Thumbtack update just released!

StevenDrucker — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:55:00 GMT

We’ve been busy working on fixes to Thumbtack given the feedback and bug reports from our users. We’re just made a point release containing solutions to several issues that were raised. We’re working on new features as well, but we’ll talk more about those later. For now, we wanted to call attention to some of the changes you will see:

Improved bookmarklet
Improved browsers support; notably better compatibility with IE8, and we’re working on others J
Printer-friendly views
Notifications when a collection’s content has been changed
Better localization for times and dates of posts
General bug fixes galore

The Thumbtack Team

Introducing Thumbtack!

ThumbtackTeam — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:53:00 GMT

From time immemorial, humans have been driven to document and disseminate both their greatest ideas and the minutiae of their existence. Whether it was our pre-historic ancestors etching stick figures in subterranean caves, or the ancient Egyptians carving hieroglyphics on their pyramids, we have collected knowledge in myriad creative ways using the best tools available to us.

Our evolution as a species has been marked by a quest for better ways to document and capture our essence. The invention of paper and the Guttenberg printing press were major milestones in our ability to preserve and share knowledge. Each of these inventions also marked an explosive growth in the amount of information in existence.

The emergence of the PC and Internet has reduced the friction for generating and capturing ideas to almost zero. The resulting exponential growth in information is both a boon and a challenge. Today, we’re exposed to a dizzying amount of information. It’s estimated that there’s more information in a single weekend edition of the New York Times than an average person living in the middle ages encountered in an entire lifetime!

Our capacity to discover, archive and recall information hasn’t evolved at the same pace as our ability to generate it. As the internet evolves into the de facto place to author, store and disseminate information, there is an even greater need for tools that will help us thrive on this seemingly endless flow of information. Thumbtack aspires to be one such tool.

Thumbtack is a personal repository for information gathered from across the web. It can be used to collect text, photos and links from any web page using familiar mechanisms such as copy and paste. It’s implemented as an Ajax application and runs entirely within a browser. All user data is stored in a web service and is accessible from any computer via a browser.

An optional code free browser bookmarklet enables users to seamlessly collect clippings directly from any web page. The editing capabilities within Thumbtack enable users to annotate, author and publish any content stored within.

A key theme of Thumbtack is to empower users to do more with their data. Thumbtack users may be collecting or authoring content for a variety of purposes – for archival, researching a topic, to share with others, or to publish to the web. Thumbtack offers streamlined workflows in each of these scenarios, enabling users to interact with, and act on information with ease.

Users of Thumbtack can choose to interact with information using a variety of views. Canvas view is one such view that enables users to arrange web clips in a free form collage for publishing, or as a mind map.

While striving to be a useful tool to collect and manage information, Thumbtack also aspires to lower the effort needed to manage information. The Thumbtack service uses machine learning and natural language techniques to introspect on incoming data in order to understand its contents. For example, the Thumbtack service automatically extracts addresses from web clips and annotates them as properties on the web clip.

While the features built into Thumbtack cater to the least common denominator among its data types, Thumbtack Gadgets enable very specific functions on top of this general infrastructure. Gadgets are also the model for extensibility and customization of the Thumbtack experience. For example, the Address Gadget examines each Thumbtack clip for the presence of an address property. If an address is found, it’s automatically mapped by the Gadget.

Gadgets are not just passive consumers of data, they have an interactivity model. As the user hovers over a clip, an event is fired to all active gadgets enabling them to render information relevant to that clip.

In addition to being a personal repository, Thumbtack is designed to be a crossroads for information. It’s sharing and publishing capabilities enable a user to share information within a private group, or publish it to the world using a variety of mechanisms - as an html page, an RSS/Atom feed, or embedded within a user’s blog or personal web page. Thumbtack even supports publishing in the form of IE8 Web Slices.

Thumbtack also has the beginnings of a useful platform in its gadget infrastructure, REST APIs and syndication capabilities. In the future, Thumbtack gadgets built on Live Labs’ Web Sandbox will allow developers to enhance and extend the capabilities of Thumbtack.

Based on user feedback, we hope Thumbtack will evolve over time and presage other useful information experiences from Live Labs.

- The Thumbtack Team

thumbtack blog

Thumbtack update just released!

Introducing Thumbtack!