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Diigo @ DEMOfall 07 - A True 3D Information App?

Diigo.com announced their re-launch today with an information network unlike any we have seen in  scope or capability. The new Diigo network being unveiled at DEMOfall 07 creates global communities around data, information, interests and knowledge. These new communities engage and connect people around the content they collect and use. Diigo is already one of the most useful bookmarking and research sites on the Web. The integration of Webslides and the power of "writing the Web" makes Diigo perhaps the Web's first truly 3 dimensional tool. I spoke with Diigo Co-Founder Maggie Tsai on Friday about their deep and groundbreaking vison. I covered Webslides a couple of weeks ago, but honestly did not envision the depth or scope of Diigo's potential. Maggie demonstrated the capability of a development nearly as complex and difficult to encapsulate as the semantic search engine's technology. The simple truth of Diigo combined with Webslides is that with continued refinements Diigo could well be the mega site imagined by many for Web 3.0. Diigo Plus Webslides Diigo users can create groups, lists, collaborative forums, do research, annotate or comment on pages and essentially build layers of data and knowledge atop any Web page. The concept of a multi-layered Web is difficult to grasp, but Maggie's team have begun to capture the power of what content-centric (their word my understanding) collaboration can do. "Writing" to the Web via sticky notes, annotations and highlighted elements combined with various collaborative elements is power for more than doing a research project. With the addition of Webslides - essentially an interactive, selective browser/player within a browser - Diigo provides a multifaceted platform for unbelievable collaboration and monetization potential. Diigo also unveiled another crucial element for "directing" data at users with their Webslides embeddable widget. This tool allows users to embed Webslides bookmark or RSS shows inside pages and blogs. These shows can be customized to express any number of topical or thematic blog posts, topical articles, product reviews, real estate offerings or just about anything one can imagine.

A Tall Order Diigo is certainly a fantastic individual or collaborative research tool, but inserting a platform like this into what we might call "the hub" (the center of what people do) of the Web has deeper implications. Bookmarking and social networking has seen massive appeal. The idea of wrapping users up in this core of data and knowledge has been touched upon by sites like Wikia, Digg, Stumble Upon, Facebook and many others in the various venues. All of these great sites gather content that is acted on and sometimes enhanced by users, but the data remains rather static or 2 dimensional for the user. Stumbled Upon comes closest to letting users "filter" the Web and its data but even there the great volume of information is lost or scattered with time. Diigo's methodology effectively turns Diigo into a Web within a Web of filtered, searchable and dynamic information.

Diigo, which bills itself as a “social annotation” tool (previous coverage here), will present its platform at DEMOfall. Rather than just compiling interesting data found online, the platform allows you to organize by bookmarking, highlighting, and clipping only the most relevant elements of sites, including videos, and then adding sticky notes with annotations. These can then in turn be used to create a slideshows (Diigo’s WebSlides), that according to Diigo can be used by groups in collaborative efforts or presentations. In fact, it’s this community/collaborative element that Diigo hopes will help their service stand out from an already crowded space. In theory users will be driven to congregate around topics, feeding these with their own ideas and reflections through personal clippings and annotations, all the while discovering other collaborators on the same topics.

Safari production does include highlights and annotations

Should Diigo cumulatively cache the content, and relate it to an annotation, _each_ time an annotation is made?

Diigo 3 Beta offers, I believe, a reasonable, well-considered balance: * one cached copy of the content of a URL * extraction of annotations for that URL.

Diigo, known for its social annotation, finally went public yesterday. The service aims to turn the web writable allowing users to privately or publicly annotate any website they visit, in turn making a “participatory and interactive media” for its users. I must say that even though I have had an account for Diigo’s private beta since I last reviewed it late December, I have been anticipating its launch. So much has changed since my last review including social bookmarking enhancements, new annotation tools, tools built for bloggers, and more.

