Back in January we talked about Zootool, a new web application that aimed at revolutionizing then way you collect and organize bookmarks on the web. I described Zootool as the best new webapp of 2010, and I still think that Bastian Allgeier’s creation is the most innovative and best designed new kid on the block this year.
Four months and hundreds of thousands of entries later, the Zootool community is still young, still growing and looking for more and better integration of the app with online services and devices. Zootool integrates with Twitter, Facebook and Delicious to share and backup your bookmarks, but people want a way to access Zootool from their Macs, iPhones and iPads. And while we know that an iPad version is in the works and maybe we’ll see a native iPhone counterpart someday, today Imprbbble has released the first official Mac client for the app called Zootool Offline.
Zootool Offline is a simple Mac app that lets you browse and backup your bookmarks offline directly from your Mac. It comes as a menubar app (but you can decide to show the dock icon anyway) and it sports a pleasant user interface that resembles the online version of the service, with a wooden window (which is optional, by the way) and your visual bookmarks in the shape of thumbnails against a dark background.
On first launch you’ll be asked to enter your Zootool credentials and choose a backup location, in this way the application will fetch all your bookmarks and back them up so that you’ll be able to open them when you don’t have an Internet connection. I guess this should be pretty useful when you’re traveling with your Mac and you want to show those Tumblr images to your friends. Please note that the offline features are available only for images, so you’ll have to launch URLs anyway if you want to read a webpage or watch a video your archived. Personally, I’ve decided to backup everything into Dropbox - you know how much I love it.
Zootool offline is a very simple utility, available at $4.95 here, and it shows a great room for improvements. I’ve talked with the developers and they promised me they’re working hard in extending the features and functionalities of this desktop app, but by now Zootool Offline is just a menubar app that lets you check your zoo entries from your Mac. If you’re a hardcore Zootool user, you’re going to buy this anyway and wait for more features to come. Just like Zootool.com, it’s promising and still growing.
