Welcome to the Netvouz blog
Netvouz - Online Social Bookmark Manager - Save, Tag and Share your bookmarks

This is the Netvouz blog. To visit the Netvouz social bookmarking service go to www.netvouz.com.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Site violation: Netvouz.com :-)

We got an unusual email from an "IT Manager" at a company. Read this:

Your website Netvouz.com is linking to my website [the web site.com]. You have no authorization to do this and I request that you remove these links immediately.

This is where these links can be found:
http://netvouz.com/{user}/tag/company
http://netvouz.com/{user}/folder/4798157202731688352/possibles+offshore+formations 
http://netvouz.com/{user}/tag/offshore
http://netvouz.com/{user}/tag/formations


Thank you.

Jack  [last name]
IT Manager – [the web site.com]


I'm really sorry Jack but you have no authorization to email us. And we're not going to remove any of our users' legitimate links (but Jack, do come back when you find links pointing to child porn or any other illegal content and we'll be happy to remove them).

We spend endless hours keeping Netvouz free from spam and SEO links, but hey - this is really the opposite of SEO, isn't it? ;-)

/Henrik



Thursday, February 16, 2012

Netvouz upgraded

As you may have noticed we have spent the last few days doing a major upgrade of the Netvouz infrastructure. No? You haven't noticed? OK, good. Then you also didn't notice our minor glitches during the upgrade ;-)

Nevertheless, with the new upgraded hardware and software on our servers we are now seeing response times about 10 times faster than before. In some specific cases even 100 times faster!

So keep on bookmarking. Meanwhile we are continously accepting new members. Seems like a lot of people are abandoning delicious since their major redesign and shift in focus.

Later,

/Henrik

Friday, September 16, 2011

Netvouz is the best!

We just received some very spontaneous and positive feedback from one of our long time users:

I love NetVouz !!! You guys are fantastic! One of the best web sites on the internet!

I've been using NetVouz for 4 years and it's been just great.

Solid and reliable!

Keep up the good work!

Thanks Thilo - we'll make sure to keep up the good work! :-)

//Henrik

Saturday, March 05, 2011

Technical Problem

We're currently having some network hickups here at Netvouz. The netvouz.com web site is currently not accessible. We are working on resolving the problem and will bring the site back online as soon as possible.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

//Henrik

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Delicious shuts down, Netvouz opens up

Past Friday we started getting lots of requests for new accounts at Netvouz. We do have a continous stream of requests but Friday it was significantly more than usual. After a while we realized why - Yahoo is shutting down Delicious (which, for those of you who don't know, is the biggest and busiest social bookmarking service around). So we decided to open up our self registration service and welcome all Delicious refugees into the warm cosy Netvouz cottage. We have automatic import of Delicious bookmarks and such so the check-out from Delicious and check-in to Netvouz is painless.

Today we disabled self-registration again... So many spammers that just opens new accounts and starts auto-posting junk links. As you know we strive to keep Netvouz always available, free from spam, and to give you fast page load times. Millions of junk links just make life so much harder for us.

So for everyone who really wants an account at Netvouz, and who do not plan to use it for spamming, please drop us an email (info is at our Contact page), and we'll be glad to set it all up for you.

//Henrik

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Google Chrome extension for Netvouz

John Pedersen, the developer of the Firefox extension for Netvouz, has switched to the Google Chrome browser. A great browser but something was lacking - no integration with his favorite online bookmark manager. So he decided to develop an extension for Google Chrome as well. We have now been testing this for a while and it's working really well.

Anyone using Google Chrome should go to Chrome extension for Netvouz and install it. When installed a single Netvouz icon appears in the upper right corner. Clicking it reveals two buttons; one for quickly accessing your Netvouz bookmarks page and another for adding new bookmarks.




Many many thanks to John for his work on this!

//Henrik

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Netvouz adds Google Chrome support

Today we added support for Google Chrome as a browser to Netvouz. Some early adopters of Chrome have noticed that the Netvouz menu system has not worked well (or not worked at all, to be honest...) with Chrome. That's fixed now.

There are yet no Chrome plugin for saving bookmarks to Netvouz as there is for Firefox, but using the standard Bookmarklets works well. To install them select Tools -> Browser buttons when you have signed in to Netvouz and follow the instructions.

