Subscribe to RSS feed

splitbrain.org - electronic brain surgery since 2001

Google as Browser History

When was the last time you said: “Damned, I read something about it a few weeks ago but I can't remember on which website”? This happens frequently to me. I usually bookmark everything I might find useful someday but of course you can't bookmark every site you visit. Or can you?

Google recently announced their own bookmarking service. AFAIK not many people use it. The bookmarks are private only, so there is no social component and services like del.icio.us are much more popular. But there is one thing you can't get on del.icio.us: The world's biggest search index. When searching your bookmarks at Google it does not only search the title, description and tags you entered, but uses it's search index, too.

So how does this solve the problem? Well, imagine a Firefox extension which will automatically bookmark each page you visit at Google. Voilá - there it is: your personal view on the internet restricted to only the things you have seen already. When ever you need to refind a page you've visited once, just search your Google bookmarks.

The gBrain preferences Sounds good doesn't it? The only thing missing is the Firefox extension which does it. No longer. I just read some tutorials and built my first very own firefox extension called gBrain. So far it works but it still needs some work.

Because that's so Web 2.0, I hereby announce the first private Beta of gBrain. :-) If you like a copy just drop me a mail.

Update: Now in public beta

Tags:
gbrain,
bookmarking,
history,
firefox,
extension
Similar posts:
Posted on Monday, May the 1st 2006 (4 years ago).

Comments?

1
why gbrain.xpi does not install automatically? most probably because your http server sends wrong mime type for extension .xpi.
(see http://www.splitbrain.org/proj … cts/gbrain)
2006-05-13 21:04:09
slim
2
Well it uses "Content-Type: application/x-xpinstall" which should be correct. The problem is probably the "Content-Disposition: attachment" header which is added by DokuWiki's media handler.
I'm waiting to get the extension accepted at http://addons.mozilla.org which will solve the problem anyway.
2006-05-13 21:40:19
3
Hi Andi,

A great idea for an extension, and thanks very much for it.  I was just wondering, would it be possible for it to always use the same Google a/c to bookmark to? Just that at the moment it seems to ignore whichever a/c is set in GBrain preferences, and use whichever a/c is logged into. As I switch between a couple of accounts regularly, I tend to get my browser history scattered across several accounts.

Thanks
Brendan
2006-09-22 15:56:43
Brendan
4
Brendan, no this isn't possible currently. The gBrain extension only tries to relogin if storing a bookmark fails. This is to be nice to Google. To achieve what you want gBrain would need to send two request per visited page (one for login, one for storing the bookmark) - I don't want to hammer Google more than needed.
2006-09-24 12:44:30
5
Hi Andi,

I agree that that wouldnt work too well, as everytime you browse to a page and its automatically bookmarked, it would log out of whichver Google a/c is currently logged in. But would it be possible to maintain a different cookie state for this extension, which would correspond to one Google a/c? I've no idea how to do this, but it seems to be possible, as the GMail Manager extension (http://www.longfocus.com/firef … /gmanager/) allows you to be logged into several GMail accounts simultaneously. Also the Cookiepie extension (http://nektra.com/oss/firefox/ … cookiepie/) also seems to allow independent cookies for different tabs. Again, I've no idea how this would work for an extension, but I think it might be possible.
Thanks
Brendan
2006-09-25 14:29:12
Brendan
6
Thanks for the pointers. This sounds like a feasable idea. I will have a look at those extensions, no promises or timescale, though ;-)
2006-09-25 20:08:32
7
Sure... No promises taken or timescale expected:) It would be great though. Thanks again.
2006-09-26 23:54:10
Brendan
8
(edit of the previous comment, sorry)

I really like gbrain but I would also like to be able to tags my bookmarks manually WITHOUT gbrain removing my tags ... are you sure this can't be done ?

PS : I have also posted this question on the google bookmarks group here : http://groups.google.com/group … 56dee7e20e
2006-10-18 21:18:03
Pierre
CAPTCHA

No HTML allowed. URLs will be linked with nofollow attribute. Whitespace is preserved.