My New Obsession...Ma.gnolia BlinkList
I have realized something about myself in the last few weeks...I'm fickle. And I apologize for this. Why it took me so long to realize, I don't know. On the other hand, maybe I'm not fickle! Maybe I can just admit when I find a superior application. I believe the superior program I have found is BlinkList. I know I went on and on about Ma.gnolia in this post, My New Obsession... Ma.gnolia. Then one day I received this comment:
Mike said...I left this response:
May I ask what made you go with Ma.gnolia vs. BlinkList? We are always hard at work on making our service better and better and I would greatly appreciate your feedback.
annie said...I never received a response from Mike, which I didn't care for, since he said he would appreciate feedback. But, we all have a life, and perhaps his took over. After waiting for a response, I went ahead and tested BlinkList.
@Mike, In all fairness, I have not tried BlinkList. It was brought to my attention a few days before your comment! I have been looking at it, and have an account. So, I will do a comparison to Ma.gnolia. What I have found so far that I like...the way it displays the links on a page. This seems faster than Ma.gnolia. I absolutely love the cloud and the fact I can display it on my blog. I will be looking into that, and it may be the deal breaker. I haven't looked much further...my time is getting away from me lately, but I will get into the goodies of BlinkList as time permits. Does it save the page as Ma.gnolia does, even if the page goes down? That is a feature that I like. Another feature Ma.gnolia has is 'Ma.gnolia Roots' which I find handy and fun, with the little badge displaying the number of times that page has been marked on your site. And, last, but not least, I love the easy feel of Ma.gnolia. The layout is easy on the eyes. BlinkList is close, but doesn't quite hit the "Zen-ness" of Ma.gnolia. I will look at them both, and decide which features are more important to me. I do feel that BlinkList is in the same ballpark as Ma.gnolia. It will be close.
To answer to my questions...
- I don't think it saves the page as Ma.gnolia does - a feature I love, but may be only something to slow down the site. And BlinkList is much faster than Ma.gnolia. In the scheme of things, I would rather have speed over saved pages. If the page is that important, I usually copy it myself.
- I like the way the links are displayed on the page on BlinkList. There are more per page and you can readily see how many 'blinks' it has. A blink is when someone bookmarks that page.
- It does not have a feature similar to 'Roots' in Ma.gnolia. As cute as that is, it is really only a novelty...eye candy. I like the magnolia flower.
- I still don't believe it carries the Zen feel of Ma.gnolia, but it does not have a busy feeling either. It has a simple design that is intuitive and easy to move around in.
One feature it has that I absolutely love is the 'Cloud'. I can't help it. I love clouds. To me they are such a great way to get around. Now I have two clouds on my blog. One That is for BlogU labels only, and clicking on a word in the cloud will open a page with all the posts with that label. The other, which presently is located in my footer, is for all my bookmarks, and clicking on a word there will open a page with all my bookmarks labeled with that word.
OK. My vote is in for BlinkList. I have moved my bookmarks from ma.gnolia to BlinkList and am quite pleased with it so far.
Labels:
BlinkList,
Navigation,
Web2.0
18 Comments:
Dear Gadget Guru (Annie),
Do you know of any way to get a localized weather report, preferably all text, on my blog? I want the size to be 200px by 200px or smaller- and therein lies the problem with online solutions I've found- they're all too wide.
I've tried various sites which supposedly show feeds on your site, but they just show the title with a link, just like blogger's feed widget does. I could use a feed if I could get the actual CONTENTS of the feed to show (that would be the weather report).
Any ideas??
HELLO! You've got feeds showing the content right down there under "blogs on blogging!"
/rushes off to see about del.icio.us
@alice, how about a 120 x 60 from netWeather?
Yes, I will check it out! Thanks. Haven't quite finished with that delicious business yet... other stuff in the way, you know.
Thank you very much Annie :)
It could have a small generic weather type image, that'd be ok too. Like a sun, rain clouds, etc. As long as the whole is small-ish, and images are generic.
@alice, I found the most perfect thing from my friend, Hans. Wheather Repoort Widget
Thank you so much for the two you pointed me to. I don't know how you do it. I'd looked for a couple hours and was quite disgusted with it all because all I could find were much too large.
I still don't know how you got the actual content of those feeds to show on your blog.
Anyway. The two weather thingys you showed me work perfectly. Thanks. :)
Hi there,
I am so excited to hear that you are loving BlinkList! Sorry about having missed your comment.
Just so you know, we are just getting started with BlinkList. You will see a lot of exciting improvements over the coming weeks. Will announce those on our blog.
Regarding your feedback and suggestions, they have been noted. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us and we are excited to hear that you are now part of the BlinkList community!
Mike
@Mike, easy to miss comments! I have the feeling BlinkList will be one of the best. I'm liking it more and more each day. I figured out how to import all my links from ma.gnolia, and I'm happy.
BTW, I converted my daughter also!!
Blinklist is a great site for finding certain websites and I use it quite often when I cant find what I am looking for in Google
@Anthony, You know, I never thought about using it like that. I'll have to give it a try.
I do like to see what others have saved. I've found some really different sites that way.
Yup, we are making a big push to make it much more fun to find what other people have saved. Discovery on BlinkList is definitely a big part of what we are all about and it is entirely different and hopefully more fun than what you do on Google.
@mike, I find it a lot more fun than finding sites on Google. It is like a tried and true recipe...someone has already decided it is good.
I'm a fan of blinklist as well, and I tried magnolia for a while, I too loved the flower (got to, I'm living in Mississippi now, the magnolia state! lol), but not enough to leave blinklist for a snazzier logo.
The cloud is the best, and following what other people have blinked is a great way of finding great sites. I'm a fan of the blinklist friends part of it as well.
@rich g. Yes, their cloud is the best. I am totally a blinklist fan. I haven't tried the 'friends' part yet. I didn't think it was working yet. I will check it out!
Hi Annie
I'm the product manager for Ma.gnolia, and I appreciate your comments here a lot. We've done a lot of work to improve performance, and it might be worth checking out. We'd never try to tell you what service to use but since you mentioned performance specifically, I thought I'd point it out.
@tslieng, thanks for stopping by. I will look it over again. Performance is very important to me.
Hey Annie
I am not familiar with any of these services mentioned by you. What are they really responsible for? Should I consider them for my blog?
Do you also write how to speed up our blogs?
Thanks
Jack