Permanent-Library-Services

Introduction

What’s a personal permanent digital library and why do I need it? Namely, I define it as a place that you can capture everything on the Internet and keep a copy somewhere. Even if the source is down or magically disappears for some interesting reason, you can still read them whenever you want.

This post is based on my personal more-than-5-hour-so-enjoy-it research.

Service candidates

Evernote

Evernote is a note. Note I do not recommend 印象笔记 which is its localized version storing all the data in Chinese data centers though it has a descent WeChat integration.

• Pros:

  • It works
  • It does not need you to pay

• Cons

  • It’s too heavy and bloat for reading.
  • Do not have a good looking Windows client

Pocket

A well-known read-it-later service which is recently acquired by Mozilla. Its 5-dollar-per-month premium service provides the function we want. It’s not that expensive considering Spotify costs $10 and Netflix costs$8 monthly.

• Pros

  • Looks good

• Cons

  • You can’t change the title of the articles saved, at least for now. This is a bad news for saving 微博文章

  • It’s not possible to modify the HTML before saving it. According to its public API v3, the only content-related parameter is URL, which means if I develop my own “save button”, I still can’t change the title

  • This feature is under consideration of the development team, according to here.

  • I have contacted Pocket Support Team to address 微博文章’s wrong heading problem.

Pinboard

The company that aquired the once-famous and maybe the oldest bookmark system, Delicious. Charges about $22 yearly for permanent library.

• Pros

  • It’s cheap

• Cons

  • The webpage is so ugly! OMG they claim that it’s minimum design but look what kind of s**t it is.
  • They do have some good-looking third-party client for OSX and iOS. Well, I guess Windows and Android users do not need any client with basic idea of aesthetics?

Potential Candidates

Raindrop.io

A young and good-looking bookmark service. It does not has the functionality yet. But according to its Feature Request page, this functionality is planned.

• Pros

  • It looks so good
  • It’s cheap ($2 per month for premium)

• Cons

  • The feature has not been implemented

Have fun!