Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

it has a lot more features than my current favourite, del.ico.us:- Longer description when bookmarking pages.- Saving bookmarks to Twitter (if you are into that!)- Web links can be automatically saved to del.ico.us and 3 other social sites.- Instant bookmarking of a web page (one click save)- The toolbar has an icon which shows whether the site has been bookmark previously.- Bookmarks can be tagged read/unread status- There are highlighting and collaborative features like sticky notes and site comments/- You can import from other social bookmarking tools (del.ico.us, magno.lia.com, furl, etc)- Images can be clipped and saved.- Embedded videos can be captured and saved (supporting youtube.com, myspace.com, video.google.com, video.yahoo.com, atomfilms.com and many others)- You can send bookmarks to major blog platforms easily (one of my favourite features)- Cached feature: archive of the original bookmarked webpage can be accessed- Diigo's Site Communities aggregate users who bookmark & annotate the same website & build meaningful reader communities.-Dashboard: A quick glance of all the latest activities from you and your friends on Diigo. Check out public bookmarks and annotations your friends have added, see what groups they have joined or created, and other interesting activities they are doing at Diigo. also shows you all of your incoming messages, friend request, group invites and more.

Diigo has a very attractive and subdued appearance, that is packed with features without being overwhelming.

To begin with, Diigo is an extremely powerful social bookmarking site. Obviously, Diigo does all the things you would expect of this type of service: you can save bookmarks, assign tags to them, and search the site for bookmarks that are also tagged with those terms or find people who have saved the same bookmark. Diigo also allows you to construct “Lists” of links. Lists are another way of structuring your data that you can use in conjunction with tags. Each List can be made up of any group of links that you can sort in whatever order you desire via a drag and drop interface. This is really nice to see a service that still understands that tags are not the end-all be-all of organizing content.

Diigo doesn’t just want to be a bookmarking service, they aim to be a flexible research tool, and allow you to highlight and annotate web pages to provide more directed commentary on what you are bookmarking. These notes can be private for your reference only, or publicly visible to any user. This immediately brings up comparisons to Clipmarks, except that this is very different. Whereas Clipmarks just takes your highlighted content and loads it into their service, Diigo also leaves those annotations in place in the form of highlights and sticky notes that are visible only to Diigo users. This allows you to not only share those annotations on Diigo itself, but also to visit the originating site and see those comments in context of the surrounding content.

Diigo is fantastic social bookmarking and proto-blogging tool, marrying the best of del.icio.us, the leading bookmarking site, and Google Notebook, a recently upgraded and highly flexible tool for interacting with and reviewing your websurfing experience. I didn't spend much time with Google Notebook once I discovered it by way of comparing del.icio.us with Google Bookmarks, but I played with it enough to notice a lot of excellent features that del.icio.us did not have, including the ability to automatically associate bookmarks with a current project, flexible blog-like layout for groups of bookmarks, and collaboration features. As I moved bookmarks into Google Notebook, I started to realize I would be missing out on some advantages of del.icio.us, such as strong interconnectivity through tagging and an exceedingly simple and crisp interface. Enter Diigo, which retains del.icio.us's advantages while sprucing it up with notetaking, tagging flexibility, and collaborative features that rival Google Notebook and then some. I compare these three approaches to bookmarking on four fronts: tagging, blogging, collaboration, and "other stuff".

Tagging: When I'm surfing, I almost never want to slow down to tag or detail the links I'm saving. I'm either just browsing, and I just want the page to be saved in some repository of "cool" somewhere I might be able to check it out later, OR I want to save the page and others to come back to for some project I'm working on. Although its actual tagging features (labelling) are limited, Google Reader was cool because it would automatically save links to the notebook I was currently working on, which seemed easier than having to tag the page every time I save for del.icio.us. Diigo isn't quite this easy, but it does provide the option of setting default tags so I can cruise through surfing without pause. It also allows you to change tags for multiple bookmarks at once, a feature that has been delayed in del.icio.us during the extended wait for version 2.0. Winner: Diigo

Blogging: Sometimes, I don't want to put a whole lot of thought into consolidating my links into one coherent group. In this regard, all three services provide suitable options for tossing together semi-coherent groups of links on independent webpages for others to see. Google Reader does a good job of making scraps from around the internet look palatable; see this example about ultralight backpacking gear, but it does not offer the same level of interconnectivity that del.icio.us or Diigo provide. A similar example from del.icio.us shows it's limitations: the links cannot be groups under one note or be put into any order other than alphabetical or chronological, and pictures and other non-bookmark material cannot be added. Diigo does not have any of these limitations: its lists can be ordered as you please and divided into sections, and they are built independently of the tags, so you can draw bookmarks from anywhere into the page, as you can see in this example. The option that makes Diigo stand out is its ability to transcend the status of "proto-blog" by easily exporting links to the blog of the user's choice. By simply selecting links and clicking "Send to Blog >>", a skeletal blog entry is started in Diigo which can be fleshed out and published on the spot. Winner: Diigo

