Carpe Diem

Mozilla Pocket to Raindrop

2025-05-24T01:09:00.000-07:00

As stated in Mozilla official blog post: Mozilla Pocket is shutting down. The service will be available until July 8th, after that, Pocket will enter export-only mode, users can export all the bookmarks before October 8th. If you want to keep your bookmarks, it’s time to migrate them to another service.

Raindrop.io is a good alternative. This article will explain how to export all the content in Pocket and import it to Raindrop.

Step-by-Step Migration Guide: From Pocket to Raindrop

Go to getpocket.com/export, and make sure you can access the email in the left-top corner, Pocket will send the file to that address. Click the Export CSV File button.
Go to your email and download the file. Pocket says:“Please allow up to 7 days to receive your export.” I don’t have many bookmarks and received the email in less than one minute.
Sign in to your Raindrop account, then go to https://app.raindrop.io/settings/import, click the “Upload File” button, select the file and upload it.

Why raindrop:

It integrates with a lot of apps.
It runs everywhere, web, browser plugins, iOS, Android.
It’s safe and secure. Open source, no ads and trackers.
Permanent copy: Raindrop automatically creates copies of all web pages and files in your collection. Only available in paid plan.

About a year ago, the OneNote web clipper stopped supporting non-Edge browsers. As a Firefox user, I decided to separate my personal notes from saved articles: personal notes to OneNote and saved articles to Mozilla Pocket. Now, Pocket is shutting down.

I tried Joplin after migrating my Evernote notes to Joplin. Joplin users must open the Joplin app to save a page with the Joplin web clipper plugin.

However, with Raindrop pro plan, you just add a bookmark to the page, and then Raindrop automatically creates a copy of the page. Note: Archiving depends on page accessibility; restricted content (e.g., paywalls, login-locked pages) may not save successfully. Check the limitations on this page for more details.

How To Build An Archive Page for Blogger

2025-02-11T06:30:00.000-08:00

Bloggers have discussed an archive page for blogger blogs, and the posts are grouped by month. Since I don’t have many posts, an archive page with posts archived by year is fine.

Method 1

I asked Google Gemini, and it provided me with a piece of JavaScript code. The code works properly, if you would like to add an archive page, follow the steps below.

1 Go to layout, add a gadget, and choose the Blog Archive gadget.
2 Add a new page, and pick a name you like. The page name will be the slug in the page URL.
3 Switch to HTML mode and paste the following code. Set the robots.txt meta tag for the page and hit the Publish button.

 //This code was generated by Google's Gemini AI.
<div id="custom-archive"></div>

<script type="text/javascript">
function createArchive() {
    // 1. Get blog URL (Blogger provides this automatically)
    var blogUrl = window.location.protocol + "//" + window.location.host;

    // 2. Function to fetch posts from the Blogger API
    function fetchPosts(start, callback) {
        var url = blogUrl + "/feeds/posts/default?alt=json-in-script&start-index=" + start + "&max-results=150&callback=?"; // Fetch up to 150 posts at a time
        $.getJSON(url, function (data) {
            callback(data.feed.entry || []); // Handle cases where there are no posts
        });
    }

    // 3.  Process the post data and organize by year (modified for reverse order)
    function processPosts(allPosts) {
        var archiveData = {}; // Store posts grouped by year

        allPosts.forEach(function (post) {
            var publishedDate = new Date(post.published.$t);
            var year = publishedDate.getFullYear();
            var month = publishedDate.getMonth() + 1;
            if (month < 10)
                month = "0" + month;
            var date = publishedDate.getDate();
            if (date < 10)
                date = "0" + date;

            if (!archiveData[year]) {
                archiveData[year] = [];
            }
            archiveData[year].push({
                title: post.title.$t,
                url: post.link.find(link => link.rel === 'alternate').href, // Find the permalink
                date: year + "-" + month + "-" + date  // Format date as YYYY-MM-DD
            });
        });

        // 4.  Build the HTML output (modified for reverse order)
        var html = '<ul>';
        // Sort the years in descending order
        const sortedYears = Object.keys(archiveData).sort((a, b) => b - a);

        for (const year of sortedYears) { // iterate over sorted years
            if (archiveData.hasOwnProperty(year)) {
                html += '<li><strong>' + year + '</strong><ul>';