Happy bookmarking!

//Henrik

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Netvouz Buttons updated

The Firefox extension for Netvouz has been updated by its developer. It now supports Firefox 3.1 beta versions. You can also display your most recent bookmarks (Netvouz new view) or all your bookmarks (Netvouz all view).

If you want to use any of these two new options open Tools -> Add-ons in Firefox. Then click The Extensions tab on the top, highlight the Netvouz buttons row and click Options. Select your preferences in the dialog that pops up.



Thanks again to John Pedersen for all his work on the extension!

//Henrik

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Spam cleanup!

The Netvouz bookmark database grows steadily - and we like it! Lots of good stuff is coming in all the time.

However to maintain Netvouz' excellent performance and to keep our service free from junk we have decided to do a major spam cleanup. We believe we will junk more than 100000 accounts in this process so it's gonna take us a while.

While we do this we have also disabled the self-registration feature, so during the time we will manually create new accounts for those who really want them.

Happy bookmarking!

//Henrik

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Enabling Netvouz Buttons in Firefox 3.0

John Pedersen, developer of the Netvouz buttons extension for Firefox, has updated the version number of the extension so it's now compatible with Firefox 3.0 and the add-ons installation mechanism. So now it installs smoothly without any tricks needed.

Thanks again John!

//Henrik

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Netvouz 2.0 - project finally started

Hello,

As some of you have noticed there hasn't been many new visible features to Netvouz lately. Instead of adding new features we have focused on two things; 1) keeping Netvouz free from spammers, and 2) scanning the market for the best Web 2.0 development tools and platform.

Today I'm glad to say that the project of transforming Netvouz into a dynamic web 2.0 platform has finally started. We have selected the technologies and products that will enable us to do this transition. This means you should finally see all the goodies of Ajax as well as several new features being rolled out once the Netvouz 2.0 platform is in place.

Netvouz today consists of some 80.000+ lines of code and one of our goals is also to cut down on that number, making the codebase easier to maintain. Another goal is to open up an API for others to easier integrate Netvouz in other services and platforms.

It's currently too early to give an estimate on when we can launch Netvouz 2.0, but as the project moves along I'll post updates here.

If you have a feature request, please don't hesitate to drop us an email at "info at netvouz.com".

//Henrik

Friday, January 04, 2008

Netvouz buttons Firefox extension updated

John Pedersen who developed the original Netvouz buttons extension for Firefox has released an updated version (now available for download from Mozilla extensions web site).



Version 1.51 has slick new icons made by Swedish Arvid Axelsson, creator of the excellent Firefox theme Qute (highly recommended). It also has configurable options for how the MyNetvouz and Add2Netvouz buttons should open windows.

To configure the new Netvouz buttons extension to your preferences select Tools -> Add-ons in Firefox. Then click the Extensions tab on the top and then the Preferences (or Options, depends on Firefox version) button next to the Netvouz buttons extension. This brings up a dialog box where you can select the window opening behaviour you prefer:



Thanks much John for your hard work on this update!

//Henrik

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Netvouz featured on Profy

Yesterday the technology news blog Profy posted a positive review of Netvouz.

The reviewer appreciates the Netvouz way of organizing bookmarks using both tags and folders, as well as our unique features, such as the broken links manager. He also liked our performance and the fact that we work hard on protecting our users from spammy content.

I was very pleased reading this review as it really manifests that Netvouz is a powerful social bookmarking service which stands out among hundreds of similar services. (I already knew this before, of course, but it's always nice to see it in print ;-)

Read the full Netvouz review on Profy.

//Henrik

Monday, July 23, 2007

Netvouz adds Safe Browsing service - Surf safer with Netvouz

As part of our ongoing activity to improve link quality we have now added a safe browsing service which warns you if you are about to visit a potentially harmful web site by following a link on Netvouz. From now on all bookmarks on Netvouz are regularly checked to discover web sites that are either known for distributing viruses or other harmful code (malware), or are known phishing sites which may attempt to trick you into sharing personal information.

If you click a link on Netvouz which leads to a suspected site, instead of sending you directly to the site (which could be harmful for your computer) Netvouz takes you to an information page explaining the consequences of visiting the site. When you have understood the consequences you can continue to the suspected site if you want. So Netvouz does not block any web sites or prevent you from visiting them, but we do warn you when you are about to visit a potentially dangerous site by following a link on Netvouz.

