In 2005, librarian, writer, teacher, and independent information profession, Mary Ellen Bates wrote a very positive review of eSnips, an online and web-based saving and sharing service.

Mary Ellen writes in her overview:

So, what is eSnips? At its most basic, it provides a free web-based file storage and sharing tool. You can upload up to 1 gigabyte of material — plain text, music, photos, screen shots, whatever. Since I travel a fair amount, I was first attracted to eSnips as a simple way to make a back-up copy of my essential files and presentations accessible from any PC. But what makes eSnips interesting is that, with its toolbar, you can “snip” any content you see on the web and have that material stored in your eSnips account as well.

In her article, Mary Ellen points out that as of August, 2005) eSnips was an early beta.

Well, 20 months have passed.

Today, eSnips is officially announcing a new online community sharing feature. Some of you might have noticed communities coming online in the past couple of weeks.

From the announcement:

eSnips MicroPortals [community portals] provide a comprehensive, ever-changing, centralized view into all aspects of a community regardless of size or type. This includes the latest, most popular and favorite files and folders, access to new and favorite members, a forum to discuss community affairs, and community-only areas that list unique tags, news and activities. Any MicroPortal can be formed around a group of people who use the same tags (categories) to describe the content they publish.

We think it’s good to see that a community (likely, a smaller focused group of users) will share their own tags versus using the same tags which are used across the main database. This could make using industry jargon and other specialized terms more useful by providing more precise results. An example, of sometimes a smaller, focused database can have the potential to offer better results. In our minds it’s similar to search for education related content using ERIC with the ERIC thesaurus.

Look for links to eSnips MicroPortals/Community links in the upper right side of the eSnips homepage as well near the top of the page.

Examples:
+ eSnips Community for Artists
+ DJ’s/Remix Community
+ Poetry

There is also a new eSnips Marketplace where artists and others can sell their wares.

Update: Mary Ellen’s article from 2005 mentions that a Firefox Toolbar was in the works. It’s now available. (Shirl’s note: For Windows only.)

See Also: eSnips Blog
See Also: eSnips Comes from the Same People Who Provide NetSnippets

See Also: Another service that offers related but different features (also free) is Filangy. This service allows for group sharing, tagging and can also work (you decide) as a TiVO for your browser. In other words, automatically saving every page that you view in your browser. Again, this feature can be quickly toggled on an off.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 and is filed under Cataloging and Metadata, Libraries and Librarianship, Resources for Educators, Software and Web-Based Applications, Technology and Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.