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Show HN: Zapmarks

zapmarks.io

35 pointsjacobgraf42 comments

Thanks for checking out Zapmarks! I created this product for myself first and foremost but I am hoping other people find it as useful as I do.

I am a developer by day and jump from device to device and browser to browser. I hated having all of my bookmarks tied to one or the other so I created Zapmarks!

Also, being a small business owner, I wear many hats and have lots of different accounts for everything. It's great coming up with a keyword in your head and knowing it will take you directly to what you want it to.

For example, I have many Google Drive accounts for different things, I have 'drive' set up to go to my personal Google Drive and 'drive2' goes to my business Google Drive. Since I know this and have built that muscle-memory, I can get directly to exactly what I need very efficiently! Here are a few other Zapmarks I use frequently, as examples...

vzw = Verizon Wireless Account budget = Google Drive Personal Budget Sheet qb = QuickBooks Online bank = Online Banking fbm = Facebook Messenger en = Evernote gh = GitHub

I have lots planned for Zapmarks! Give it a shot and let me know if you have any questions!

Best of luck to you on your project. It reminds me of aol keywords

Thank you!

Hmm, isn't this built into Firefox? Bookmarks can have keywords and they are automatically synchronized everywhere.

Yes, Firefox has bookmark keywords. I remember using these way back when, but then I moved to Chrome and I was lost. Zapmarks is cross-platform and works with any browser, that's our main advantage.

I'm curious - why is the pro membership limited to 500 zapmarks? Seems like it would be trivial to make that unlimited.

It was set at 500 as a starting point, if we find Pro users are frequently getting close to that limit, I'm sure we'll tweak things as needed!

This looks like a bookmark manager UX enhancement, and while I can understand a value of this being cross-platform, it would probably make more sense in a form of a browser extension.

Alternatively, I can see it being a "start page" sort of thing with support for efficient keyboard search, but again this doesn't strike me as something dramatically more useful than a static HTML page with Ctrl-F for search.

This basically solves a trivial problem in a somewhat overcomplicated way while creating a paid dependency on external service.

We already have a native Chrome extension to do just this, and are working on other native solutions. We also offer a number of other ways to integrate it into other platforms using simply a URL. When logged in, we have a "Tools" page which lists some of the options for integrating Zapmarks into various platforms but are working to add more as we go!

Nice! I do the same thing with custom aliases in my .bash_profile for all kinds of things, including opening various webpages, opening meditation videos on youtube and such to certain timestamps, so I think the idea has some legs. One thing I do with my aliases is have custom arguments, so like if I want to open a stock ticker on yahoo it's `yah goog` from the command line. So being able to add custom arguments might be a cool additional feature.

Good luck!

I use lots of bash aliases as well!

Yep, query strings are on our list! Thanks for checking things out!

Hmm:

- Are variables allowed in the links?

- Can you set it as the default search engine for your browser so these can just be typed into the main search bar instead of going to the Zapmarks site each time?

Firefox's built in keywords already do great for this, and I have seen https://shortmarks.com/ for other browsers. What does your site offer that those do not? They are both free options.

Variables aren't supported in the links yet, but this is definitely on our radar! We focused on keyword functionality for launch, but the search would definitely be handy as well!

Yes, you can manually change your default search engine using this url. Substitute %s for whatever your query string variable is for your device/browser.

https://zapmarks.io/u/%s?api_token=your-api-token-here

On Chrome, you can simply install our extension which allows you to type 'z {keyword}' to access your Zapmarks. Other native browser extensions are in the works as well.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zapmarks/pdomgldhp...

We have a few benefits over the competitors, like Secret Access Links which allows you to use your Zapmarks on new browsers and devices without logging in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr4dPcnrUMM

Also, we are working hard on developing lots of other ways to integrate our product into other devices and platforms, like Alfred on the Mac.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/graftechnology/zapmarks/Zapmarks.al...

Hope that answers your questions. Thanks!

Congratulations on launching Zapmarks!

I’m a big fan of bookmaking services. Having better ways of managing your saved information is important to me. I run https://trackr.sh that serves a similar goal.

Why did you pick a single keyword to identify your bookmarks? I use a similar workflow in Firefox vit found that it doesn’t scale for a lot of bookmarks. For https://trackr.sh I chose to go with a multi tag combination where you select a number of tags to narrow down your list of bookmarks.

Hijacking other person's ShowHN to promote your own project of nearly the same exact nature is not very nice, don't you think?

It certainly wasn’t my intention to hijack this post. I wanted to ask a genuine question. Personally I don’t think referring to a competing product is bad when asking for a comparison of features.

Sorry if my comment came across as self promotion!

That's business though. Do ShowHNs advertising some private company need to be ad-like by disallowing mention of competitors?

Is this like (and a competitor to) Pinboard[1]?

I love Pinboard. I was lucky to have bought the lifetime license during one of the promos.

Free App, Shiori[2] on the Desktop is an excellent companion.

