This article was originally published on Medium
Hi, it’s Gonzalo. I’m the solo developer of Pegao.co, a web app for bookmark lovers. My main goal is make this project open source and I hope the platform never shows ads, nor share your data with third parties.
If you enjoy my work on Pegao.co, please consider supporting what I do. Thank you.
https://ko-fi.com/zakokor
https://www.patreon.com/zakokor
Introduction
About a year ago, just at this time of year when you have that feeling in your gut — the year is ending and you didn’t accomplish all your goals — I started thinking that it had already been about 5 years of my life without writing a line of code because that’s the way it all happened, my work no longer allowed me to do something different to manage an important project and in my personal life my daughters were born and I felt that I needed to dedicate them as much and quality time as I could, and for this I also had to rest.
At that time, there was not much to do and it bothered me because I was always involved in small web projects that kept me creative and learning…but not everything in the garden was rosy, I remember too it was often frustrating trying to develop something that was supposed to be simple and I ended up spending nights without being able to do it, but in short those stories were the ones that always kept my motivation to move on…because my interest was never to earn money … I mean it would be great if I could make some money, but it was never my main interest.
Now, at 40 years old, things haven’t changed much, basically I have a full-time job, I keep taking photos for microstock, design and build wooden furniture for my new house, I exercise and I’m a father and husband 24/7.
So, how did I get started with Pegao.co?
At the end of 2018 I started looking for a simple need I had and if the solution could help me organize my ideas and optimize my time. There were so many things that race through my head in a day, but it was not until February 2019 when I finally found something interesting…it was right in front of me the entire time.
While I am working, it was very frequent that I ended up looking for information on the internet that I needed but many times I could not fully digest it, so if I was on the computer I ended up sending me links by email to read them on my phone at night and when I read them I continued to open more links than would use the next day on the computer; so I easily ended up with 50 or 70 open links (every week for some reason they were growing) on my phone until it was blocked and lost, in addition to a sync issue between my devices.
My first thought was using the browser bookmark, but many of those links would need them for short time and I didn’t want to deal with the fact of having to delete them. Additionally, I remember sharing with my wife, on WhatsApp, some news links or topics that were interesting and I understood that this solution should also help me share information with others.
It was like that without analyzing it much more, I decided that that would be my new side project, although surely there might also be some solution such as a browser extension or app that did what I needed, but for me the important part was the motivation I had to start over.
What followed was multiple conversations with my wife, because I knew it was another occupation that I was going to have and I needed to count on her support and try to find a way to make this idea a reality. Among many of the things we talked about, I was able to conclude three: 1) that many of my ideas stayed in that so the determination was necessary to do them, 2) I had to give priority to some of my occupations because I couldn’t do them all at the same time, so I decided which ones would have less dedication and in what day / hour it would be more productive to execute them, and 3) I had to get into the habit of working at night so it would be an effort. This was not something I would have done in an Excel chart, but when I started embarking on the project I defined it taking these aspects into account.
I must admit that it’s still a challenge to build a side project, however this year I will be able to say that I managed to retake something that I had missed.
Roapmap (high level)
This is what I’m working on:
☑ Login with Google.
☑ Save links easily.
☑ Lists of links.
☑ Organize links quickly with emojis :)
☑ Filter by emoji or list.
☑ Public profile (your full name and photo on Google, username and all links).
☑ Follow people.
☐ Login with Twitter, GitHub.
☐ Account page features (Customize interests, email notifications and so on).
☐ Search by…
☐ Private profile.
☐ Follow sources.
☐ Documentation (help, source, etc)
…and the list keeps growing.
Pegao.co — a web app for bookmark lovers
Twitter @zakokor or @pegaoco
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