Web alternative to Scrapbook extension?

[justice]

I'm looking for a web app service that allows me to save complete webpages for future use (things like tutorials etc) so that they can be accessed after the original site has gone. I was originally using Scrapbook and Zotero but I do not want to deal with the hassles of a desktop software product, plus I want to access it from 2 pcs (bonus for iphone access). Any ideas?

In case you don't know any of these programs, you 'bookmark' a page and the contents of the page + all assets get saved and can be viewed again at a later date. It's also important to find keywords through all saved pages with a single search. Usually there are groups or catagories to relate multiple captures together.

[justice]

Anyone has experience with http://www.diigo.com/ ? You can bookmark unlimited pages but cache only 5 a month for free - or unlimited for $20 a year which is not bad.

[hpearce]

have u tried using dropbox as a location for your scrapbook data ?

Basically the same is an extension called Scrapbook Plus

[justice]

Yes that was my original plan and next day Scrapbook had lost all pages, which has never happened to dropbox. Pointing scrapbook again to the dropbox folder did not retrieve the pages, problems with syncing is one of the reasons for using a centralized (thus online) system.

[mwang]

Tried Evernote? Anything wrong with it?

[justice]

yes i did it's great for pasting in information to keep but not for full featured webpages because the layout is lost and you'll end up manually removing cruft which you wouldn't have to do if it just archived the webpage as you see it. Although you could instapaper mobile it first, still thats one step more.

Another alternative would be saving pages to xps/pdf and using desktop search and saving a smart search to desktop.

Still happy with the potential and functionality of Diigo, still not happy paying for another webservice.

[Bamse]

Another one to test is Iterasi http://www.iterasi.net/features/

Not sure about how to sign up, I did 2/2/2009 and it seem to work but when clicking "Want to upgrade or change your account?" I get a simple contact form.

From their FAQ:

How much does it cost?
Because the needs of our clients vary so much from one customer to the next, we need to evaluate the sites and pages you want to archive, and understand your archiving goals before we can discuss pricing. If you’d like a quote please contact us through the form on the contact page.

Limitations of free account are unknown to me.

[40hz]

I like ReadItLater. It's a free service very similar to Instapaper. I use it in conjunction with their paid Digest option which provides some nifty additional functions. I'm very happy with both..

If you want to try a very good desktop solution (that is absolutely no hassle to use BTW) try Canaware NetNotes. I use this in conjunction with ReadItLater.

[justice]

Netnotes seems to do the trick too, good desktop solution. Readitlater doesn't seem to archive the pages, just the link to the page? So if the original page dissappears you won't be able to read it again? Iterasu seems to make it very hard for home users to use their products and I was unable to sign up.

[40hz]

Netnotes seems to do the trick too, good desktop solution. Readitlater doesn't seem to archive the pages, just the link to the page? So if the original page dissappears you won't be able to read it again? Iterasu seems to make it very hard for home users to use their products and I was unable to sign up.

-justice (January 01, 2011, 10:01 AM)

You can sync ReadItLater to your device so it works on or offline.



I don't use it on the desktop that way because for anything I want to permanently keep I'll use NetNotes. So ReadItLater is more a staging area rather than an archive the way I use it. I'll never trust anything that's really important to me to a webservice without being able to make a full local backup. That's why I don't generally like web apps. Many try to lock you in by making it difficult for you to export your data.

Note: I do use RIL's sync feature on my iPhone however. That way I always have something to read during slacktime or while commuting. (Assuming I'm not the driver.   )

[app103]

I tried NetNotes, as a possible replacement for Surfulater. I wasn't that thrilled with it. Surfulater really spoiled me rotten.

You can save the selected portion of a page in Surfulater with a copy of the entire original page as an attachment. And while some people may say that Surfulater databases don't play well with Dropbox, there is always the export to HTML function that you can use to export either the entire database or just a folder. That does work well with Dropbox, although it only exports the clipped portion of the pages and not the original page attachments.

[cyberdiva]

I tried NetNotes, as a possible replacement for Surfulater. I wasn't that thrilled with it. Surfulater really spoiled me rotten.

-app103 (January 01, 2011, 10:35 AM)

I was about to recommend Surfulater, but I see app103 has beaten me to it.  I tend to save parts of web pages rather than the entire page, but Surfulater can do both.  A description of some of its web-saving capabilities can be found here.  And it's not limited to information from the Web.  Just about any electronic document can be saved.

Surfulater is not free--indeed, at USD $79, it's a bit pricey--but you can use it on up to five computers, and I think I've occasionally seen some special offers for it at a discount.  All I can say is that I've tried lots of programs to save and retrieve information, and my hands-down favorite is Surfulater. 

[Curt]

Surfulater is not free--indeed, at USD $79,

-cyberdiva (January 01, 2011, 11:14 AM)

Holiday offer right now is 50% off, plus VAT.

[Perry Mowbray]

I seem to have used everything mentioned here and have whittled down to ReadItLater and ScrapBook. The sync between computers is an issue... if I wanted to do that I'd use SpiderOak to keep my two ScrapBook folders sync'd.

[justice]

Alright well...   small update:
* diigo is not high enough up the priority list to pay for the archiving bit. Same goes for pinboard.
* NetNotes just looks too cluttered and techy but I recommend to try it for yourself cos it works.
* Evernote's latest version seems to do a reasonable good job of saving full pages now, which I wasn't aware of. I also already was using evernote for jots and small notes.
* I already use Instapaper which I love - it also has a bookmarklet to create plain text versions of pages

Therefore I now capture pages with Evernote, complex pages go through instapaper first. Complete workflow:
Find interesting article > save to instapaper > read > repeatedly useful then save to evernote.

How do I find interesting info?
Feeds that go into Google Reader and then get read by Reeder for iPhone then saved to Instapaper usually (it also support Evernote i think - I should test this)

[justice]

Small update.

I tried Trunk.ly. It indexes your bookmarks, it is free - however I am now using Pinboard.

Why? It turns out being able to search the actual pages is cool (so I can find a keyword even when it is not in the title and description and tags), however from my 1900 bookmarks now about 100 have been removed, including valuable resources. Had I used Pinboard, I would have had a copy of the page. BTW, it also indexes all bookmarks.

The fact that it cost $25 a year for an archival account (this includes the $10 to join) is now worth the fact to keep all my bookmarks since 1994 available, for a long time. I spend more than $2 a month on iPhone apps, so the price is not really a big deal.

The problem in a graphic:


As a bonus, I now only use my day-to-day bookmarks in the browser. Everything else lives on Pinboard.