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Diigo rocks, web annotation is here Filed under: General Web annotation — Josh @ 6:46 am After a few monts of use now, Diigo has replaced any other methods of bookmarking. I don’t use Firefox bookmarks anymore. I only us del.icio.us if I want a non-browser interface to my book marks. In my last post about Diigo I said I liked it but I’d post my complaints next post. Since then they’ve fixed everything I was going to complain about. The interface for editing your bookmarks used to be clumsy and hard to find, but they’ve totally remedied that. I was going to complain that the dispay of your tags was sad and ask if we could get a display of our tags as a tag cloud. Before I got the chance to suggest it, I logged in and found I had that option. I’m really liking Diigo and finding it useful. I am printing fewer hard copies of articles. I used to print copies to highlight and annotate them. I’m doing more and more of my highlighting and annotation on Diigo. My primary constructive criticism is that it would be nice to have some non-browser interfaces to the data. For example, the option that del.icio.us gives you to embed a tag cloud of your del.icio.us tags in any web page. That kind of functionality would make Diigo indespensible to me.

Diigo is an incremental evolution in human-information interaction. It combines web annotation, which I’ve written about several times, with the social construction of knowledge. It embraces tagging and social bookmarking, as many now are, and extends it to the next step, social annotation. Diigo’s online service approach addresses several problems of web browsing. First, how do I preserve this information I’ve found on the web? You bookmark it. But what if the page moves or is removed? With Diigo, when you bookmark, a copy of the page is saved on Diigo’s servers. Now that I’ve found and saved the page, how do I interact with it? Our model is how we interact with paper documents; We highlight and we make notes. Diigo enables you to both highlight and add notes. That stuff is great, but it gets better. Diigo allows you to make your annotations public. A user of the service see’s the public annotations of other Diigo users. In the future, Diigo will allow the creation of groups. With Google’s PageRank and with social tagging, we find information by the wisdom of the crowd, by word-of-mouth. With Diigo it is now easier than ever to share our collective thoughts on that information-our interpretations, extensions, criticisms and associations. Bringing us full circle, Diigo allows you to tag your bookmarks, and see the tags of other Diigo users. More help finding the information, the comments, and then adding your own. It’s a positive feedback loop.

SOURCING TIP: And Diigo was its name-O One thing I have been ranting about (online and offline) is the need for a tool that will allow researchers to seemlessly share their intelligence. Imagine (as I often have) the time that would be saved if I were to discover a resume online and then see a note left by one of my co-workers that reads, "Been here, done that and submitted the candidate." Wowzers! That would really cut-down on duplication of efforts wouldn't it?

Okay, so let me show you something  I really like and am recommending that research teams use - Diigo. This FREE product has enough features that I would willingly pay for it and from me, that is a high compliment. Here are a few highlights from the VERY LONG list of features they offer. (Man, these guy are good!) A few highlights from their website... The Best Web Annotation Service: Add highlights and sticky notes on any web page, anywhere, and access them anywhere. A Great Webpage Clipping Tool: Highlighted portions of any webpage are clipped and collected centrally, which can be shared and searched. An All-in-One Bookmarking Tool: Bookmark webpages to Diigo, local folder, del.icio.us , Simpy, Furl, Spurl... and make them permanently cached and full-text searchable. A Great Collaborative Platform: Share and interact on online findings, complete with highlights and sticky notes. The Most Customizable Search Tool: Like Google's toolbar, but far more customizable, so you can access any search service with one-click --- music, maps, references, local library, New York Times, ... Unique Content Selection Menu: Interact with any word on a webpage just by selecting it, no click needed! - highlight, search, look up - whatever you you want!

With a virtual highlighter and digital sticky notes, now you can highlight & jot down your comments directly on any part of a webpage and scan through all your research findings quickly. Keep your annotations private or share with others. Exchange viewpoints on any specific area of a webpage - great for collaboration or debating an issue. Tags and full-text search on everything make it extremely easy to organize and find stuff - no need to fumble with folders and subfolders. You control the privacy setting on what can be seen by public or kept private. Need someone to pay special attention to a particular section of a webpage? You can forward a webpage with your highlights & Sticky notes. For further interactions, your friends can append their comments under your notes right on the page.Discover relevant / new content based on specific users, topics of interest, recommendations, hot lists, and more. For example, to discover high quality contents on some subject, check out bookmarks under specific tags - remember these represent the joint effort of lots of people.   ** Now here is something that I think is a killer feature! I download the Diigo toolbar and when I come to a page that has been annotated, I am notified (see arrow). I can set this to show me only the notes I have left behind or, the public notes of others. And get this, once I set up my free web-based account, I share that info (my log-in) with my co-workers and all of the annotations we mark private are only seen by us. (Wink) Ahhh... now this is a tool worth noting, using and (above all else) sharing with other researchers on your team. (Click here for virtual tour of their product.) 4-Star recommendation!!!