The bookmarking and reference service I use most is adding a show-and-tell slideshow feature. Diigo lets you mark up Web pages, then share and export your notes. Its new WebSlides, in closed beta testing, will enable you to create narrated presentations of Web pages that you've saved and annotated. Diigo is meant to be more practical than something like StumbleUpon, a fun way to discover new sites. Diigo Vice President Maggie Tsai touted Diigo WebSlides at the Office 2.0 conference today as an ideal tool for teachers. Her demo showed off handy-looking recording and playback controls for making presentations out of your saved pages and then sharing them with groups of other users. The slide shows also display text you've highlighted or notes you've taken on bookmarked sites. Unfortunately, you can't test WebSlides yet; only a beta wait list sign-up is available for now. I use Diigo instead of Delicious because it has more research-friendly features, and it can simultaneously save stuff to Delicious, Newsvine, and other services.

Despite my best efforts, my bookmarks had gotten out of control. Something had to be done.

That’s when I came across my new favorite tool. It’s called Diigo, and I use it every day. Diigo allows you to highlight and save blog articles. Pre-Diigo, I would bookmark an article, and when I wanted to reference it, I would have to read the entire article again to get to the part I wanted. Now I highlight and bookmark the article, and when I want to access that information, I go straight to what I need. Diigo even allows you to put sticky notes directly onto blog posts and articles. You can add your own comments so that you know why the heck you saved and highlighted the article in the first place. The highlight and annotate options are particularly helpful if you do research prior to writing articles.

You can even highlight a portion of an article, click “send,” and email just that snippet to a colleague or friend. The emailed snippet contains a link so that the recipient can access the original source if they want more information after reading the blurb. You can also add your own comments when emailing snippets.

Diigo defines itself as Social Annotation: the best way to collect, share and interact on online information from anywhere Diigo provides a basic toolbar from which all features are accessed. Clicking on the Diigo button immediately opens up a bookmarking window. Having such quick access is very handy. The bookmarking window offers all the basics: url, title, Tags, Public/Private (public means your bookmark is visible by others), Unread (bookmark something and come back later to read more), Add elsewhere (Diigo allows integration with other bookmarking services). Additionally, Diigo displays existing comments, and lets you add your own comments. The bookmarking service integration can be improved. Diigo doesn’t automatically login to the service. A popup login screen is provided for each service selected. This is laborious. There needs to be automatic integration so it seems seamless. Current integration is available with del.icio.us, blinklist, rawsugar, netvouz, shadows, furl, simply, spurl and yahoo. The comments is where Diigo begins to diverge from other services. Comments are public and visible by all Diigo users. The purpose of comments is to leave short thoughts about a site that will provide useful to other users. Comments are view when using Diigo to bookmark a page. A commenter on the Yahoo page wisely noted: Diigo really needs a function to thumb up/thumb down the comments for pages. This will get spammy, really, really quick. This is true and needs to be addressed by Diigo.

When I go to bookmark a page, I can also highlight text and Diigo will save it. So in the process of research, if there is a key paragraph about the topic I am researching, I can highlight the paragraph and then bookmark the page. As long as I am logged in to Diigo, every time I visit that page, that paragraph will be highlighted. Diigo gives options on the various kind of highlighting available. On my Diigo homepage, both comments and highlights are posted underneath each bookmarked site for easy reference. All tags are shown on my homepage as a tag cloud. I can switch this to a list. Each mode can be viewed alphabetically or by frequency. The really cool thing about tags in Diigo is the ability to easily edit them. I can easily choose a tag and rename or even delete it. This task is made too difficult by other services. My own bookmarks can be viewed either from the Diigo website or from the Diigo toolbar. The toolbar lets me filter my bookmarks by tag so I can easily find what I am looking for. I can also choose to filter bookmarks by the entire Diigo community. Diigo also has a powerful forwarding feature. If you find a website that a friend would be interested in as well, it only takes two clicks to email the URL to them.

The power of Diigo comes in with its annotations features. I already mentioned highlighting above. Diigo lets users aggregate those highlights. For example, you’ve spent hours researching a topic and tagged each site with a particular tag. On the Diigo site, you can pull up all those tags and display ALL your highlighted text. This provides you an easy way to view your information. This is a great tool for writers. Saves times from cutting and pasting quotes or flipping back and forth between all the bookmarked pages to remember what was pertinent to you. Diigo also offers Sticky Notes. Sticky Notes are different than comments. Comments are always public and can never be edited (but can be deleted.) Sticky Notes can be public or private, can be edited and can be deleted. Sticky Notes should be used for your own thoughts. They can be used to simply indicate something you need to write about in the future, or type at length a response to a webpage that you will later use in an article. There is more to be said about Diigo. Another great thing about Diigo is a very user friendly help section. I printed the whole thing out. After the 30 mins or so it took me to read through the material I had a pretty good understanding of Diigo’s capabilities. The hardwork put into Diigo is evident. It has become my bookmarking tool of choice. Technorati Tags: diigo, bookmarking, annotation, research, tools 11.13.2006 @ 11:07 AM — Filed under: Social Bookmarking

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