A few weeks ago, I was looking for a bookmarking service that I could start using full-time and seriously. All this while, I used to stuff my bookmarks into Safari itself — very rarely organizing them because whenever I needed them, Safari just auto-completed the URLs for me. But I wanted to get over this habit and started looking for a service that’d make me want to use it. There was something about Delicious that never made me use it. I even attempted to use Pinboard on chairman Gruber’s recommendation, but that didn’t work out either. But then I stumbled upon Zootool. Jackpot!
Zootool is a very visual kind of bookmarking service made with love from Germany. The moment I landed up on the site, I knew the people behind the site weren’t shy of showing off their love for pixels. The Zootool UI and their general design direction is great — Zootool isn’t fancy, it’s not shiny. You won’t find overdone elements or overtly glossy buttons on the site. Zootool is that perfect blend of elegant UI design and fantastic function. It’s beautiful.
And this same principle is evident in their iPhone app as well. Taking cues from their website’s design, the app is really well done. It lets you browse through the bookmarks either in a grid view or a list view, which can be toggled by shaking the phone. Adding a new bookmark is easy and the screen is very pleasing to the eyes. Unlike most other apps that use the conventional loading spinner, Zootool’s iPhone app uses a really cute green loading bar on top. It’s nice to see something fresh like this.
Zootool has been a fantastic bookmarking service in the last few weeks for me and I highly recommend you try it. Creating an account is free and has most of the features, though a recently introduced Pro account option is also available, where you get to choose the price you want to pay yearly. The iPhone app on the other hand costs just $1.99 on the App Store. Here’s my profile on Zootool.