Monday, June 15, 2020

Evolution of bookmarking apps

Can't believe there was a time when I used the bookmarking app called Delicious. At that time (2008?), Delicious was already a very 'smart' app, and I sort of felt proud about being a user while many of my friends were still relying on the browser's built-in bookmarking function (which, of course, is not very versatile).

And then a few years ago (can't remember the exact time), Delicious sunsetted, and I had to find an alternative. Eventually, I settled for Diigo which, at that time, I found even better than Delicious, as Diigo, which functioned as a Chrome extension, allowed for multiple tagging. 

But then a few days ago, when I found out about the functionality of raindrop.io, I surrendered to it instantly. I even took the trouble of exporting all my Diigo bookmarks and imported them into Raindrop.io.

Which might suggest that app developers should not expect much loyalty from their users in this era of fast and fierce competitions.

Specifically I have fallen for Raindrop.io because:


  • its Chrome extension is easier to use than that of Diigo; 
  • Diigo is trying to include too many things (e.g., Outliners) other than bookmarking; 
  • Raindrop.io makes it easy to create themed collections from bookmarks which can be shared with others; for example, I can create a collection of useful websites on screencasting, and share this collection as one URL; and 
  • with Raindrop.io, it's not just websites that I can bookmark; I can upload my pics, pdfs, docs, etc., which will be turned into URLs which I can bookmark and put in Collections. In other words, in one Collection URL, I can share useful websites and my teaching resources on a certain topic; and most importantly ...
  • the free version is good enough for my purposes. 


https://raindrop.io/

ChatGPT and Being a Guide on the Side

 自從有了ChatGPT, 在課堂中一些以前我會主動解釋的概念,現時間中我會請學員即時問ChatGPT, 其中一個目的,是讓學員看到如果是純知識,他們其實不用我去告訴他們,我亦希望借此培養他們的主動求知的精神。 這並不表示我備課變得輕鬆了,只是我的心思變為集中在設計一課的Lear...