Scrible

Modern research platform for school and work

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This title is longer than our URLs

The Bard tells us brevity is the soul of wit, so scrible just got a bit wittier. We have rolled out our own URL shortening service that gets used behind the scenes to deliver you shorter URLs than ever before. We noticed our links were getting a little bloated and wanted to slim them down to keep up with today’s scribler on the go.

Here’s an example Tweet using a new shortened URL:

The shortened URLs take the form of http://scrible.com.com/s/(super secret code goes here) but function in exactly the same manner as the old links we generated. And don’t worry, all the links you’ve generated in the past are still valid as well.

The best part about all of this is that you don’t have to do a thing to take advantage of it. We do all of the shortening, serving, and redirecting behind the scenes without any extra work on your part. So just keep on sharing those pages, and we’ll keep serving out shorter and sleeker URLs.

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scrible gets social

We have been hard at work the past couple weeks in order to bring some shiny, new social integrations to scrible. Starting off, we have added the ability to sign in using either Facebook or Twitter.

You can either use these services to create a new account, or streamline the sign in process for your existing account. If you’re adding one of these methods to your existing account, you’ll need to verify that you own the account by entering your password. This is a one time step, after completing it you’ll be a single click away from your scrible account from here on out.

Once you’re logged in, we’ve added three ways for you to share your scrible content. You can post single pages to Facebook and Twitter from your library, using the new “post” button.

This will post a permalink and some information about your page to the service of your choice.

Or, if you’re already on the page, you can post two different ways. From the toolbar, you can post the whole page to Facebook and Twitter like you can from the library using the corresponding buttons.

If you want to post one of your annotations, you can do that too. Just open up the context menu for that annotation, go to the post button, and choose where you want to post it.

We’ll put as much of that annotation as we can fit into the post, as well as a link to the page. There you have it, scrible social integrations. What are you still reading this for? Go tweet to your heart out!

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Copy cat

Once we added the ability to send one shared web page e-mail to multiple people, we realized it would make sense to include yourself on that conversation. So we’ve added an option to the Share Window to send yourself a copy of the Share Email as well. This way, if anyone does a Reply All to the  Share Email, you’ll get included in the action as well.

 

All you have to do is check the box that reads “Send a copy to myself” and you’ll be included in the recipients of the Share Email. This way, you can continue the discussion about the web page beyond the initial Share Message you provided.

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Sharing via group emails

Credit: RRZE via Wikimedia Commons

We recently changed the way email sharing works based on our own internal experience using scrible for article sharing.  We got frustrated that we couldn’t have group email threads based on articles we were sharing with each other.  The way things were working, if you shared an article with multiple people, each recipient would receive their own Share Email.  Then, if one of the recipients wanted to reply to that email and include all of the other recipients, they’d have to somehow magically know who those recipients were and manually add those people to his (or her) reply.  Ugh.  We didn’t like that. After grumbling about it to each other for a while, we remembered that we write the code and fixed it!  Now, all of the email addresses you enter into the Recipients field in the Share Window will all be sent one group email so that every person will see all of the other folks included in the Share Email.  So now, to carry on a group email conversation about the article, all you have to do is hit “Reply All” and everyone’s in the loop!  Much better!

We’re always looking for ways to improve sharing.  If you have suggestions on how to make scrible more collaborative, please let us know through our feedback page.

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Cc for Cc-onversation Cc-larity

Imagine that you get the following Share Email from your friend Robert:

“This article relates to our conversation last night.  Please see my green notes for my thoughts on the matter.”

You have no idea what Robert’s talking about.  You didn’t even talk to him last night.  You look at the “To” field of the email and see that your mutual friend Loic is on the email as well.  Was Robert directing this annotated article to Loic or you??

Turns out that Robert’s message was directed at Loic, but he also included you in on the shared page because he thought you’d be interested as well.

In the world of email, the “Cc” (Carbon copy) field is used to avoid this confusion because the primary recipient of a message appears in the “To” field and secondary recipients appear in the Cc field.  So, everyone receiving the email knows who the email was directed at and who’s just along for the ride.

In the same spirit of clarity, we just added a Cc option for pages shared via email using scrible.  This is useful in case you want to Cc a separate set of people on the Share Email than the ones you’re primarily directing the page to (i.e. the folks entered in the Recipients field in Share Window).  Here’s how to use this new feature…  Clicking the “Add Cc” link in the Share Window will pop open the CC field like so:

Fill it in just like the Recipients field and you’re ready to go. Now, everyone will receive one Share Email, with separate recipients shown in the “To” and “Cc” fields of the Share Email.  Everyone will know who you’re primarily talking to and who’s was just included to keep ’em in the loop.

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Turbo Button

Now were iz dat turbo button?

Ok… Who remembers the Turbo Button on the old computers that would magically change the speed of your computer on the fly?  It was great.  You’d notice your computer was running really slowly and you’re sure it should be faster… and wha-laa you’d discover that somehow the turbo button had gotten turned off.  Change it back and you got an instant speed boost.