Below is an example of what the warning page may look like (click it to enlarge).


The Netvouz safe browsing system currently relies on the Google Safe Browsing service to find suspected web sites, but we plan to also take advantage of other safe browsing services to further improve the precision.

The safe browsing system is active for all links displayed on the Netvouz web site (both public and private links) as well as all links delivered thru any kinds of feeds (RSS, JavaScript, or HTML feeds).

With our automatic link checker (which regularly scans your bookmarks and verifies that they are valid) and recent spam filter for our search engine we have already proven that we care about your links, and this new service further manifests our intentions to become the best place to store your bookmarks online. At least if you care about them.

Give it a try! Sign up and upload your bookmarks to Netvouz, and enjoy a smarter and safer way to surf the web.

//Henrik

P.S. Did you notice the new cool icons for the Netvouz buttons Firefox extension? They will be incorporated into the next update of the extension, soon to be released on Mozilla Add-ons web site.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Netvouz is 13th Largest Social Bookmarking Site

According to eBizMBA July 2007 summary of the largest and busiest social bookmarking web sites Netvouz ranks as number 13.

This may not sound like such a great achievement, but considering the huge number of social bookmarking sites that have popped up the last 2-3 years and the fact that Netvouz is not owned by a company but developed mainly by one person, I think it's pretty good. And as you may know Netvouz has been in development since 2001 and came online (silently....) in 2003, so we're definitely not a rookie.

A while ago we were also ranked as one of the top 5 best social bookmarking sites by Pandia.

In my opinion several of the services on the list are not really true social bookmarking sites. I consider digg.com, Technorati, Slashdot, Shoutwire etc. not to be true bookmarking sites but rather news voting sites (and excellent such!). Or do you know anyone who is actually using these services for managing their bookmarks?

Nevertheless, I certainly enjoyed reading the list. And thanks to everyone for supporting us and making Netvouz successful. Your feedback is always appreciated.

//Henrik

Monday, July 09, 2007

More sorts. Less duplicates.

The observant Netvouz user may already have seen the new features we have added the past week, but for the rest of you here's a quick summary.

First there are some useful new sort options which let you view your bookmarks sorted by last visit date and by number of clicks. These let you see which bookmarks you have clicked recently as well as which you have clicked most. You find these sort options in the Netvouz Show menu as "Sort by visit date" and "Sort by visits". A click is registered only when you are logged on and only when you click your own bookmarks.

We have also added a check which notifies you when you bookmark a web site you already have. We then load and display your existing bookmark (if you have several copies we load the last modified) so you can update it instead of saving a new. If you really want to save another copy you can use the Netvouz File -> Add Bookmark menu option or just click the Copy link next to the bookmark.

In addition to this we have also added a P3P Privacy Policy which should make Netvouz work better in recent versions of Internet Explorer which, apparently, have a tighter control of cookies. A P3P policy states what information a web site collects about its users and how it uses this information. Rest assured, Netvouz only collects standard server logs and uses cookies only to determine if you are logged on or not and what your display preferences are, and we do not use this to contact you with any spam email or so, only to improve our web site. We hate spam just as much as you do!

Work continues - this week we will work further on improving link quality and also implement Safe Browsing!

//Henrik

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Netvouz Firefox extension now live on Firefox Add-ons site

The Netvouz buttons Firefox extension, developed by Netvouz user John Pedersen, went live today on the Firefox Add-ons site after a few days in the Sandbox.

You can install it in the same way as any other Firefox extension (select Tools -> Add-ons menu and click Get Extensions in Firefox, then select Browse by category -> Bookmarks on the Add-ons web site). You can also get it directly from http://addons.mozilla.org/addon/5194.

If you are using Firefox we highly recommend this extension instead of the two bookmarklets previously available.

For more information see this previous post (or just scroll down ;-)

Thanks again John!

//Henrik

Monday, June 25, 2007

Netvouz buttons integrates with Firefox

John, a Netvouz user, has developed a Firefox extension for Netvouz. Netvouz buttons 1.0 provides the same functionality as the "bookmarklets" you use to save bookmarks to your Netvouz account and to visit your Netvouz bookmarks. But because it adds two buttons to the Firefox navigation toolbar (back, forward, stop, home etc.) you do not need to enable the Firefox bookmarks toolbar just to make the Netvouz bookmarklets visible.

