Group items tagged

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!!!

If the Internet is your main medium for research, I believe that you know the importance of bookmarking and sharing your findings with colleagues to get the best information possible. Therefore, an online research tool will be very helpful in organizing gathered information while at the same time making it available to others for collaborative purposes. Diigo - a powerful online research tool fits perfectly for this need.

Diigo is a browser plugin that functions as a web highlighter, sticky notes, social bookmarking tool, and a social information network rolled into one. Once you have download and install the Diigo toolbar, you can start bookmarking websites, highlighting texts inside it, leaving comments and more.

Next, the knowledge sharing part of Diigo lets you share and discuss your findings with any available public or private groups. With Diigo, connecting with friends with similar interests can be done effortlessly through content sharing.

In the fall, I ran across a new social bookmarking site–Diigo. I started using Diigo with a paper that I was writing and loved it for several reasons. First, it’s a social bookmarking site which meant that I could peruse the links of other people on the site. Second, Diigo gave me the Furl functionality of highlighting and annotating, but the format seemed easier and the interface was more aesthetically speaking (in my opinion).  While I was in this stage of tinkering, I met with one of my dissertation committee members and I was talking about the focus of my dissertation–blogging. He very bluntly reminded me that my entire dissertation could not focus only on blogging, but needed to be focused on more features. I was in a bind–I wanted to focus on the advantages to writing that came from blogs, not all medias. But the more I played around with Diigo, the more a little grain of an idea began to grow. My dissertation should note about the advantages to writing–but about collaboration through Web 2.0

So, this semester, I went out on a limb and offered my students the option of collaborating on their research this semester. They were already not looking forward to the research, but the idea of using each other to further their research sounded like a good idea. Still, they weren’t jumping at the idea. Then, I gave them a quick walkthrough of Diigo. Their eyes lit up like they had just been given a present–and it wasn’t even their birthday. One student looked dumbfounded and asked: “Is it really that easy?” “It sure is.” I replied.

Annotation is Suddenly Fun Each semester, I try (in vain, usually) to get my students to annotate their text book. I do this to prepare them not only for future studies, but also for the annotation that research demands they do. Diigo, suddenly, makes the students want to annotate their bookmarks. It is their chance to make sure the world (or their group) knows how important specific words on a webpage are to them.

Diigo also supports my own metacognition as I come across web pages that have been annotated by my Diigo network

Contributors to this article: Demetri Orlando, Sarah Hanawald, Beth Ritter-Guth, Michèle Drechsler

strategies to encourage metacognition

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: Collaboration Beyond Bookmarks

Collaboration is one of the tenets of today’s web experience. The desire to share information, opinions and emotions adds tremendously to our online experiences. Social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us have been a great way to discover information on the web. But sharing bookmarks in this fashion has limited the level of collaboration we could get to. Diigo, a site that combines social annotation with bookmarking, enhances collaboration in a few interesting ways. Highlighting the Important Stuff Typically I bookmark a page because there’s something on it that’s important to me. With traditional bookmarking I would have to surf the page to find the nugget I want. Diigo allows you to highlight the sections you want to focus on. Additionally, you can add “inline sticky notes” to highlighted sections in order to capture your thoughts right on the page. Sharing with Others Annotating pages is great for an individual wanting to keep track of important parts of the page. But the real value of Diigo is when you share your bookmarks and annotations with others. Not only can they see the page with your annotations, they can add to it if you choose to let them. And you can annotate theirs. In fact, you can set up groups that allow many people to create real conversations from information found on the web. Sharing Beyond the Page Creating conversations right on the page is great, but it’s nice to send the conversation around the web as well. Diigo lets you easily email links and annotations to people you think would be interested in it. Also, you can create a blog entry from it, or even send it as a tweet in Twitter. This is powerful as you’re able to extend the reach of the conversation and open it up for further collaboration. Diigo is packed full of functionality, and may take a bit to get used to. But if you’re looking to go beyond traditional bookmarking, you’ll want to check it out.

Diigo is an online bookmarking tool with a twist. Sometimes, merely saving a bunch of tagged Web sites to a list of favorites is not enough. Ever wanted to highlight one cool corner of a Web page? Do you wish you could scribble on various Web sites to collect recipes, plan a vacation, or write a big research paper, then share your notes? Diigo can help you do that.

Diigo's plain text interface is as simple as that of Del.icio.us, yet with additional functionality. For instance, Diigo lets you select a bunch of bookmarks at once and change their settings; Del.icio.us does not.

Diigo looks as basic as Del.icio.us, but ease-of-use tweaks make a big difference in convenience. For instance, you can select all items on the page and change their settings at once, which Del.icio.us doesn't allow. Advanced search features look within the text of a page, as well as at tags, titles, and your annotations

I just stumbled upon diigo, which follows the footsteps of del.icio.us but takes it up a notch. All I was looking, was for a way to highlight content on the web. The web is an incredible source of information, and while doing research, I find myself going back to bookmarked pages to find code snippets or some other info. Besides being able to bookmark a page, I wanted to be able to permanently highlight something on the page. Diigo allows you to do this, and it is available with a Firefox plug-in (I believe they also have an IE plug-in as well). Here is an example of a site I was reading and wanted to highlight something:

Now, whenever I visit that page, the content I highlighted will always be there. But wait, there’s more. You can share add notes as well to your bookmarks, and you can share this information with ‘friends’ under your accounts or automatically post to groups you define. This is a great way to share information, you could have people in your enterprise subscribe to the groups you define and then automatically share everything in a collaborative matter. For instance, you could create a group called “Virtualization” and once you find an interesting article, comment what you need and push it to the subscribed users. This can only make the flow of collaborating information a lot smoother.

