Linking to some server-side bookmarking tools made me curious, so I set one up on my local server, the PHP/MySQL based MySQLinks.

It’s described as beta, which appears a bit modest, but I understand the description. There’s no ‘make nice text’ function in the form submit, for example, which means it chokes on SQL operator characters such as quotes.

Although it works with blog pinger update files, it currently will only examine one changes.xml file at a time (so you can’t build a list of the updates with multiple sources, a necessity), and if that file is unavailable, it coughs up raw errors instead of your llist of links. So it’s got a ways to go yet.

On the plus side, setting it up was cake. I joined the mailing list and contributed rewritten bookmarklet code so that Safari would work with the tool, but have heard nothing from them and not recieved any list-mail, which makes me think they project might be dark for now.

It’s got me thinking about data management in general again. On my desktop, I tend to drag and drop crud all month long and then stick it in a folder every month. I have actually gone so far as to find scripts to do the cleanup for me on the first of the month but have yet to implement them because I want it to integrate with a by-filetype filer script I use. I also want all of the above to be available as folder actions in the OS.

Better is the enemy of good, after all. So instead I just do the cleanup by hand, or, better yet, write about it here instead of figring out how to hook it all up.

Hm.

I really should get it all working, and I really do have all the pieces in place. Once I get that settled I could presumably build a front end for the configuration components. I guess the last thing would be a concept that would allow users to grok it as an app instead of a collection of scripts.

Maybe if I call it the Red Swingline? Your Intern? Humina.