Diigo: the Web 2.0 Swiss Army Knife July 24th, 2006 Just as PC World predicted, the bookmarking / social annotation powerhouse known as Diigo announced their public launch today. While others have been quick to launch a legion of bookmarking sites that are all nearly identical to one another, Diigo’s developers have taken the time necessary to produce the most substantive collection of annotation, blogging, and research tools available under one roof. Those who think that Diigo is “just another” bookmarking site are in for a big surprise when they start to explore the real capabilities of this little beast. When I first mentioned Diigo back in February, I stated that my favorite feature was the ability to bookmark across multiple platforms (such as Binklist, Furl, RawSugar, etc.) but what I didn’t realize is that I hadn’t even scratched the surface. “What are these great features?” you’re asking. Let’s take a look at some of them. First of all, the key to unlocking the secret world of Diigo is the toolbar. This tiny piece of software allows the whole of the internet to become an interactive work station. While the toolbar contains the standard bookmarking and search features you would expect, it also allows you to use the real gem of this suite: the Content Selection Menu. The Content Selection Menu is an innocent-looking little drop down menu that appears whenever you highlight some text (this feature can be turned on or off via the options menu on the toolbar.) The menu contains three categories of sub-menus: Diigo, Search, and Copy.

The Diigo sub-menu allows you to highlight selected text or to blog the text with Blogger, WordPress, Movable Type, LiveJournal, or Typepad. The highlight can be set to either public or private visibility. The private highlighting is particularly useful if you’re doing any sort of research that involves keeping track of bits of information from all over the web. The public highlighting is great for annotating web pages with “sticky notes” that other Diigo users can see when hovering over the highlighted text. One more important feature here is the ability to forward the web page without having to go through the trouble of composing an email to do it. So in one fell swoop you can bookmark, highlight, annotate, and forward without ever having to leave the web page. (One minor correction: the highlighting does not become publicly visible unless a public Sticky Note has been attached.) In the Search sub-menu you will find the ability to search your selected text across a potentially infinite number of search engines and online resources. The stock search menu comes loaded with about ten categories, each containing multiple resources. Whether you want to search a standard search engine such as Google or Yahoo, a blogging resource such as Technorati, News, Shopping, Music, Bookmarking sites, they’re all there, and much more. In addition, the search menu is fully cusomizable. Don’t need a certain category? No problem, just delete it. Want to add you own category? That’s no problem either. You can add, remove, and rearrange ’til your heart’s content. The Copy menu is short and sweet. And I do mean sweet! As much as I love all of the other features Diigo has to offer, this is quite possibly the one “must have” feature that seals the deal for me. This sub-menu has only two offerings: Without format, and With format. Anyone who has needed to cut & paste text from a web site into a blog entry, email, or word processing document should know the frustration of having to unformat the text in order to make it usable in your document. I had gotten to the point of just keeping Notepad open in order to quickly (and I use that term very loosely) unformat text before pasting it into my documents. Now with a single click I can strip the text of its formatting, making it ready to insert into the document of my choice. Like I said…sweet! I could go on and on about the wonders of Diigo, but you really aren’t going to gain a full appreciation for it until you give it try yourself. If all of these features (and I didn’t even cover them all) seem a little overwhelming, don’t worry. There is an extensive help section to guide you through. Why wait for Web 2.0 to come to your favorite sites when you can carry this cutting-edge tool wherever you go? Posted by Reginald Freeman

A few weeks back I managed to score an invite to a new social bookmarking/annontation site called diigo. I am quite excited by the potential of a service such as this and its really starting to realise some of the oppourtunity out there. Essentially diigo lets you bookmark pages, tag those bookmarks, add comments to those bookmarks, highlight content within pages, add comments to those pages that are viewable by all diigo users and utilise all the community features your used to like subscribing to your friends lists. Thats not a list of features that springs out of the page, many of these ideas have been attempted previously. Its more the deftness that diigo handles these ideas with that makes it stand out from the pack. Theres also the fact that its all bundled into one service.

the best way to sum up a service like diigo is that it overlays a Web 2.0 service on top of Web 1 sites. Things like tagging, annotation, social bookmarking and social commenting are very Web 2.0 in nature. diigo allows you to apply these ideas to normal Web 1 style sites.

