BookMark’d saves links and is your own personal search engine.

Or at least that’s the work in progress tag line.

I was sitting at my computer this weekend and remembered that I bookmarked an interesting page. I was trying to find the bookmark, but I couldn’t. I even tried the bookmark search tool, but that only matches if a word or phrase is in a page, so I could be stuck with a lot of results, or have the wrong word and not get the result I need.

Of course, I’ve tried to organize my bookmarks into folders, but then if I wanted something in multiple folders. I’d have to bookmark it twice. And the whole interface for adding bookmarks into folders is a pain. Of course there’s always delicious, but that only lets me search through tags, and who really remembers all of that?

So I decided to crank out my own solution that works the way I want (hopefully someday, it’s still in development). You can see a live example at markd.6km.me.

First they give me an awesome intern experience, and now I feel obligated to switch to all of their products and services… just kidding.

So before I get into talking about the lack of IMAP support, other complaints, and some solutions, I should probably talk about why I’m switching.

First off, the scroogled campaign is a bit exaggerated. It does feel like they sent e-mails to their example account to get the right ads for the video to show up. Now-a-days, you can opt-out of Google’s interest-based ads¹. But there is some truth to the campaign.

It will happen to you

At first, I thought I was okay with the whole “Ads based on e-mail content” idea. A majority of my e-mails are from mailing lists or new letters, so ads based off my interests seem cool. That is until the event happens.

The “event” is some moment in your life where e-mails you get are completely unrelated to your interests and somewhat out of your control. Someone started sending me angry e-mails about how I was a bad friend and what not. Then I started noticing ads based on “finding new friends” and “meeting new people”. I wasn’t searching for these things or visiting any sites like that (except for maybe facebook).

This wasn’t the first time something like that had happened. E-mails to friends about going to the gym or video equipment changed my ads, and I was fine with that, but when the ads are based off of more personal or hurtful e-mails, that’s when things go bad. Imagine if you or your child had a Gmail account, and they were the target of cyberbullies? Then the ads they see when logged in with their Google Account will all be based off of what those bullies send to them. I’m not sure if Google has detection for that in their algorithms, but it is a scary thought.

So after several instances of discomforting advertising, I decided to pull the plug on Gmail.

So I finally did it. I defended my thesis, and now I’m waiting for commencement and receiving my diploma. It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve spent the past 6 years at university. It just seemed to fly by.

One of the questions that no one seems to be asking me is “What’s next?” I understand because everyone knows I’m going off into the real world to work for Microsoft. I don’t want to say that’s not really “What’s next?”; it’s just that there’s so much more that can go on than just that. And because of that belief, I feel like I’ve reached my quarter-life crisis.

…and it was painful…

Carpe diem

I love the feeling of adventure–the keyword being feeling. So, I packed my suitcase and flew up to Boston to visit my friend Todd.

He told me we would be going on a “little” hike–it was my first hike after all.

So I’ve been working at Microsoft for a whole two weeks. It’s shocking how fast time flies because it still feels like I was in school a week ago.

For those of you wondering, I’m currently in the Windows Kernel Platform Group in Building 9. Even though it’s been two weeks, I still get lost in the building. It’s a labyrinth.

It still feels surreal being at Microsoft. It’s started sinking in, but at the same time, I’m waiting for someone to walk through the door and say “Just kidding! We got you good.”