Alexander Robotics

The Problem

I consume information. Gobs of it.

My bookmark directory structure had turned into a mess. With this robot project, I knew I must implement an organization strategy to tame my online information. These past few days, I set out to do just that: organize my bookmarks.

The Options

I first tried Evernote, thanks to the great word of mouth it has going for it. Evernote has a sleek, almost seductive interface, allowing you to search and organize all the content you post. Despite this, I had a few problems with some of Evernote’s approaches:

1. Insecure - I’m more paranoid about this than some, but the fact that all my notes and yours are online in plaintext, indexed, and accessible by some system administrator worries me.

2. Too much - Evernote can store everything: audio notes, pictures, to-do lists. Though executed nicely, the app feels like it does too much.

3. YAC - This applies to just about any service other than Google and GitHub for me — Yet Another Cloud my information is stored in.

Evernote’s web clip extensions inspired my next direction. Instead of organizing bookmarks, which are simply URLs and a brief description, the entire page should be indexed and searchable. I set out to convert all of my bookmarked web pages to PDF using Web2PDF.

After the web pages are saved, they need to be stored somewhere and accessible anywhere. Three choices came to mind: Google Docs, Dropbox, and Git.

Google Docs now supports file upload for any content type. I could upload the PDF to Google Docs and use their search service to index. Whoa, didn’t I just list Storing as Plaintext as an issue for Evernote? Yes, I know the double standard, but Google is battle hardened.

DropBox is beautiful in its seamlessness with the operating system. With the service, I can create a DropBox account within my file system and simply drop the saved PDFs inside. DropBox has the advantage of encrypted files and the content being accessible on my iPhone.

Git paired with a remote host is an alternative. My issue with Git is accessibility on a mobile device, though the various web front-ends help. There’s also the same security concerns if going with a third-party hosted Git solution.

The Solution

Screw it. Just google what I want.

I started down the path of saving my bookmarked pages as PDFs, annotating them with URL information, then storing files in a directory structure to either upload in Google Docs, save in DropBox, or commit to Git. I ended up deleting every single one of my bookmarks and quit bookmarking altogether.

The conclusion came when deciding where to save the PDFs. The content did not fit into a nice hierarchy. Does an article about an artificially intelligent robot belong in the AI or robotics directory? The second realization was most of the bookmarks are outdated, whether the content itself is outdated or the content no longer applies to me.

I came to the conclusion Google is already indexing my online content for me. If I want to find the instructions for an L293D motor controller on Instructables, I can search for just that and voila.