Clearly one of the challenges academia faces is to figure out a productive use of networks in terms of research practices. Usually I write more about the teaching aspects of the university and clearly there are many ways universities will employ networks. But I want to think specifically about the use of the web for research with a few goals in mind:

• to enhance collaboration between academics



• to publish and share research



• to share knowledge with a broader audience (students, governments, industries, non-profits, the general public, and so on)

One might say that these have been answered, but the real challenge is that as the web continues to evolve and now converge with other networks, the practices we have established need to change as well. That is, from the inception of the web, one could find the appearance of academic journals: genuine, rigorously reviewed, academic scholarship available freely online. There were (and are) listservs that might facilitate collaboration. Similarly individual faculty and faculty organizations built websites where they offered information, policy statements, and so on (NCTE or MLA for example in English Studies). But how are we moving forward?

Conventional academic discourse lies with journals and conferences. For all the advantages of these modes, neither offers an ongoing, dynamic interchange. Listservs offer that, but, in my experience anyway, they don't really create a productive, collaborative space. Sometimes there are debates on listservs; sometimes there is sharing of information (e.g. does anyone know a good article about x"?). But there isn't a sustained building of knowledge there. I suppose there could be, but there isn't, probably b/c we all go off to write our individually authored articles and conference presentations.

In any case, the listserv is too large a community for collaborative work. Yes, tens of thousands contribute to Wikipedia, but they don't all work on the same article, right? So I don't know what the magic number is, but let's say I was looking for a dozen scholars in who were interested in the same things I'm interested in:

• mobile networks



• virtual worlds



• audio/video production



• public, collaborative learning

It's unlikely that we would all work on the same research project at once, but there would be a handful of project undertaken by individuals or small groups. There would be a public face to the group and a private project management site, like Basecamp. The public face would offer a steady stream of information as we shared what we were doing, what was going on in our teaching, what we were reading and writing. We'd be assembling streams of information from our blogs, twitters, flickr, YouTube, and so on--wherever we were post information. The result is a collection of information that is hopefully useful groundwork for more formal investigation and also a mechanism for fruitful collaboration between our classes.

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?

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!

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.

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

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

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) .

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.

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.

We've seen Diigo before, but now it has a few tweaks to simplify it. Diigo is meant as a collaborative research tool to let you highlight and bookmark specific portions of text you find on the Web. Diigo now also lets groups discuss highlighted text and and publish it onto a blog.

Habituellement Activeille ne s’intéresse qu’aux outils éprouvés et rodés, dont la valeur ajoutée dans le domaine des activités quotidiennes de l’entreprise est vérifiée par un solide retour d’expérience. Les solutions “high tech”, mais à l’avenir incertain, sont plutôt abordées ici.

Mais voilà un outil qui vient de sortir en version publique, après six mois de tests privés, et qui est tout à fait remarquable. Il s’agit de Diigo, au nom un peu bizarre, correspondant à l’acronyme “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff”, qui se présente comme un outil de partage de liens (social bookmarking), mais va bien au-delà.

Peu importe la théorie, extrêment riche au demeurant, c’est encore la pratique qui nous intéresse dans ce produit.

On peut en faire deux lectures. La première, celle des concepteurs, permet de découvrir une architecture riche qui couvre la gestion des liens, avec de nombreuses possibilités de classement (répertoires, tags), la recherche dans les signets (incluant le texte de la page et les annotations). Le contenu d’une page web peut être sélectionné (en totalité ou partie) et marqué (par soulignement).



Cette mise en valeur de paragraphe reste attachée à la page et est rendue visible aux autres membres de la communauté ! J’ai également saisi une note brève.