Sunday, December 16, 2012

Easy bookmarking with your mobile device

I find myself surfen the web more and more using my iPad or my Android phone. And often I run into an interesting webpage that I want to save in my linkaGoGo account to reference it later, or to finish reading it when I have more time.

I could copy the webpage link and manually add it to linkagogo, but that is quite elaborate as you need to copy the link, then go the linkagogo Add page and paste the link and type in the title. To make this easier linkaGoGo allows you to email the web page information right into your linkaGoGo inbox folder.

Now how does this work? Well both IOS as well as Android allow you to email the webpage you have in the browser. They will automatically put the title of the web page in the subject of the email and the web address (link) as the first line of the email content. Now if you send this email to addto@linkagogo.com the webpage will automatically appear in your linkaGoGo bookmark collection. It adds the link in your linkaGoGo Inbox folder. If you don't already have an Inbox folder, it will automatically be created for you. To make sure it ends up in your linkaGoGo bookmark collection, you need to email it from the email address that you used to setup your linkaGoGo account with. If you don't remember what is in, you can look it up in your linkaGoGo account page. To get to the account page click on your username on your linkaGoGo home page.

Now besides the title and the link you can also add a description of  the link below the link in the email. You can mark keywords (tags) in the description with the # character. An example email would be like this:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Subject: linkaGoGo Home
___________________________________________________________
http://www.linkagogo.com/

The most #awesome #bookmark manager on the #internet.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

When this email is send to addto@linkagogo.com. it will create a bookmark in your linkaGoGo Inbox folder with a title "linkaGoGo Home". The url will be taken from the first line of the email (http://www.linkagogo.com/) and the description from the remaining email contents. All the # prefixed words will be added as keywords.In this case: awesome, bookmark, manager and internet. Note if you omit the description, the title will also be used for the description.

You may ask where do I find this browser email function. I'll cover this for both IOS (Iphone, Ipod touch and Ipad) as well as Android. I don't own a Windows 8 phone or a Blackberry. If anyone know how to do this on these devices feel free to add the steps in the comment section.

On IOS use the 'Mail Link to this Page' option from the  Action button at the top left of the screen on the IPad and and at the bottom on the Iphone and Ipod Touch. Once selected the following screen will appear.



The title and link are already filled out and you can add the description with keywords below the link.

With Android you need to click the Options button which will bring up the Options menu. Select the More option and from the list choose "Share Page". From the next list choose the email application you want use and now you see your email application with the subject prefilled with the title and email contains the link to the page.

Once you send the email with the link you will get a confirmation email back once it is added to your account (typically within 5 minutes). If it failed, the response email will describe what the problem is. Oh and since linkaGoGo is funded by subscriptions the feature is available for Plus (4.95 a year) and Premium members (24.95 a year).

Happy bookmarking....

GoGolian

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Change course and clean ship

It has been a while since I last posted on GoGolian. There are multiple reasons, the main one I want to say was not having time, but if I am honest it was more that I did not know what to do with my brainchild linkaGoGo.

I started linkaGoGo in April 2001. It grew originally out of my bad typing and as I always typed in bad urls. These took forever to resolve in to nothing or a website that I had no interest in. I tried to use the browser bookmarks features but got frustrated with their folder only oriented UI and the fact I used browsers on multiple machines and it was a nightmare to keep the bookmarks in sync.

Since then I added a whole bunch features that I needed in my use of linkaGoGo, which made my life a lot easier. Then I got requests from members also using linkaGoGo and added more features. Some I used as well others less.

Things changed a bit when another bookmarking website del.ico.us got bought by Yahoo. I thought I had an opportunity here and moved my focus from pure bookmarking to selling sponsored links, which worked, but caused a huge inflow of a different kind of user. People trying to promote their website by bookmarking it on every bookmarking site they could find. There are even services that allow you with one submit automatically a link to a number of website.

linkaGoGo ballooned and ended up with 1.5 million registered users and 650 million bookmarks. As a result of that I had to scale and invest to keep the service running. This year was pivotal as Google started to threaten all those folks that used linkaGoGo to promote their website to get it off some of linkaGoGo’s public pages or it would demote them in Google search result ranking, the result was I got zillions of people asking, begging and even threatening me to remove their links.

This summer I was ready to pull the plug, but then realized I would lose exactly why I started linkaGoGo. My need for a fast, convenient online bookmark manager. Pulling the plug was not an option I liked and decided to change course and clean ship. At the moment I’m in the process of focusing back linkaGoGo’s core: personal bookmarking. This has resulted in a number of changes and will continue to do more changes.

Things that have changed are that all public facing bookmarks have either a nofollow attribute on the page or the bookmark and according to Google’s policies should no longer be punished for being linked from another “non-content” related website. Still can’t believe the grand censorhip of our favorite “no-evil” search engine. Also removed all the advertising and sponsored links, unless there were running contracts, but they should be gone by September 2013. I also removed the large directory sites go/Sites and go/Directory. This had a positive impact on the load of the servers.

In the planning for the near future are a number of things. First clean out the database and only leave accounts of members that really use linkaGoGo as it was intended, by visiting their websites using their bookmarks on linkaGoGo.

Second is to remove free subscriptions, I’m still thinking about how to implement this. But basically I want to get rid of spammers and since linkaGoGo has no longer advertising income will need to increase subscription income. In the end linkaGoGo does not charge that much, only $4.95 for a Plus subscription and $19.95 for a full Premier subscription, and this is not per month, but per year. So I’m thinking of either a $.99 trial for 2 months (this will definitely get rid of spammers) or a 7 day free trial, which can then be upgraded to a Plus or Premium subscription.

 Third I also want to make the Premium subscriptions a little simpler by just providing the full Premium subscription.

Next is to upgrade the user interface, it still has the early 2000 look and it really could use a facelift. You can see an example of it on the linkaGoGo iPad page. I have also been thinking about browser plugins, made a Chrome extension prototype which look very promising.

So 2013 promises to become an exciting year for linkaGoGo. Let me know in the comments what you think of all this.

GoGolian