Five Ways to Mark Up the Web

In 1999, Eng-Sion Tan and two friends launched Third Voice, a browser plugin that would let anyone make annotations on webpages. The intent was to encourage freer speech on the internet, but many slammed it as “Web Graffiti.” The company eventually shut down.

The idea of web page annotation didn’t die with Third Voice, though. New services, each with unique features, have carried on.

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Diigo

A must have for researchers
Diigo is a research tool that lets you share bookmarks and annotations on web pages using a browser plugin or bookmarklet. Notes are anchored to highlighted text and bookmarks save a cached copy of the site. Diigo will also let you save to multiple other bookmarking services (all the big ones) and email your annotated pages to friends who don’t have the plugin. We covered Diigo earlier.

Diigo has some advanced search functionality built in as well. With Diigo, you can search for the highlighted words on the web with any of four search engines, social bookmarking systems, on blogs, within the current site, amongst inbound links, and seven different content verticals (TV, stock sites, etc.). Diigo also lets you post links to your blog through posts, or a “linkroll” widget listing your most recent annotations.

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Diigo

A must have for researchers
Diigo is a research tool that lets you share bookmarks and annotations on web pages using a browser plugin or bookmarklet. Notes are anchored to highlighted text and bookmarks save a cached copy of the site. Diigo will also let you save to multiple other bookmarking services (all the big ones) and email your annotated pages to friends who don’t have the plugin. We covered Diigo earlier.

Diigo has some advanced search functionality built in as well. With Diigo, you can search for the highlighted words on the web with any of four search engines, social bookmarking systems, on blogs, within the current site, amongst inbound links, and seven different content verticals (TV, stock sites, etc.). Diigo also lets you post links to your blog through posts, or a “linkroll” widget listing your most recent annotations.

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In 1999, Eng-Sion Tan and two friends launched Third Voice , a browser plugin that would let anyone make annotations on webpages. The intent was to encourage freer speech on the internet, but many slammed it as “Web Graffiti.” The company eventually shut down.

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Diigo

A must have for researchers
Diigo is a research tool that lets you share bookmarks and annotations on web pages using a browser plugin or bookmarklet. Notes are anchored to highlighted text > and bookmarks save a cached copy of the site. Diigo will also let you save to multiple other bookmarking services

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Fleck

Bare bones
Fleck is the most basic of the annotation services, letting you simply post public or private text notes on a page. Notes can be posted by using a browser plugin or by ajax when Fleck feeds web pages through its servers and adds the necessary annotation code. Permalinks to annotated pages can be emailed to friends and posted to blogs. We covered their launch previously and expect the company to be rolling out more features.

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ShiftSpace

Have your way with any webpage
ShiftSpace is an opensource browser plugin (FF only) being developed by NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program and is pretty close to internet graffiti. The plugin allows their users to annotate and remix a website saving it as a communally editable alternate version revealed in your browser by pressing Shift + Space. ShiftSpace allows users to leave notes, highlight text, change images, and edit the page source. It kind of reminds me of the web page analysis plugin Firebug, which allows you to carry out live edits of any web page. For web surfers with the plugin, modified pages are marked with a small ShiftSpace icon (§) in the bottom left side of the screen.

Modified pages are called “shifts”, and if made public, are shared on the ShiftSpace website. Users can subscribe to the shifts of users they like via RSS. The ShiftSpace team also plans to implement “trails”, which are hyperlinked collections of related shifts.

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ShiftSpace

Have your way with any webpage
ShiftSpace is an opensource browser plugin (FF only) being developed by NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program and is pretty close to internet graffiti. The plugin allows their users to annotate and remix a website saving it as a communally editable alternate version revealed in your browser by pressing Shift + Space. ShiftSpace allows users to leave notes, highlight text, change images, and edit the page source. It kind of reminds me of the web page analysis plugin Firebug, which allows you to carry out live edits of any web page. For web surfers with the plugin, modified pages are marked with a small ShiftSpace icon (§) in the bottom left side of the screen.

Modified pages are called “shifts”, and if made public, are shared on the ShiftSpace website. Users can subscribe to the shifts of users they like via RSS. The ShiftSpace team also plans to implement “trails”, which are hyperlinked collections of related shifts.

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ShiftSpace

Have your way with any webpage
ShiftSpace is an opensource browser plugin (FF only) being developed by NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program and is pretty close to internet graffiti. The plugin allows their users to annotate and remix a website saving it as a communally editable alternate version revealed in your browser by pressing Shift + Space. ShiftSpace allows users to leave notes, highlight text, change images, and edit the page source. It kind of reminds me of the web page analysis plugin Firebug, which allows you to carry out live edits of any web page. For web surfers with the plugin, modified pages are marked with a small ShiftSpace icon (§) in the bottom left side of the screen.

Modified pages are called “shifts”, and if made public, are shared on the ShiftSpace website. Users can subscribe to the shifts of users they like via RSS. The ShiftSpace team also plans to implement “trails”, which are hyperlinked collections of related shifts.

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Stickis

Subscribe to only the annotations you want
Stickis is a web page annotation service that lets you subscribe to content “channels” from your friends and the community via a browser plugin. We previously covered their launch. You can also view notes without the plugin when they are served by proxy through Stickis’ website. Channels can consist of text and image sticky notes, RSS feeds (blogs), and even specialized data channels for web services such as OpenTable or Yelp. Every note you make is also stored on your personal Stickis blog, which leaves a trackback to itself if you annotate a blog.

