This comment ended up being much longer than I anticipated, so
TLDR: I built a bookmarking app with full text search across your bookmarks and browsing history, permanent archiving, browser extensions, mobile apps, tab saving, and more. Open source. I'm looking to release it as a SaaS and any assistance will be greatly appreciated.
—
I built a bookmarking app called Crestify [0]. I use the internet to teach myself everything from programming to guitar playing, being more productive, design, product development, and a variety of other topics.
I would be researching a topic and come across a blog post or message board discussion that I thought was quite insightful or useful. I might bookmark the page in my browser, upvote the discussion on HN or Reddit, save it to Pocket, and so on.
There were numerous issues with this, including the fact that things were scattered all over the place. I didn't always remember the website or the title of the page where I read something. I may recall a few words, but they may or may not be exact. A lot of the time, I'd have a hard time finding a page again, which was extremely frustrating.
The vast majority of apps did only one thing, so I had to use a variety of apps and scatter my data, including Pocket (reader view), Pinboard (archiving and search), browser bookmarks (quick access), Evernote (search and access on mobile), archive.org and archive.today (archiving pages), onetab (saving open tabs on a topic), and others. Some apps didn't work on mobile, some were discontinued (Dragdis, Readability), some were clunky and broke my flow.
I wished there was a single app that could do it all. I didn't know much about web development, but no one else was going to make it, so I decided to build it myself and learn as I went. Having an idea that I was eager to see become a real product kept me motivated, and I was able to immediately put what I learned into practice, which helped to solidify the learning. As a side note, I believe this is the most effective way to learn something new.
This is what Crestify does:
- One-click bookmarking with browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome (Working on a Safari extension now)
- Reader view for bookmarked pages
- Full text search for bookmarked pages
- Save your open tabs and then open them again with a single click on any device.
- Context view - after finding a bookmark using search, use context view to see what you bookmarked before and after that one.
- Tagging for bookmarks
- Permanent archives - Archive a public copy to archive.org and a private copy to crestify itself (can archive SPAs too). If you bookmark using the extension, the archive will be exactly what you saw, so this could be some Gmail messages, or Facebook comments, or paywalled articles, it doesn’t matter. What you saw is what gets archived. You can also search through the same. This is something that no other bookmarking service does.
- Mobile apps (webview based but share menu extension is also present) - this is a WIP, but I’ve been using it on my iPhone for the last couple months and it’s great being able to add bookmarks on the go.
- History saving - This is a fantastic feature. Keep on browsing as usual, and the text of each page is automatically added to Crestify, where you can search through it. This can also capture paywalled pages or pages that require a login (you can create filters to exclude certain pages, or keep the extension disabled in incognito mode).
- It is fully open source [1]. Everything from the frontend to the backend, extensions to mobile applications. I need to upload some updated code to the public repo (with history saving, mobile applications, and so on), but first I need to clean up the code. Crestify is BSD licensed.
- It can import bookmarks from a variety of sources, including Pocket, Instapaper, Readability, Pinboard, and browsers. (The importers need some improvement; I'll get to it soon. If you can share sample export files, please send them to dhamaniasad [at] gmail [dot] com).
- I've also just begun work on a Safari extension that will work on both macOS and iOS. Once this is completed, you will be able to use all of the features (including history saving) on both desktop and mobile (can already use it in Firefox on Android). Since the current extension is written using the WebExtensions API, this is not a huge task. Still, certain APIs work differently in Safari, and I never had the motivation to create a Safari extension until Apple added support for extensions in iOS).
--
I want to offer it as a SaaS, but I fell into the trap of always thinking it's not ready yet, and I'm also having a bit of trouble identifying the niche (since it's a pretty specialised product). I'd started working on my startup shortly after developing this, and then moved to freelancing while traveling, so I never had the opportunity to release it, but I want to release it this year and would really appreciate any assistance or advice.
