On Clipix for genealogy

Today I read an intriguing article about new(ish) website Clipix, which has the tempting tagline ‘Organize your life!’ It has been designed to make saving stuff off the web as simple as possible.

It works very much like Pinterest, but it’s not intended for sharing stuff with other people. Instead it’s designed to allow you to store and organise your own links in a way that’s more convenient, organised and visually accessible than bookmarking.

It’s more convenient because it’s online rather than on your machine. You can access it from any pc/laptop, and there are even mobile apps too. It uses a ‘clip’ button similar to Pinterest’s ‘pin it’ button, so it’s no more of a faff than bookmarking. It also allows you to upload your own files as well, so you can mix in your own pictures and documents with articles, images etc. from the web. Clever stuff!

It’s more organised and visually accessible because it has a board system like Pinterest, rather than a long and messy list of bookmarks. Like Pinterest, for each clip it saves an image and a brief description – useful as a reminder of what it links to, which you don’t get from a bookmark. If there’s no image associated with your link, you can use a sort of ‘title text’ as a thumbnail instead. 

I haven’t tried it out yet, but I’m already hooked on the idea, so I’m really hoping that the functionality, layout etc. is as good as the idea sounds (though currently the website keeps crashing on me, which doesn’t bode well!) For one thing, it means I can work from any computer and always access all my stuff in a useful way, rather than carrying around a memory stick and having to click through a million folders to get to what I’m looking for.

I can see a million different ways this is going to be useful, both for genealogy and otherwise.

From a genealogical perspective though, my initial thought is to have one board for ever surname I’m researching, as a kind of ‘work in progress’ space. From here I could link to individual Ancestry profiles, as well as having my individual index profiles in there, and all photographs, documents and links relating to that branch. If I can have just that board and its info in the background as I research, then it means that literally everything I need is just one click away at all times! Magic!

It does have sharing functionality, which again could be really useful for swapping sources etc. To be honest thought, it’s refreshing to see a new idea that’s actually solving a problem and helping you to do something, rather than just helping you tell everyone you’re doing it!

L x