Springpad

Update: Springpad closed it’s doors on June 2014.

Springpad. A new word that I’ve come to like, and I think you might, too.

In a few words

The product team tends to say things best:

Springpad is a free, easy-to-use personal assistant app that helps you not only remember what’s important to you but also get things done.
Unlike bookmarking sites that simply save information, Springpad lets you keep track of the overload of important information, projects, ideas, and recommendations you encounter daily. Then Springpad enhances your information with useful details and relevant suggestions so you can get what you need, when and where you need it. It’s the everyday done better.

Others have described it as a “Pinterest + Evernote” combo. You’ll have to check it out and decide for yourself.

Why I like it

I first noticed the iOS app – nicely done. I then checked out the web app when looking for an alternative to delicious (bookmarks). I mentioned Springpad while writing about Dropmark, and left still inclined to Dropmark over Springpad. But then the two showed each of their strengths and future uses.

Verbal Comparison

Here is what I like about Springpad, in some ways compared to Dropmark:

  1. Embedding – Having a bunch of great bookmarks collected is one thing, sharing them is another. The ability to embed a notebook to a web page it huge. It is what I wished Delicious would do and it’s what I wish Dropmark could do (eventually). It it what Springpad does. I can share the link to my Dropmark collection where I love the “flow” of website-to-website much better with Dropmark. However, with Springpad’s approach, embedding a notebook is hard to beat. 
  2. Comments – Visitors can see comments and can collaborate on the “bookmark”/Notebook instead of just visiting the actual bookmark/site, which in some/many cases is and can be very useful. Similarly, there are times when no comments are needed (“Hey man, check out these 5 awesome sites…”). I like being able to send someone to a Dropmark of websites and they can “get to know” those sites by quickly viewing/bringing them up. They do not, however, have any of my comments on each site in that experience. With Springpad, they see my comments, but it takes more work to actually view the bookmarked site, and it requires that I leave a comment to make it a useful feature (sometimes this isn’t necessary or desired, etc.). For collaboration, however, this is very helpful.
  3. Collaboration – being able to join, follow, share, comment, add-to, and “Like” are all great features of collaboration within Springpad.

Those are only 3 aspects, but they are three big ones.

There is but one feature request for Springpad bookmarking: grab a screenshot, as Dropmark does, of the website being bookmarked so I don’t have to manually upload an image file to make it look great.

Thanks for everything else in the meantime!