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Microsoft's Thumbtack, an Answer To Google Notebook

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Live Labs have introduced a new service that lets users collect snippets of information from Web sites and share the collections with others. It's similar in concept to Mozilla's Joey, a defunct project that let people copy and paste portions of Web pages onto a single page that they could access from their mobile phones or another computer. Thumbtack is also like other available services, including Google Notebook. But Thumbtack developers think their service has a difference. 'Thumbtack stands apart in its ability to introspect on incoming data in order to automatically classify it and extract structure from it using machine learning,' according to the FAQ about the service."

7 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Fire up the copiers Redmond! by Aranykai · · Score: 5, Funny

    Seriously. Whats next? Windows 7 will feature a task bar at the top of the screen with a magnifying shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen?

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    If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
    1. Re:Fire up the copiers Redmond! by fluch · · Score: 5, Funny

      And someone in Redmond reads this post and thinks: "Hmmm....!"

  2. Thumbtack? by unkaggregate · · Score: 4, Funny

    So does that mean their product is a pain in the ass?

  3. Microsoft will Remain Second Rate Player on Web by nysus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    FTA: "Thumbtack works in Internet Explorer and Firefox, but it lacks some features when used in Firefox, Microsoft said."

    Microsoft just doesn't get it. If you can't get your service to work with all major browsers, your service is going to be seen as inferior, not the browser.

    And apparently, Microsoft thinks people like being forced to use their software. Well, guess what? They don't. They resent it. It's not 1999 anymore. People now understand AOL is not synonymous with the Internet and Microsoft is not synonymous with software.

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    ---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.

  4. Re:I think an important question here is... by Arancaytar · · Score: 5, Informative

    When I have something interesting to paste or write down, and am too lazy to start up my text editor, I use Google Notebook.

    The disadvantage of the text editor is that I can only rarely remember what I named a file if I was in a hurry. The notebook lets me search and even preserve markup and images. Basically, Google Notebook is the text editor for the Lazy.

  5. Coming soon... by arotenbe · · Score: 4, Funny

    Microsoft Thumbscrew! The product guaranteed to make you scream in agony! Now with even more boneheaded user interface design decisions! Order now, and we'll somehow work in DRM and the Internet Explorer rendering engine, too!

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    Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
  6. Re:All those long words by WTF+Chuck · · Score: 4, Funny

    Funny, I thought all those long words meant, "We are searching your notes so that we know what advertisements to cram down your throat."

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    Note - Liberal use of <sarcasm> tags may or may not need to be applied.