Ask HN: Would you use a cloud based browser session, browsethrough.me | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you use a cloud based browser session, browsethrough.me

1 pointphlux5 comments

HNers,

I am a pack-tabber -- I typically have 20+ tabs open on a regular basis, on multiple machines for various purposes.

I have been sepc'ing the following service to address the issues I have with limited time, too much information, lack of organization. I am curious if you would use this service should I build it?

Browsethrough.me (or ill call it topicizer.com) is a cloud based browsing session which allows you to detach and reattach to various browsing sessions hosted via the service.

Group like site tabs together, such as a reddit session and the resulting cascade of tabs resulting from that session. An HN session or a work research session.

Lump sites/sessions together by topic as well such as "photography" "Ruby" "Programming" etc and be able to return to those sessions, share those sessions, tag them, add notes and potentially other actions.

Ultimately - what I would like to see is that rather than sharing a simple link, one could share out something akin to a digital tour; "Read this, then this, then look at this, and refer to this".

Considering the browser is such an important portal for everything we do, I find it odd that there is lack of deeper level features such as I have described to help people better manage access to online information.

If you find this interesting and would like to work on this with me, drop me a note.

As someone who finds your "20+ tabs" cute (I've got an order of magnitude more per device), this is something I've always wanted. I did look into existing solutions, with Weave being the most attractive I found, but none really worked for me (the biggest problem with Weave was, unsurprisingly, browser dependency; I use multiple browsers on the same computer, let alone across devices).

It would be important to do this well. Speed and security are essential for this to be worthwhile. However, as far as the idea goes, I'm definitely game.

I am not familiar with Weave -- I'll be honest, I did not look to see if anything was addressing this problem - I guess due to the fact that with as much as I read - I would have assumed to have heard about it...

What would you add/change with respect to the idea?

The idea with Weave was not exactly the same as yours, but it shares the same feature that I consider the main draw: sharing tabs across devices. Weave really is supposed to be a platform for sharing all of the browser data (history, bookmarks, etc) across devices, but the inherent Firefox dependency and cumbersomeness of use stopped me from using it.

Interestingly, at around the same time I was looking for that, I was also looking for a way to construct a digital tour such as you describe to use to show some things to remote coworkers, so I'm somewhat amused that you seem to be combining these ideas.

If you did end up creating a service that let me seamlessly share tab sessions across multiple devices on different platforms, I'd be ecstatic enough. Being able to tag tabs to various sessions and be able to pull them up like that so I could easily share the sessions for my projects between my work devices without bringing in, say, my HN tabs would just be a dream.

I'm really not good with security & networking but how're you planning to prevent a Firesheep-like attack?

Aside from the fact that this is not a solution aiming to fix wireless security, and other than offering the service via HTTPS - I am not sure that a "firesheep-like attack" is really a concern.

I suspect that the main argument against such a service would be the worry that your history / passwords / accounts what have you would be shared/sold/compromised.

I dont yet have the answers to such concerns, but I am interested in feedback on whether one would use the service assuming the stated security/privacy concerns were properly handled.

FWIW, I refuse to ever have a facebook account due to my complete lack of trust in that company's ability to act in a way I would be comfortable with as it pertains to any of my personal information...

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