Managing ToRead List In Bookmarking Services

Written by Luyi Chen on July 2, 2007
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A feature that I am longing for in bookmarking services is an efficient way to manage my toread list. An example of toread list is the popular tag ‘toread’ on del.icio.us.

What’s that? When I go through my feeds every morning, I often find a couple of long and insightful articles that I believe I will read through it, but I don’t have time to do this in the morning. So I will tag it with ‘toread’ in del.icio.us. Most of the time, I don’t have the time to read them the whole day. Then they get stacked.

When I finally get hundreds of items in this list, a problem arises: How do I go through this list efficiently? Please understand that the list is growing everyday, so you cannot imagine that I can spend a whole afternoon to go through it without doing other things.

Sometimes I revisit the same article again, and in the same reason I don’t have time to read it immediately. When I try to put it into my toread list, I find that I have tagged the article one year before. After blaming myself for not cleaning the reading list in one year, I would like to have a way to stick the items to the top of the list, so that I can go through this item in higher priority next time I check my toread list.

Next LibrarySeveral days ago, when I was playing with Next Library, I found that it is taking on part of my problem. Although I am not satisfied with the service yet.

Next Library is a pet project of Jack Tang in Hangzhou. The interface is the same as Google Reader. In case they have any business goal of the service, they should definitely change it.

The service is a combination of bookmarking and reading list management. When you bookmark any piece of article into the system you can set reading schedule at the same time. Then in the left side of the console you will find items in your toread list ranked according to your reading plan.

The service is mainly designed for scholar purpose. For those who need to collect lots of papers, it’s especially useful. What’s more, the service is supposed to give you advise on your reading plan. I think it’s based on the popularity of the article, though I haven’t tested this in detail.

I used to turn it down, since it’s somewhat underdeveloped. But I decided to write about it again, because it’s taking on such a great problem.

One Response to “Managing ToRead List In Bookmarking Services”

  1. Jack on July 3rd, 2007 3:22 pm

    Hi Chen,
    I cannot find any trackback in your blog. Here is my explain of “why you should take consider NextLib” (http://jack.lifegoo.com/?p=145)

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