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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

We have all found directories like Cyndi's List to be valuable assets in our family research efforts.  Unfortunately, these directories require lots of maintenance and since most of these are volunteer efforts, it can take weeks to get new sites included. 

Diigo is the most useful tool for take-it-with-you research. It not only organizes and tags bookmarks, it also lets you mark up Web pages as you would a paperback book--with sticky notes, highlights, and comments--then share those notes with others.

Text is linear Text is unlinear Text is said to be unlinear Text is often said to be unlinear Text is unlinear when written on paper Digital text is different. Digital text is more flexible. Digital text is moveable. Digital text is above all…hyper. Digital hypertext is above all… hypertext is above all… hypertext can link hypertext can link here here or here… virtually anywhere anywhere virtually anywhere virtual The WayBack Machine http://yahoo.com Take Me Back Oct 17, 1996 Yahoo View Source Most early websites were written in HTML HTML HTML was designed to define the structure of a web document. p is a structural element referring to “paragraph” LI LI is also a structural element referring to “List Item” As HTML expanded, more elements were added. Including stylistic elements like B for bold and I for italics Suck elements defined how content would be formatted. In other words, form and content became inseparable in HTML Digital Text can do better. Form and content can be separated. http://www.cnn.com RSS XML View Source XML was designed to do just that. http://www.cnn.com/?eref=rss_topstories same withCNN.com and and virtually all other elements in this document. They describe the content, not the form. So the data can be exported, free of formatting constraints. Latest News Anthro Blogs (124) Savage Minds 8apps: Social Networking for Productive People WORLD CHANGING ANOTHER WORLD IS HERE Antrho Journals (124) University of California Press Journals Digital Publishing Current Anthropology AESonline.org Google With form separated from content, users did not need to know complicated code to upload content to the web, I’m Feeling Lucky Create Blog Name Your Blog Beyond Etext http://beyondetext.blogspot.com Choose a template Your blog has been created! Monday, January 29, 2007 Hello World! POSTED BY PROFESSOR WESCH AT 8:14 PM 0 COMMENTS There’s a blog born every half second and it’s not just text…Search YouTube Broadcast Yourself This is a video response to The Beauty of Being Human flickr Ahoy mwesch! Upload Photos Anthropology club Created by you. KSU Anthropology club Club Photos Google XML facilitates automated data exchange font-size: 14px; font-f

What does this tool do: It is (still) most valuable as a tool to save and organize your bookmarks, so you will never lose or forget a saved-site again. But the latest upgrade adds much greater depth to previous versions.

To call Diigo just a bookmark organizer is like calling Ella just a singer. But the truth is that your first and most obvious value will come from Diigo’s ability to store and search out your lost bookmarks like no other free program available. You can also highlight and file short sentences within a URL without saving the entire site. Plus you can search text as well as tags and easily forward your best links on to your friends. If you want additional layers of social networking, note taking, and added research ability, this tool satisfies. But you should plan on a gradual ramp up to proficiency. In order to take full advantage of Diigo, it will take some effort to make it sing for you…but in the meantime, it can sure hum.