Blinklist and the human mind

Blinklist, a new social bookmarks manager (still in Beta), makes a lot of claims about functioning the same way that our mind does:

“BlinkList is a tool that allows you to create a mental map of the internet of sites that are important to you. It’s a bookmarking manager designed to work in the same way your brain stores data and thinks about things.”

“Traditionally, whenever you saved something on the computer, you had to put into a category or a folder. Well, human beings don’t operate in such a rigid way. When you want to save something, you usually think of multiple mental notes that might make sense, depending on what it is that you are saving.”

As a cognitive psychologist, I am generally somewhat skeptical about such claims. But encouraged by the Blinklist development team (see comment below), I gave it a try.

Frankly, Blinklist has a lot of potential as a link organiser, but the Beta version still has so many usability problems that I cannot see myself switching to the service yet. (More detailed comments by me can be found on the Blinklist discussion forum).

Blinklist says it will launch the full version in October 2005.