Collections: Easiest way to collect, organize and share anything with anyone

muratmutlu 13 years ago |

I noticed that Jolicloud launched something similar the other day if anyone wants to compare https://drive.jolicloud.com

tonyx 13 years ago | |

We actually checked out Jolicloud when they launched. Kudos to them that they have built a stunningly beautiful product. Our focus however is less on giving you one place to view all of your content but much more on organizing them, sharing them and making sense of them.

armansu 13 years ago | |

Jolicloud is great! Collections (circa Dec'12) did the same, but as a native desktop app. Our current focus is not about bringing all your services together in one place (however, you still can do that), but to efficiently collect links/files from anywhere, organize them and sharing the collections you curated.

dutchbrit 13 years ago |

Alright, there's one more thing I'd like to say, feedback wise.

If I add a webpage, and that webpage changes url, or gets removed for whatever reason, that page also automatically seems to get lost in collections.me - adding a snapshot/saving of that page on collecting would be great.

I also tried doing this for an image on my server. I removed the image, but I still see it (which is good). I wonder however if the image has been saved, or if it's just a cache in your webkit viewer?

Ps. Please don't take all my feedback as negativity. What you've built is a great start! Well done.

armansu 13 years ago | |

Thanks for feedback! Yeah, currently we are only saving the top 1440x900px snapshot of the webpage. As for other files, we store it on our servers as long as they're under 20Mb.

dutchbrit 13 years ago |

I actually wanted to build something similar, since I spread things through bookmarks, files in my Downloads folder & links in my emails. I'm a very hectic person and needed something like this!

However, it just doesn't work here it seems. Shift+cmd+c'ed a webpage, and Collections did mention it put that item into my inbox. However, when I went to my inbox, nothing was there. Tried again, same problem. Clicking on the plus button at the bottom of the app didn't do anything either, I was hoping I could add something manually instead... Running on 1.8.3 here. :(

dutchbrit 13 years ago | |

Follow-up: On restarting the app, the item was in my inbox, and new items also went to my inbox. However, I'm still not able to use the + button - I assume that's (annndddd it crashed) there so I can manually add an item?

What's the ETA for a mobile app? This is obviously a HUGE must ;)

armansu 13 years ago | | |

Thanks for feedback! The fact that collected items didn't show up immediately in the inbox in your case is definitely some kind of the bug which we will look into. '+'/'-' buttons are actually for creating new collections and removing existing ones respectively. We will definitely make it more intuitive.

dutchbrit 13 years ago | | |

New collections aren't created when clicking on the plus button. When clicking on the minus button however, they are removed (so the minus does work). If you can't replicate the issue, feel free to shoot me an email (see my profile). I can give you remote access to see for yourself/test/debug.

armansu 13 years ago | | |

Got it, will fix it tomorrow ;)

armansu 13 years ago | | |

Regarding the ETA for the mobile app, we don't have anything to announce at this moment, but will keep you updated.

shurcooL 13 years ago |

I've watched the video, it intrigued me and left me with these questions: Can you put an item in multiple collections at once? Can a collection be inside another collection?

armansu 13 years ago | |

Thanks! We used to support nested collections and 'single item - multiple collections' in the intermediate versions, but decided to disable it for the overall simplicity of the v1. We'll bring it back when/if many users really want it.

aw3c2 13 years ago | | |

you won't be able to tell if they do. only the loudest dogs bark. if you cannot use a feature how can you know if you really need it. vice versa, if it does not exist, how do you know you don't "need" it. life was fine without smartphones and Facebook too.

armansu 13 years ago | | |

True. But we think that overall simplicity (not feature completeness) should be the driving principle when you're starting out. Educating your users step by step. If you give new users Facebook in its current form, they would have no idea how to use it ;)

notlisted 13 years ago | | |

Let this noisy wheel add a little squeak... I would (could) not use it without the option to store a URL in multiple bins. I use both nested folders and "aliases" right now... (drag and option-cmd-drag weblocs into one or more folders on my desktop)

Matsta 13 years ago |

I tried the app out of the other day. I'm not sure if its still in beta, but the app lacks a lot of polish. And as of typing this it just crashed.

Definitely has potential though, but I might wait a little while to I consider using it again.

armansu 13 years ago | |

Thank you! We'll work hard to make it better!

george88b 13 years ago |

Looks great! This is definitely useful. Only two things, when I go to add a service, dropbox is not appearing as an option for me. Also, it was not immediately clear to me how I would delete a collections folder. I kept trying to right click the icon in the left panel but I now see that if I click My Collections there is a minus botton at the bottom.

armansu 13 years ago | |

Thank you! We disabled Dropbox and Gmail for now, we'll put them back when our integration is more reliable. You can delete collections with 'Delete' key or '-' button at the bottom of the screen. But agreed we should definitely make UI for this more obvious.

urza 13 years ago |

Hmm looks interesting.

I have a question: does it actually download the content I bookmark or is it just links? For example, does it download the youtube video to my local folder or is it just link to the video and if I would want to see it next year, I will have to hope the video is still there?

armansu 13 years ago | |

If the local file you're collecting is under 20Mb, we're storing it on our servers. Regarding youtube videos, as for now - they're gone from Collections if they are deleted from Youtube. We're thinking of doing something about it though ;)

troymc 13 years ago |

Question: Does Collections expose any developer interfaces? I can imagine a whole ecosystem of apps/plugins that build on it: alternate visual presentations, data mining, sync, bulk transfer, backup, advanced search, etc.

tonyx 13 years ago | |

Hi troymc,

Interesting idea. We might look into that sometimes. Our current focus is on delivering a great experience to end users so we are integrating services ourselves one at a time. Don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. :)

ISeemToBeAVerb 13 years ago |

Looks cool. One question though; you say "share anything with anyone", does that mean I can clip text, links and images from anywhere on the web, or only from the services you mention on the landing page?

armansu 13 years ago | |

Thanks! You can definitely collect links from Chrome/Safari, just press Cmd+Shift+C. Unfortunately, we don't support clipping text and images from the web. Yet :)

whynotbalu 13 years ago |

Looks amazing, I need to upgrade from 10.6 as well :( I noticed on the site that the "Download for free" button at the bottom says "10.7 and above", which needs to be corrected?

armansu 13 years ago | |

Thanks! Just updated the subtitle for the footer download button to reflect that. Our next short term goal is to make the app Lion-compatible.

whynotbalu 13 years ago | | |

Awesome, thanks! Can't wait to use it!

malandrew 13 years ago |

Any plans to add Pinboard integration? (I reckon Pinterest integration would also be relevant)

muneeb 13 years ago |

Oh man, now I'll have to update OS X just to try it out!

armansu 13 years ago | |

We definitely want to support Lion really soon. But, yeah, upgrading to OSX 10.8 might be faster :)

halkazzar 13 years ago | | |

ai ai ai!!! I am on MacOS 10.6 still... i know i know, i need upgrade :-P

est 13 years ago |

previous https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4919287

armansu 13 years ago | |

This was the beta for the December 2012 version - a viewer which let you browse the content from your online services in a single place.

cabbeer 13 years ago |

Anything like this for windows?

armansu 13 years ago | |

Working on it!

jjb123 13 years ago |

was just wanting something like this about a month ago. well done guys.

armansu 13 years ago | |

Thank you!

antoniuschan99 13 years ago |

sick!