Furl
Encyclopedia
Furl was a free social bookmarking
website that allowed members to store searchable copies of webpages and share them with others. Every member received 5 gigabyte
s of storage space. The site was founded by Mike Giles in 2003 and purchased by LookSmart
in 2004. Diigo
(a web annotation
, social bookmarking
& research tool website) bought it from LookSmart in exchange for equity.
feature of other social websites. Additionally, a user could write comments, save clippings, assign each bookmark a rating and keywords
(which are given greater weight while searching), and have an option of private or public storage for each topic or item archived.
Considered one of its main features,
Furl also privately archived a complete copy of the HTML of each page that a user bookmarks, making it accessible even if the original content was modified or removed, an antidote for link rot
. This also allowed full text searches to be made within the archive. However, as highlighted under limitations below, images that were embedded using links were not archived with user's copy of the html page, so images sometimes disappeared over time. To avoid claims of copyright violations
, this archived copy was visible only to the member who bookmarked the page. Other users were directed to the publisher's site, where the content could be viewed depending on membership requirements and privacy settings.
Users could see lists of other users who have furled a URL, and read their comments (if made public) to find users who share interests, supporting folksonomy
. A dynamic recommendation list was automatically generated for each user based on the sites already saved by him or her and other users with similar interests. Lists of the most popular items for today, this week, and this month (and by topic) were also available. It was possible to subscribe to a user's archive (or to a set of topics in a user's archive) to get daily email notifications whenever new items were filed.
Furl allowed bookmarks to be imported from (and exported to) Internet Explorer
, Mozilla
/Firefox, and Delicious; and also supported exporting of the entire saved archives to ZIP
formats, and export metadata to XML
format. There were other import/export functions, including various citation formats (MLA, APA, Chicago, CBE, BibTeX, and RIS/EndNote).
Toolbars and bookmarklet
s are available for Internet Explorer and Firefox to quicken the bookmarking process.
The search result displayed items from the entire Furl archive, or only from a user's own archive, but the sequence of these results was automatically ordered. There was no option to display results by date order, by popularity order, or in any other particular sequence. It was not obvious how the results are ordered.
The popularity of Furl exposed users to performance problems which began in the latter half of 2006 and persisted into 2007.
Furl shut down its services on April 17, 2009.
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them....
website that allowed members to store searchable copies of webpages and share them with others. Every member received 5 gigabyte
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
s of storage space. The site was founded by Mike Giles in 2003 and purchased by LookSmart
LookSmart
LookSmart is an online advertising company based in San Francisco. LookSmart provides search advertising products and services to text advertisers, as well as targeted pay-per-click search and contextual advertising via its Search Advertising Network...
in 2004. Diigo
Diigo
Diigo is a social bookmarking website which allows signed-up users to bookmark and tag web-pages. Additionally, it allows users to highlight any part of a webpage and attach sticky notes to specific highlights or to a whole page. These annotations can be kept private, shared with a group within...
(a web annotation
Annotation
An annotation is a note that is made while reading any form of text. This may be as simple as underlining or highlighting passages.Annotated bibliographies give descriptions about how each source is useful to an author in constructing a paper or argument...
, social bookmarking
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them....
& research tool website) bought it from LookSmart in exchange for equity.
Features
Furl enabled members to bookmark, annotate, and share web pages. Topics were used to categorize saved sites, similar to the taggingTag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
feature of other social websites. Additionally, a user could write comments, save clippings, assign each bookmark a rating and keywords
Keyword (Internet search)
An index term, subject term, subject heading, or descriptor, in information retrieval, is a term that captures the essence of the topic of a document. Index terms make up a controlled vocabulary for use in bibliographic records. They are an integral part of bibliographic control, which is the...
(which are given greater weight while searching), and have an option of private or public storage for each topic or item archived.
Considered one of its main features,
Furl also privately archived a complete copy of the HTML of each page that a user bookmarks, making it accessible even if the original content was modified or removed, an antidote for link rot
Link rot
Link rot , also known as link death or link breaking is an informal term for the process by which, either on individual websites or the Internet in general, increasing numbers of links point to web pages, servers or other resources that have become permanently unavailable...
. This also allowed full text searches to be made within the archive. However, as highlighted under limitations below, images that were embedded using links were not archived with user's copy of the html page, so images sometimes disappeared over time. To avoid claims of copyright violations
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
, this archived copy was visible only to the member who bookmarked the page. Other users were directed to the publisher's site, where the content could be viewed depending on membership requirements and privacy settings.
Users could see lists of other users who have furled a URL, and read their comments (if made public) to find users who share interests, supporting folksonomy
Folksonomy
A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; this practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging...
. A dynamic recommendation list was automatically generated for each user based on the sites already saved by him or her and other users with similar interests. Lists of the most popular items for today, this week, and this month (and by topic) were also available. It was possible to subscribe to a user's archive (or to a set of topics in a user's archive) to get daily email notifications whenever new items were filed.
Furl allowed bookmarks to be imported from (and exported to) Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
, Mozilla
Mozilla
Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
/Firefox, and Delicious; and also supported exporting of the entire saved archives to ZIP
ZIP (file format)
Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...
formats, and export metadata to XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
format. There were other import/export functions, including various citation formats (MLA, APA, Chicago, CBE, BibTeX, and RIS/EndNote).
Toolbars and bookmarklet
Bookmarklet
A bookmarklet is Unobtrusive JavaScript stored as the URL of a bookmark in a web browser or as a hyperlink on a web page. The term is a portmanteau of the terms bookmark and applet, however, an applet is not to be confused with a bookmarklet just as JavaScript is not to be confused with Java...
s are available for Internet Explorer and Firefox to quicken the bookmarking process.
Limitations
Images which were embedded links were not archived with the HTML page. For example, when an HTML page was archived via Furl, the location of the JPG from the HTML content was saved, thus pulling up that image when the user's personal copy was loaded; however, if that image no longer exists on the original server, it was lost and will not display with the user's archived copy. So, a Furled site with many pictures could end up being just text.The search result displayed items from the entire Furl archive, or only from a user's own archive, but the sequence of these results was automatically ordered. There was no option to display results by date order, by popularity order, or in any other particular sequence. It was not obvious how the results are ordered.
The popularity of Furl exposed users to performance problems which began in the latter half of 2006 and persisted into 2007.
Updates
New features were released in early 2007, including an updated user-interface. On January 30, 2008, Furl unveiled an updated user interface.Furl shut down its services on April 17, 2009.