If you’re one of the expanding list of genealogy bloggers, chances are good you frequently find things online you’d like to write about. In addition to copying the quote, you also need to grab the site’s name, article/page title and link. Diigo, my favorite online research tool, can help make this process a whole lot easier. Diigo’s “Blog This” function builds on its highlighting and annotation features to make it easy to capture information and incorporate it into a blog post. The feature works with WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, Moveable Type, Windows Live Spaces and Drupal blog platforms. Here’s how it works . . . Setup The first step is to set up your blog so Diigo can access it. Log into Diigo then click on My Tools. Now click on Blog This in the left column. When that page appears, click on the +Add a new blog link. Enter the address of your blog in the URL field, then click Next. Now enter the username and password you use to to access your blog and click Add New Blog. Your blog should now appear on your Blog This page. You’re ready to start blogging. Blog This As you browse the web, you come across a tidbit you’d like to write about. Highlight the text you’d like to include in your post, right-click and choose Diigo > Blog This from the popup menu.

In the example shown here (configured for a WordPress blog), you can see in the left column that this post is going to my Family Matters blog as a draft in the News category. What you actually see will depend on what blog platform you are using. I may post a “quick and dirty” item directly from the Diigo editor, but generally I will send the highlighted text to my blog as a post and finish it off there. Either way, Diigo has made it easy for me to include web content in my posts - saving both time and effort.

Diigo: Once they start their web-related search, Diigo, an add-on extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer, allows students to highlight text and post sticky-notes directly onto webpages, then share their comments within the group. Others can add their own comments to the note. Selected text is archived to a "my bookmarks" page, along with the comments and a copy of the website. Students can collaborate within the bookmarks site or on the individual websites. Diigo supports RSS feeds, allowing teachers to follow student progress. The more I use this tool, the more I'm convinced it ought to be integral to every research project. It allows students to actively connect with the information they're reading--to question, annotate and infer. All in collaboration with their group. How amazing is that???

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

By CNET staff (October 20, 2006) It's easy to suffer from information overload when the world's data is at your fingertips. What you need are tools that help you home in on the most relevant facts and organize them. We've rounded up (in random order) some great services that help you go straight to expert sources and keep track of your research. These digital tools can keep you on track--whether you're working on a middle-school science fair, wrapping up a graduate degree, or pursuing a hobby.

4. Diigo beta How helpful is it to bookmark a Web site if you need only one sentence from that 3,000-word article? Diigo is a free bookmarking service that lets you do what we wish Yahoo's Del.icio.us would: highlight text and comment on Web pages. Diigo caches each site so that you can search within text, not just the topic tags. And you won't have to leave the Del.icio.us community, since Diigo lets you save bookmarks simultaneously in both places.

2. Wikipedia You might shun this online, open-source encyclopedia if you've ever been burned by prank entries or fudged facts. But because anyone can edit Wikipedia, it's a richer resource than Britannica for subjects off the beaten path, such as the > 1960s underground press > or > rivethead subculture > . Though it's not the only source you should reference in term papers, at least Wikipedia gets you started. >