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Stickis

Subscribe to only the annotations you want
Stickis is a web page annotation service that lets you subscribe to content “channels” from your friends and the community via a browser plugin. We previously covered their launch. You can also view notes without the plugin when they are served by proxy through Stickis’ website. Channels can consist of text and image sticky notes, RSS feeds (blogs), and even specialized data channels for web services such as OpenTable or Yelp. Every note you make is also stored on your personal Stickis blog, which leaves a trackback to itself if you annotate a blog.

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Trailfire

Create and share tours of the web
We covered Trailfire’s launch last August. Since then, the social website annotation service has developed considerably, recently announcing some more of the social features it originally promised.

Trailfire is an IE and Firefox plugin that lets you post notes (called marks) right on top of a webpage and string them together with hyperlinks (making “trails”). The plugin consists of a note button for leaving marks and a sidebar for managing your trails. When you arrive at a page you’re interested in marking up, you click the mark button, which pops up a little ajax balloon with a text editor inside that you can position anywhere on the page. In the editor, you can compose a message out of text, images, and hyperlinks. You then title the mark and select which trail (group of notes) it belongs to. Trails can be posted public or private and commented on. When a trail is posted, you follow it by just clicking next.

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Trailfire

Create and share tours of the web

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Create and share tours of the web
We covered Trailfire’s launch last August. Since then, the social website annotation service has developed considerably, recently announcing some more of the social features it originally promised.

Trailfire is an IE and Firefox plugin that lets you post notes (called marks) right on top of a webpage and string them together with hyperlinks (making “trails”). The plugin consists of a note button for leaving marks and a sidebar for managing your trails. When you arrive at a page you’re interested in marking up, you click the mark button, which pops up a little ajax balloon with a text editor inside that you can position anywhere on the page. In the editor, you can compose a message out of text, images, and hyperlinks. You then title the mark and select which trail (group of notes) it belongs to. Trails can be posted public or private and commented on. When a trail is posted, you follow it by just clicking next.

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Stickis

Subscribe to only the annotations you want
Stickis is a web page annotation service that lets you subscribe to content “channels” from your friends and the community via a browser plugin.

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April 10th, 2007 at 10:34 pm

I use Diigo religiously! In my professional life, I train recruiters on how to use the internet to find hidden talent as well as conduct extensive online research on behalf of my employer. I tell EVERYONE that Diigo is THE product to use (bar none) and encourage any and all to try it for themselves.

I diigo! Do you diigo?

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April 10th, 2007 at 11:16 pm

I’ve spent a lot of time using Diigo. I’ve looked over the other services you mention, just in case there was something better out there. Day in and day out, I can work more quickly and easily. It’s so powerful I still haven’t scratched the surface. They seem to be making it better all the time, and they listen to their users. Diigo rocks the Web!

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April 11th, 2007 at 6:57 am

Diigo!
I am a diigo user.and through my using,i find diigo is very easy.This litter tool has made my study very conveniently .
I have introduced this tool to my classmates .Because this ,i want to be a diigo spreader.

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The memex concept of “trails” doesn’t seem to be captured by many of the current systems (except perhaps TrailFire and ShiftSpace? )

I think the wiki article on memex covers the differences: http://en.wikip....org/wiki/Memex

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April 11th, 2007 at 11:54 am

Nick, Thanks for covering the web annotation area and mentioning Diigo here. Since the Techcrunch review last August, we have been developing lots of new features and we hope we can give you a demo soon.

As a sort of quick showcase of Diigo, click this link to see some annotations on this post http://srl.diigo.com/11xq — no plug-in is needed and you can be using any of the major browsers (firefox, ie, opera, safari) .

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April 11th, 2007 at 6:04 pm

Re: Meer on Diigo - “90% of those features (except annotation) are rarely used by a regular web surfer.

Indeed, web annotation itself is not for 90% of the users, and is likely to be adopted only by the minority of the web users who consume information diligently. After all, everyone knows that having a pen and a highlighter while you read is really helpful for digesting and retaining information — but how many actually do it?

For the minority of the users that do make use of web annotation, our user feedback tells us Diigo’s other features are quite appreciated. In addition, the Diigo plug-in is completely customizable, allowing users to only keep the features they want

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April 18th, 2007 at 9:02 am

I discovered Diigo two months ago, became an avid user and a self-proclaimed product evangelist, and recently started working for the company.

Diigo for me is the knowledge-management solution I was looking for.

What sets diigo apart is that it handles *Knowledge*, rather than mere links.

It is the ONLY solution that lets me *permanently* highlight and annotate specific text on a webpage, which is then saved to my diigo profile.

Diigo complements the mental process in which a sentence “jumps” at you, and you make a mental note about it. By highlighting the sections I deem important, I better understand and remember what I read. I believe there is scientific proof for this.

As time goes by, I’m building a repository of all the important Knowledge I find on the net, which I can easily manage, tag, retrieve and aggregate.

Regarding the ’social’ aspect:
Diigo provides me immediate personal benefits, and I can then share this knowledge with others of my choosing, and follow what other individuals or groups are finding on the net. Not just the pages(links) they are browsing, but the actual sections that they deem important, and their reactions to it.

I think that Diigo is not only for ‘researchers’.
Most of us conduct some sort of research whenever we read a news article, shop for an appliance, view photos or videos, or read a blogpost.

Although I appreciate the other services, and might occasionally use some of them, I find that Diigo already incorporates and combines MOST of their important features, in a way that is more robust and scalable.
Diigo specifically addresses the issue that was mentioned in the introduction of this tech-crunch comparison - mark up the web and make annotations on webpages.

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