Clipboard, the web clipping and social bookmarking service founded in January 2011 by Gary Flake, a former Overture executive who went on to become a Microsoft Technical Fellow, has just introduced a series of changes that give the website a new look and feel.

A new tile interface now replaces the sequential lists that many social networking sites, like Facebook and Google+ favor, letting members see more clips on their monitor than before. Users still have the option of viewing their clips in list format. Flake explained: “It’s really about how you interact with the clips.” Clipboard users who visit sites around the web for various reasons – entertainment, news, work, study, can collect them in one location in snippets, or what Flake calls bookmarklets. Links are dynamic so this means if one were to visit say, Salman Rushdie’s twitter account https://twitter.com/#!/SalmanRushdie then visit news site for the current headlines http://www.bangkokpost.com/  or check stock investments http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=LNKD&ql=1 all of this information would be updated from within the bookmarklet clipboard.

Clipboard launches new interface. Image source: Wikimedia – Dennis Hamilton

Flake explained the value that clipboard provides to its members: “A clip is rich enough to be worth fussing over and small enough to have in a collection.”  The changes Clipboard made to its interface make it easier to bring more attention to clips that are more important because users can grab a snippet of varying size and send it to their Clipboard home page. If the item is important the user can grab a big chunk, not so much –  just a small snippet where it will take up a very small space on the home page.

Clipboard is similar to other websites like Delicious, Evernote, and Pinterest, but it is easier and faster to clip important or interesting information for later viewing. Users can clip parts of a website they are interested in after activating the clipper by highlighting the section of the page, then clicking their mouse, which then opens a dialogue box asking for confirmation that the item should be added to their home page.  Once back at their home page, users can organize their clips into groups by category, make them public or private, or share with select users.

Flake is keeping the website free for now while he develops it, although he may turn it into an ad supported microblogging platform in order to monetize it.

About David John Walker

Dave has a B.A. in Mathematics, loves writing and reading about the latest developments in technology and social media, and has been working as a freelance writer for five years.