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like in my browser:


When you install Netvouz buttons it tries to configure itself automatically and in most cases you do not need to do anything, it should work right out of the box. But if it fails you will see the Netvouz logon screen and it will then configure itself after you have logged on.

Netvouz buttons 1.0 is currently on the Mozilla Sandbox web site and has not yet been promoted to the public Firefox extensions web site.

If you want to give Netvouz buttons 1.0 a try (and we highly recommend it!) you can install it from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5194. You will need to sign up with Mozilla and then edit your account (click "My Account" on the top right) and enable the Sandbox. If you want you may also post a short review.

Thanks John!!!

//Henrik



Thursday, June 21, 2007

New search engine delivers better links, faster!

I am very glad to announce that we have now deployed a completely new search engine on Netvouz. This new technology has been developed during the past 2-3 months and a week ago we began migrating the existing database onto the new improved design (a design which will also allow us to roll out a number of new features which will improve the social aspects of Netvouz). So after several days, weeks, months of hard work it was finally time to make the switch.

This new search engine technology is capable of delivering the best and most relevant results from the links on Netvouz for each subject. Regardless if you search on tag (i.e. browsing by tags) or perform a free-text search using the search field it will return relevant content, free from spam and nonsense links. This is a huge improvement over the old search engine which always came back with lots of spam and irrelevant links, pretty much regardless of what you searched for.

But improved link quality is not all. The new engine is also a lot faster. And because it is also highly tunable we will constantly tune it to deliver better and better results, faster and faster.

For an example of what the new engine delivers, let's shoot a few queries. Let's say we're interested in web design and especially CSS. Netvouz then suggests we take a look at A list apart, css Zen Garden, and HTML Goodies, web sites which all deal with web design, HTML coding and CSS in particular. Good choices, and we could learn a lot from visiting these sites. OK, so now we want to go shopping and what could be a better place to start than by finding the best prices at Price Watch, Priceline, or PriceGrabber. Now let's try to see what Netvouz suggest on another popular topic, cooking diet food. I haven't visited these sites myself but their names sound promising; The World's Healthiest Foods and Over 100 Quick and Easy Healthy Foods.

I hope you all appreciate the much improved search results!

//Henrik

P.S. I recently googled for a radio controlled helicopter, the Lama v4, and much to my surprise Google turns up my own Netvouz bookmarks as hit #4! It must be a sign, so I have now bought one of these as well!

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Who pulled the Internet plug?

Today I got an alert from the monitoring service that constantly checks that Netvouz is healthy. It said Netvouz was down. Strange, because at that same moment I was using it and it worked without a glitch. So it must be something else. And so I started digging....

First I went to my long-time friend GrabPERF, which also keeps track of how we're doing (also see this post). It also reported Netvouz being down. But not completely. So I took a closer look at the GrabPERF details to see what was going on. It told me that some of it's monitoring agents, such as Zurich and Technorati #2 (but not #1!), failed to reach Netvouz but others didn't. So about half of them could not reach Netvouz, while the others could. This is shown in the GrabPERF graph below.

In the middle of the graph you see several measurements which have failed (the purple dots at the bottom), while others have succeed (the green ones above them). That's odd. But at least it's not a problem with the Netvouz servers or the network connection we're hooked up to.

Hmm... let's go check the Netvouz real-time web traffic statistics.


This statistics shows that at noon local time (Central European Time) there was a sudden drop in the number of visitors. OK, so it's a fact. The Netvouz service is healthy as ever, but apparently we can not be reached from some locations on the Internet. Interesting, but why?

So this means that somewhere on the Internet a major core router that handles a lot of traffic went down at about noon today. That could happen. But it also means that the remaining routers did not manage to route via alternative routers, and that should not happen. Luckily, as both graphs show, traffic was reestablished again after about 20 minutes.

So what happened out there today? Was it just a hardware failure at an important router? Or a successful hacker attack that managed to bring it down? Or was it just a "oopss" when someone accidentally pulled the wrong plug?

I don't know, do you?

The mystery remains........

//Henrik