Take, for example the BBC News site. Theres an awfull lot of content on there, some of which I would be interested in the thoughts of others on. Currently only certain, carefully chosen stories feature comments. diigo, however, allows you to comment on these stories, furthermore you can highlight actual pieces of text within the story and comment on them. And then others can view your comments and add their own. It is possible to have a linear conversation based around single web pages or even paragraphs of content. When you take the potential of the above and add in a competant social bookmarking service you can begin to see where diigo is heading as a service. The diigo team are aware that there are numerous other services out there, the one that is certainly a huge obstacle in terms of social bookmarking is del.icio.us, a service that I absolutely love. To make the transition a bit easier you can import your bookmarks into diigo from del.icio.us, you can also automatically add your diigo bookmarks to del.icio.us

Diigo: Social Bookmarking and More... By Tim Lauer on January 6, 2006. Discuss it below Diigo is a new social annotation/bookmarking tool. In one respect it is similar to del.icio.us. It even takes advantage of the del.icio.us API so that items that you tag or bookmark with Diigo, are also tagged to your del.icio.us account. Where it is quite different from del.icio.us, is that you can also more fully annotate your bookmarked pages, and bookmarks can also be saved locally. You can highlight and tag specific images and paragraphs from web pages, and also add sticky notes. These sticky notes can be public or private. For example if I tag and add a sticky note to a page, I can also see other sticky notes left by others or I can send a notification to a colleague so that she can read my annotation and respond. I can also use Diigo to save my selections and annotations and review them later. I can also forward them on via email. The Diigo toolbar puts all of these tools at your disposal. The Flash Tutorial gives a very good overview. The more I play with Diigo the more it looks like an interesting alternative/compliment to del.icio.us. Technorati Tags: del.icio.u

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!!!

I received an email the other week asking me to take part in and review a  new service which finally launched outright this week called "Diigo".It's nice to know that people read my blog, enjoy what I ramble on about and would like me to comment on it, but anyway, on with the review.Diigo is a not your usual social bookmarking site like del.icio.us or social commentary site like Reddit or Digg, they call it a "Social Annotation website".They have a toolbar that integrates with Firefox, Flock and Internet Explorer that allows you to add "Sticky notes" to pages, post the pages to a del.icio.us-type bookmarking service (and del.icio.us itself plus others), forward highlighted text via email to a friend and, most importantly, add comments to webpages which other users can then view (or you could choose to make them private but that's hardly the point of a social annotation site now is it?!).After you have your Diigo account, you'll be prompted to install the relevant toolbar for your browser (Sorry Safari fans, I don't think you're supported yet), once that's installed and you've restarted your browser the fun begins!The annotation system is accessed via a your context menu (right-click on the webpage):

“Diigo (dee'go) is about "Social Annotation". By combining social bookmarking, clippings, in situ annotation, tagging, full-text search, easy sharing and interactions, Diigo offers a powerful personal tool and a rich social platform for knowledge users, and in the process, turns the entire web into a writable, participatory and interactive media.

Why it might be a killer: It combines features from a bunch of different sites into one thing, and all of these features work really well together. The ease with which you can add your content to blogs is really useful, and if students get word of this, it will make their lives writing papers and studying for their different subjects so much easier. When Diigo is criticized on blogs, there is a dedicated base of users that attack the bad review with proof of the site’s worth, which makes it hard to argue with.

A powerful Social Annotation and Research Tool - DIIGO! Well indeed Diggo is the coolest tool I have ever come across on the web2.0 scenario. It is a social annotation tool, social book mark tool and a online notes. Fits good to the best researchers online, it is a team tool, that leverages the time spent online. You do not waste a single minute and not waste the time spent in finding data and loosing it. Find it, mark it, send it, store it, import it!! surprising, this is all accomplished by a single tool and it is so much under rated.

With Diggo you can be rest assured you have the data saved and sent in seconds! Once your fellow researcher (or a friend) gets online on the same page, knowing or by chance, he can see that you have left a message for him. All you need is, both of you will have to install the Firefox/Internet Explorer/Flock/Opera browser toolbars. These toolbars will make sure both of you do not note the same or miss an important data.

Not only researchers, or known friends, but also strangers with same interest can make use of (rather exploit) this tool and do wonders. Say for example a bird watching community is on the prowl for a rare bird, or the very famous Flamingos, they all land up in a page that has abundance of information about the Flamingos, they can mark certain text in the page and leave a comment. Say a professor is leaving a comment about the Flamingos, and their migratory pattern, the others can see this note, respond to it! Later people with the same tool (Diigo toolbar) come to the page can see the conversation that has happened on the web, and note that this page is quite popular.