                //Sort post in descending order in each year.
                archiveData[year].sort((a, b) => new Date(b.date) - new Date(a.date));

                archiveData[year].forEach(post => {
                    html += '<li><a href="' + post.url + '">' + post.title + '</a> <span class="post-date">(' + post.date + ')</span></li>'; // Added span with class
                });
                html += '</ul></li>';
            }
        }
        html += '</ul>';

        // 5.  Insert the HTML into the page
        document.getElementById('custom-archive').innerHTML = html;
    }

    // Initialize variables for fetching all
    var allPosts = [];
    var startIndex = 1; //Start from the beginning.

    function getAllPosts() {
        fetchPosts(startIndex, function (posts) {
            if (posts.length > 0) {
                allPosts = allPosts.concat(posts);
                startIndex += 150;
                getAllPosts();//Recursive call to grab next batch.
            }
            else {
                processPosts(allPosts);
            }

        });
    }

    // Start the process.
    getAllPosts();

}

// Make sure jQuery is loaded (Blogger usually includes it, but this is a safe check)
if (typeof jQuery == 'undefined') {
    var script = document.createElement('script');
    script.src = 'https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.6.0/jquery.min.js';
    script.onload = createArchive; // Call createArchive after jQuery loads
    document.head.appendChild(script);
} else {
    createArchive(); // If jQuery is already loaded, run immediately
}
</script>

4 Add some CSS code to the theme so the archive page looks nice. Hit the Customize button in theme, scroll down to the bottom, add CSS, and paste the following code:

// This code was generated by Google's Gemini AI.
#custom-archive ul {
    list-style: none; /* Remove bullet points */
    padding: 0;
}

#custom-archive li {
    margin-bottom: 0.5em; /* Add spacing between items */
}

#custom-archive li strong {
     display:block; /*Make year take up full width*/
    font-size: 1.2em; /* Make the year headings larger */
    margin-bottom: 0.5em; 
}
   #custom-archive li ul{
    margin-left: 2em; /*Add indent*/
}

5 Visit the page. Change the look and feel by fine-tuning the CSS code.
6 Remove the gadget if you like.

Method 2:

If you are familiar with HTML, write a static archive page with HTML.

Pros and cons:

In the first method, the search engine will see many lines of code on the archive page rather than the actual post titles and links. This is why I choose to set the page as noindex. But the JavaScript code will auto-fetch any new posts you publish, even if the blog has more than 150 posts.

The second method is good for SEO, as Gemini said: Search engines can easily crawl and index a well-structured static archive. But it won’t update automatically, and you will need to add the newest post manually.

TikTok Refugees Fleeing to RedNote

2025-01-14T21:09:00.000-08:00

As TikTok will be banned on January 19th, many users are fleeing to other platforms. Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu is among the destinations. It is said that more than 700,000 new users joined Xiaohongshu in 2 days, according to Reuters.

Photo by Declan Sun on Unsplash

Xiaohongshu was founded in 2013, and most of the users were females in the first several years. The meaning of the app's name is Red Note. It was regarded as the Chinese version of Instagram, which also focuses on photo sharing. Now many male users are participating in the creation of content in all formats, texts, photos, live photos, videos in different lengths and live-streaming.

I think it is more like Twitter, on which users could post content in all formats. The difference is that RedNote will transform your text post into a photo card, when you post text without a photo or video, while Twitter was designed to post text initially. Additionally, Twitter features a translation function that enables users to read tweets in multiple languages, a feature that Xiaohongshu lacks.

Many Chinese users utilize RedNote as a search engine nowadays, because they think there are fewer advertisements in the search results than Baidu and more results based on true experience. Moreover, the platform offers more up-to-date content. But you have to sign in to use the search service.

RedNote also launched its search engine app, Dian Dian. Since I have not tried the app yet, I will not comment on it.

International users have been creating content on RedNote for a pretty long time, some of them even have millions of followers. If you hope to build some influence and gain a following, do not miss this great opportunity. You can share skills like how to improve spoken English, crocheting techniques, makeup tips, etc, or just post photos of your pets. You may get a lot of likes, and stars which means bookmarked.

What Other Alternatives Are Available?

Several other Chinese social apps can serve as alternatives, bilibili, Douyin, kuaishou, weibo, etc. bilibili focuses on long-form videos, similar to YouTube. One of its most appealing features is that it will not insert ads in videos, even for non-paying members. Douyin is the parent company of TikTok. Kuaishou is very similar to Douyin and introduced Kling, a video-generated service.