TLDR: I built a bookmarking app with full text search across your bookmarks and browsing history, permanent archiving, browser extensions, mobile apps, tab saving, and more. Open source. I'm looking to release it as a SaaS and any assistance will be greatly appreciated.
—
I built a bookmarking app called Crestify [0]. I use the internet to teach myself everything from programming to guitar playing, being more productive, design, product development, and a variety of other topics.
I would be researching a topic and come across a blog post or message board discussion that I thought was quite insightful or useful. I might bookmark the page in my browser, upvote the discussion on HN or Reddit, save it to Pocket, and so on.
There were numerous issues with this, including the fact that things were scattered all over the place. I didn't always remember the website or the title of the page where I read something. I may recall a few words, but they may or may not be exact. A lot of the time, I'd have a hard time finding a page again, which was extremely frustrating.
The vast majority of apps did only one thing, so I had to use a variety of apps and scatter my data, including Pocket (reader view), Pinboard (archiving and search), browser bookmarks (quick access), Evernote (search and access on mobile), archive.org and archive.today (archiving pages), onetab (saving open tabs on a topic), and others. Some apps didn't work on mobile, some were discontinued (Dragdis, Readability), some were clunky and broke my flow.
I wished there was a single app that could do it all. I didn't know much about web development, but no one else was going to make it, so I decided to build it myself and learn as I went. Having an idea that I was eager to see become a real product kept me motivated, and I was able to immediately put what I learned into practice, which helped to solidify the learning. As a side note, I believe this is the most effective way to learn something new.
This is what Crestify does:
- One-click bookmarking with browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome (Working on a Safari extension now)
- Reader view for bookmarked pages
- Full text search for bookmarked pages
- Save your open tabs and then open them again with a single click on any device.
- Context view - after finding a bookmark using search, use context view to see what you bookmarked before and after that one.
- Tagging for bookmarks
- Permanent archives - Archive a public copy to archive.org and a private copy to crestify itself (can archive SPAs too). If you bookmark using the extension, the archive will be exactly what you saw, so this could be some Gmail messages, or Facebook comments, or paywalled articles, it doesn’t matter. What you saw is what gets archived. You can also search through the same. This is something that no other bookmarking service does.
- Mobile apps (webview based but share menu extension is also present) - this is a WIP, but I’ve been using it on my iPhone for the last couple months and it’s great being able to add bookmarks on the go.
- History saving - This is a fantastic feature. Keep on browsing as usual, and the text of each page is automatically added to Crestify, where you can search through it. This can also capture paywalled pages or pages that require a login (you can create filters to exclude certain pages, or keep the extension disabled in incognito mode).
- It is fully open source [1]. Everything from the frontend to the backend, extensions to mobile applications. I need to upload some updated code to the public repo (with history saving, mobile applications, and so on), but first I need to clean up the code. Crestify is BSD licensed.
- It can import bookmarks from a variety of sources, including Pocket, Instapaper, Readability, Pinboard, and browsers. (The importers need some improvement; I'll get to it soon. If you can share sample export files, please send them to dhamaniasad [at] gmail [dot] com).
- I've also just begun work on a Safari extension that will work on both macOS and iOS. Once this is completed, you will be able to use all of the features (including history saving) on both desktop and mobile (can already use it in Firefox on Android). Since the current extension is written using the WebExtensions API, this is not a huge task. Still, certain APIs work differently in Safari, and I never had the motivation to create a Safari extension until Apple added support for extensions in iOS).
--
I want to offer it as a SaaS, but I fell into the trap of always thinking it's not ready yet, and I'm also having a bit of trouble identifying the niche (since it's a pretty specialised product). I'd started working on my startup shortly after developing this, and then moved to freelancing while traveling, so I never had the opportunity to release it, but I want to release it this year and would really appreciate any assistance or advice.
[0] https://www.crestify.com
[1] https://www.github.com/dhamaniasad/crestify