1. https://pinboard.in/

2. https://shiori.apponic.com/

Kind of, but we're more focused on keywords and accessing sites very quickly where Pinboard is more an archive of links. Thanks for checking us out!

Shoiri doesn’t always work with Chrome. It doesn’t work with a lot of other browsers. It’s not dependable anymore if you’re not using the most basic or common browsers (Safari, Chrome). And whatever causes it to not work with Chrome for me sometimes.

I use either Spillo or Alfred workflows now on Mac.

I’m curious, why make users type in the keyword? They already have the links saved and are logged in. You could display them in a tile format or a list something? Seems to me like 2 steps, visit zapmarks and then type a keyword is a lot of work. That’s just my 2c, respect you have a different flow and this feels right and nice product

Tiles are awful.

If they keep the same place, now you have to manage not only the content but also the order. If they shift around according to some metric like 'most used' then you have to visually search for the correct tile.

And this is assuming that the collection is small. Otherwise paging or some other kind of grouping has to be used which is horrible.

Tiles aren't even that easy to use. They always require visually processing and then coordinating the action. With typing it's just muscle memory.

They also require some kind of image which adds another dimension the problem. Now those tiles have to look good, or be colored according to some kind of logic. This styling can also impact usability, e.g. getting the icon/logo of the site can look ugly.

Tiles make sense in a touch context environment like mobile or tablets where typing can be cumbersome. But in a desktop environment it would be a lot worse.

Thanks for the feedback. Zapmarks is definitely more focused on the keyboard than the mouse. If you have a keyword in your head, we want you to be able to type it and go. Tiles would cause you to have to look around to find what you want.

We have thought about maybe having your top 3 most-used Zapmarks appear under the search bar for quick access, but not sure if that's something we will move forward with or not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I get it. Seems very niche use case. Keyboard requirement in a mobile world. I feel like the browser bar essentially solves for it already except I have to remember the 3-4 characters to get the autocomplete to fill in. But at least I don’t have to configure it either. My idea of tiles is like a phone/tablet where I could order it myself and learn the placement through muscle memory. Scanning by eye is much easier than typing and remembering what keywords I set up. I can hardly remember my passwords.

Anyways not raining on you’re parade. It’s a cool concept just doesn’t fit the use case I’d prefer. Best of luck with it!

Did you look at https://www.golinks.io?

Looks good. I have too many bookmarks for this. Might be interested if you can add folders and ways to access them for infrequently used items.

I miss foxmarks. I pay for another service, but you have to log in at least once. Firefox accounts and thus bookmarks are blocked at work.

I typically remember at least one or two keywords about any site I visit. Usually, typing these into the URL bar will turn up the desired website as a suggested result in Chrome.

Yes, most of the time this might work, but it also might not. With Zapmarks you know exactly what you're getting because if the keyword doesn't match, it doesn't work. One example would be my Google Drive example, I have multiple accounts and deep link to each of them using their own keyword (drive, drive2, drivepersonal, etc) I know if I type that keyword, I will get right there.

With suggested results, you might get to the main Drive account but then will have to go through a series of steps to "switch accounts" to whatever account you're looking to access.

This is one of the big differences. Thanks for checking us out!

The keyword idea would be a great fallback for the existing "suggested URL" function in Chrome.

I think it works as intended about 95% of the time. It'd be nice to be able to add to a simple Map<Keyword, Url> table that the "suggested URL" feature can use as a fallback.

Your copy is really bad. I have no idea what your product does after looking at the website. Maybe I would if I watched the video, but I'm not going to watch the video.

This is harshly worded but completely true. Until I reluctantly watched the video, I had no idea what the product was. I wouldn't rely only on the video and I wouldn't invite sign-up before telling people what they were actually signing up for.

Thanks for the feedback! We'll definitely look to improve on that. It's a hard concept to convey in text. Most people don't get it until they are shown, that's why we did the video, but we'll look at other ways to help people "get it" when they first visit our site. Thanks!

Try an autoplaying silent video without interface. Or an animated GIF.

Isn't the description right next to the video?

----

What are Zapmarks? Zapmarks are custom keywords, used to get you right to your favorite websites.

in Firefox I can sync my bookmarks everywhere. Bookmarks can be easily accessed using *<keyword> format

Yep, but Zapmarks is browser-agnostic which is a main feature.

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How's this different from syncing host files between machines?

You can't sync a host file to an iPhone.

That's just one example, but at the core, that's the difference. You could access Zapmarks on your Kindle browser or your refrigerators smart display if you really wanted to.

I guess so, although I'm not that avid of a phone user.

In either case, most of the time when I type "n" I get HN or "m" for mail and so forth. I can't really see a good use case for this.

That's another difference. With Zapmarks, there is no "most of the time". If you type a keyword you have set up, and hit enter, you will get exactly to where you wanted to be 100% of the time. Once you've got the keywords baked into your brain, accessing them from everywhere is very handy!

This is the same as AOL Keywords, welcome back :)

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