks has taken this concept a giant leap forward. The service is not a typical “solution to a nonexistent problem” as many web 2.0 offerings are these days. Instead, it provides great solutions for two very real problems people have. Those solutions are:

1. Provide one set of bookmarks accessible across all computers and mobile devices
2. Utilize visual memory for faster bookmark recognition, increasing accessibility

In a nutshell, Only2Clicks is a free service that provides users with tabbed bookmark pages containing both graphical and textual representations of bookmarks. The screenshot above speaks volumes. The tabs are equivalent to folders for standard browser bookmarks and the tiled images replace text lists.

Adding bookmarks is incredibly easy thanks to Only2Clicks’ bookmarklet. Click the bookmarklet while on any page and the following appears without the need to even visit the Only2Clicks site:

When a bookmark is added, Only2Clicks automatically creates a snapshot thumbnail of the page and adds it to the tab specified. Users may also upload their own preview image if so desired. I will say that one of the few problems I have with the current offering is that thumbnails are recreated each time a tab is loaded unless the user uploads an image. Perhaps this is to avoid an abundance of image files on Only2Clicks’ servers but I wouldn’t mind storing them locally in cache to improve load times.

Using Only2Clicks, you now have access to bookmarks from any computer. No syncing, no import / export, no hassle. What’s more, Only2Clicks provides an iPhone interface that works wonderfully on my Nokia N95 8GB NAM.

There are also a variety of additional useful features; one example being one-click sharing. Each user gets a unique page with a customizable URL where shared items appear, in tabs, for anyone to see. Once Only2Clicks adds RSS broadcasting to shared pages we’ll be in business. Of course there are some other things that I would like to see added to the service such as a search function and more versitile sorting but overall, I’m in love. Fantastic job – kudos to the Only2Clicks team.

Thanks to The Red Ferret Journal for the intro.