Too many social networks. Too many social bookmarking services. Social networks haven’t been around all that long, but already they have some negative associations. Social networks are black holes for sucking time, or, do I really need one more social network to add my information to and try to maintain? But just because the word ‘Social’ is in the same breadth as bookmarking, doesn’t mean that using a social bookmarking service is anything like your Facebook’s and your MySpace’s. There are a lot of choices for sharing links out there, Delicious, Magnolia, Diigo, Furl, Blinklist and many other options and variations. I started out using Delicious, and briefly used Blinklist. But Diigo blows every competitor out of the water because it is more robust and built will groups in mind.

As a collector, my knowledge of repair and restoration is in it’s infancy stage. I am a creative thinker and don’t easily understand schematics and electrical design. Reading articles written by experts on these subjects are like pulling teeth, I want the imformation I need, and I want it now. I have better things to do. So, what if I could find a resource on monitor repair and have the section already highlighted that might be of particular interest? That is just one of the many features of Diigo, highlighting and annotations. What if I want follow another collector who I know is an expert at restoration, like Brian Jones? Well, let’s say Brian had an account and he was adding bookmarks, I could then browse what he was adding and his annotations and pick up some helpful insights into arcade cabinet restoration that I wouldn’t have had before. Instead of one person searching for information, now it’s two. Add in a whole community of users and you have a very target user base of information. The possibilities are limitless.

Diigo 3.85 (A/A-)Diigo is by far the most fully featured social bookmarking site in this list, and offers several unique capabilities. The most notable feature is that users can highlight text right on the page, as well as make annotations via a “sticky note” for later viewing.There are also other very useful features. I particularly liked the sophisticated and advanced search option for doing a keyword search of one’s own or public bookmarks. On that page you can limit a search by a phrase, and restrict a search to a URL, title, comments or highlights. You can even search “on” specific users as wellNote that when you place a “sticky note” to comment on a page for your later viewing, that note is viewable by anyone else in the Diigo community that views that page too! .There are some other interesting and unique features on Diigo. For instance, when highlighting a word on any page with Diigo’s bookmarking tool, a drop down menu automatically appears that allows users to search for that highlighted word on various search engines, social bookmarking sites; blogs, on the active site and more. I also had much more control in formatting when saving a page; and had an option to forward the page to another person as well.What about the all important group feature? Well, Diigo rounds out its offerings very nicely by just this month launching its “Groups” function. That feature looks to be a clear and elegant way to allow anyone to set up a private environment for sharing your bookmarks. Ultimately, if you combine the Web annotation capabilities with the ability to share in groups, Diigo has created a very enterprise friendly social bookmarking service. And, according to a spokesperson at the firm, this Groups function is “just the first of many more advanced group collaboration functions that we will be introducing in several phases” So we look forward to staying tuned!My Grades:Group Function Capability: AResearch Value: A-Design/Interface/Ease of Use: A-Fully Featured: A-(only missing “related users” and “larger topics”)

the ability to create your own customized group where you could share your bookmarks within a own defined group—such as a workforce team, department, project team, or any other defined group. That article provided a list of social bookmarking firms that fit that criteria, and included a detailed feature comparison chart

the four most important criteria for a social bookmarking sites’ applicability to internal/enterprise searching:1. Group function capability. How easy is it to create a new group? Can the group remain private? Other group features?2. Research value. How much of a page can be saved; are there advanced and precision search features?3. Design/Interface/Ease of Use. Is it a pleasant experience to view and use the site? Does it show evidence of being intelligently thought out and designed?4. Fully Featured. In the Knowledge Management supplement, I focused on these features:Ability to create an RSS FeedSurfacing of “related tags”Surfacing of “related users”Tag suggestionsTag cloudImport/export bookmarksAbility to crate larger “topics” or hierarchical categories

(I-Newswire) - OFFICE 2.0, SAN FRANCISCO-- Sept. 6, 2007 – Diigo, www.diigo.com, is previewing WebSlidesSM, a browser-based player that displays any list of URLs complete with integrated annotations, sticky notes, and highlights as an interactive slideshow.  Diigo is also demonstrating WebSlides during the official Demo tracks during Office 2.0 conference.  More information on the demonstration schedule here: http://www.o2con.com/docs/DOC-1017. Diigo's patent-pending WebSlides, available at http://slides.diigo.com, enables a new way to easily create and share unique presentations based on web content and user annotations. To experience WebSlides, users simply collect and organize any set of links into a list, and add background music or voice narration.  By clicking "Play," the list transforms into a slideshow bringing Web pages and user comments to life. The player can then be sent to friends and colleagues and also posted on Websites and blogs. Viewers of the slideshow can interact on the slides through highlights and sticky notes directly on each page, without installing any software. This incredibly easy-to-use web-based software has many potential applications such as: - Create a guided tour for any website- Show a list of houses to real estate clients- Review a list of job candidates found online- Bundle important course resources for students- Provide a quick briefing, or a simple tutorial or guided tour on any subject- Share the favorite places you would like to visit with your friends and blog readers Diigo is a powerful, yet incredibly simple to use research tool that allows people to annotate, bookmark, highlight, save, and clip Web content that matters to them, for future reference or to share with others. They can also comment and add sticky notes directly on each web page, which are viewable by other Diigo users when visiting the same pages. About DiigoDiigo provides a suite of online research and collaborative research tool for individuals and small to medium-sized work groups. Diigo enables seamless bookmarking, tagging, highlighting, clipping, sharing, annotating, and searching of information to deliver a new level of productivity for knowledge workers. Diigo Groups also offer a simple and cost-effective platform for collaborative research. Upcoming releases will transform Diigo's powerful social bookmarking, social annotation and social networking suite into the next-generation knowledge management platform for large enterprises, through both hosted and appliance-based solutions. Diigo is privately held, and is based in Reno, NV.