This & That, Ceci et Cela

If you’re like me, you probably think information is sexy. Or even worse, you realize that information is addictive and you’re always on the lookout for new pushers in places you shouldn’t be when you should be twelve-stepping towards normalcy instead. Ok, you’re not abnormal, you just always like to know stuff even if of no use whatsoever in the immediate, near, or far future. A lot of times, you literally hoard it. In fact, the only thing differentiating you from those crazy dudes with floor-to-ceiling junk in their houses that you read about is that your junk is mostly meta-junk, especially of the electronic type. Meta-junk meaning info-junk about junk, e.g. an archive of articles about or pictures of antiques/stamps/cyclones/whatever the heck it is that you find fascinating. All sitting on your computer. Unlike physical junk that may be harder to acquire (due to rarity, cost, etc.), info-junk is everywhere. And you aren’t complaining.

If that sounds like you and if you have an iota of resistance, you’d turn away now. But you haven’t, so you’re going to go on to read about one of the latest pushers:

Clipmarks - a small Firefox browser extension with a huge footprint. In the same way that you’d cut out a newspaper or magazine article to keep or show others, Clipmarks empowers you to find information online, “clip” it (select and save specific parts or all of the text or images as they appear on a webpage), archive, share, discuss with an international community, all in real time. It also allows you to simultaneously post to delicious, digg, blinklist, and magnolia. However, the ability to see new commentary on something you just clipped 2 seconds ago pop-up right before your eyes (no screen/page refresh needed) makes other social bookmarking sites look soo 1.0 or so 5 minutes ago in comparism.

What would really blast it out of orbit for me though, would be the ability to simultaneously publish to/integrate Clipmarks with your blog, especially if its a brain-clip (editorial/original content/written from scratch), and you’re not interested in having to post the same information twice.

That and a more collapsible interface; e.g. ability to remove the leftmost column and relocate its elements to appear only on-demand from top bar. That would give more screen space to actual clip content. I don’t say this just because I’m so seduced by inline/collapsible AJAX implementations. I also say it because I shy away from visual clutter and like content to take precedence so the less visible buttons/controls, the better (for me anyway).
CAVEAT EMPTOR:

Beware, for the creators/founding pushers of Clipmarks truly believe in their product. Hence you’ll find them in the sand box at all times, hollering out welcomes, being nice (most unexecutive-like behaviour given that the press isn’t looking), exchanging clips, sharing opinions.