Style Meltdown

When I am browsing the web I find it hard to keep all the good things I find organized. I’ve got del.icio.us, Youtube, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and Flickr accounts. Whenever I want to go back to a site I found, I would have to get to search for it on the particular site that I marked it on. When I heard about a site called Second Brain I had to check it out. What it does is aggregate all of your Stumbles, Diggs, Youtube favorites etc. so you don’t have to comb through your accounts to find content you saved. In this article I will give you an overview of my user experience with Second Brain.

First Impressions

Signing up for Second Brain was easy, you create your Username and in no time you can start adding your services from the Dashboard. The Dashboard slides down and you can add a bookmark with a url or import your content from other sites. On the explore page you are presented with recent updates from Second Brain users and have the option of seeing recent collections as well. A collection is useful because you can separate your content into groups that you can easily go back to. For instance, if I wanted one for only design inspiration, I could create a collection and only add the articles or videos that I want to keep in it. You can either share your collections or have the option of keeping it private.

There is also a People page where you can see recent people who have signed up, the most followed, most viewed etc. When you follow people you can go to your homepage and their recent updates feed into yours for you. Another cool feature is the tag cloud. Second Brain collects all the tags from your services and creates a tag cloud for you that keeps all of them together. It’s nice when I want to see everything tagged Design that I’ve ever marked in another service.

Final Thoughts

One thing that I wish it had was a way to look at the users personal website. If I’m going to follow someone on Twitter I scan over what they’re saying then I look at their site to see who they are, usually gives you a very good impression. If they had that I think it’d be a good idea to have your own sites RSS feed added in your Second Brain.

I’m glad I signed up for Second Brain and I will continue to use it, I’m sure in the future it will get nothing but better. Anything that makes my life easier is okay with me.

Another reason to sign up is their sweet contest to win a Macbook Air and other prizes. If you sign up a new account and have great content, you could be picked to win. There are a ton more features that I didn’t mention that you just have to check out yourself, ya I said it.