We’d been noticing lately that our site wasn’t performing the way we felt it should.  While investigating this, we reviewed the settings on our database and found a few configuration values which defaulted to something more appropriate for computers of the x486 era (the ones that had turbo buttons).  After adjusting these to values appropriate for a modern server, we’ve seen around a 5x increase in site performance.  Always nice to get a speed boost for free.

We’re always keeping our eyes out for more ways to improve your experience.  Please let us know if you have any suggestions!

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Stickier sticky notes

We had some reports that our sticky notes were out of control. That they were wandering off wherever they wanted to be, hanging out with the wrong crowd, and generally being a nuisance to society. Well we had a long, stern talk with them and they should be straightening up and flying right. Now when you place it a note, it takes notice. It will remember where you put it, and it will try its darnedest to get back to where it was when you reload that page. And if it can’t, it’ll politely excuse itself to the margin of the page. How’s that for a paragon of proper page placement?

Hopefully this update makes notes behave closer to what you would expect from their physical analogs. Let us know what you think, love or hate it, so we can keep improving scrible and making it better than ever!

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scrible for iPad

For those of you who missed scrible at CES (we don’t blame you, there were TVs there bigger than our booth!) may not have noticed that we now have an iPad optimized version of the toolbar and library. There’s no app to install, just a bookmarklet like the desktop version. All you have to do is point your web browser to scrible, and we’ll take care of the rest.

We reworked the toolbar to make it more finger-friendly with bigger buttons and a condensed interface. We also made it scale and move with the viewport, so it’s always the right size right where you left it. You’ll notice a few buttons have been consolidated, but don’t worry, everything is still there.  Pressing the scrible logo will reveal the undo, redo, min/max notes, and remove toolbar buttons. A long press on the text styles button will reveal bold, underline, italic, and strikethrough buttons.

The library has also been streamlined and given a cleaner interface for the iPad. All of your articles saved from the desktop are available, and vice-versa.  You can search and filter through your entire library, just like the desktop version. Not a fan? Well, scroll to the bottom and there’s an option to switch over to the full desktop version as well.

Also, check out these awesome people that were nice enough to write us up during CES:

http://legallyeasy.rocketlawyer.com/ces-shouts-eureka-94321
http://www.actualidadipad.com/almacena-paginas-webs-con-anotaciones-en-la-nube-con-scrible/
http://www.columbusalive.com/content/stories/2012/01/19/gadgets-reviews.html
http://www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=4802
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/tag/scrible/
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/tecnologia/Eureka/Park/semilla/futuro/elpeputec/20120113elpeputec_2/Tes

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scrible shares better

You’ve probably noticed that scrible’s had some major changes lately.  We’ve been hard at work implementing improvements based on your feedback.  Here’s a list of the changes, followed by the details:

  • Publicly sharable URLs
  • Permalinks
  • Share multiple pages
  • Shortcuts

Publicly sharable URLs:  One big thing we heard from you was that you wanted to share your saved pages more freely (via blogs, Facebook and Twitter).  Previously, if you copied the URL of a saved page from your Library into a Tweet or Facebook or blog post, no one else could view it because they weren’t logged in as you.  The URL of the saved page was private and limited to you.  Now, such URLs are open and accessible so they’re more easily sharable.  Dont’ worry; they’re not discoverable.  So, unless you explicitly provide the URL of the saved page, no one should be able to find it.

Permalinks:  We’ve added a permalink option so you can easily generate and copy a permalink to the page.  Just look for the following Permalink Button in the scrible Toolbar:

When you click it, the system’ll work for a moment and then display the following Permalink Window with a permalink you can copy and paste into a blog or Facebook post or Tweet:

Share multiple pages:  You can now share multiple pages at once from your Library.  Just select the pages you want to share and then click the Share Button atop the Library.

Shortcuts:  Encounter an interesting scribled page you’d like to keep tabs on?  Add a shortcut to it in your Library by selecting the Create Shortcut option under the Save Menu.

You can assign your own Page Name, Comments, and Tags for this page and you’ll be able to find it in searches of your Library just like any page you’ve saved.  When someone shares a page with via scrible, a Shortcut to that page will automatically be added to your Library.  Shortcuts don’t use any of your storage quota.

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scrible gets context

Hello scrible users! If you’ve done some annotating lately, you’ve likely come across a new feature – the Context Menu. Before, if you hovered over an annotation, a red X would show up at the top left corner of the annotation so that you could delete that annotation.

Now, there will be an icon representing the current annotation instead of the red X. So for a yellow highlight, it will look like this:

Clicking this icon will reveal our new feature, the Context Menu. This Menu is where you’ll now find the delete option, as well as other useful features. For instance, you can now change the color of a highlight, note, or text-color annotation from this menu. Or, if you want to add some additional info, you can anchor a new note to the annotation.

As we continue to add features to scrible, this Menu will give you a quick and convenient way to interact with your annotations and get the most out of your curated content. If you haven’t checked this feature out yet, go give it a whirl! If you’ve already played with it, we would love to hear your feedback so we can continue to improve way the world interacts with the web.

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