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Research megatool Diigo will officially announce its new WebSlides for RSS feeds and Bookmarks feature at TechCrunch40 next week. The new widget is an embeddable player that presents feeds or bookmarks as live web pages in an interactive slideshow format, complete with the full content, pages, links, comments, and ads. The widget can be sent to friends and colleagues and also placed on websites, blogs and in social networks. Each slide that is displayed actually registers as a page view for the content owner. Webslides also allows any Diigo user to annotate each page on the fly with sticky notes to share thoughts or to highlight important sections. Viewers can also bookmark, tag, share, and clip content from the pages in WebSlides for future reference in their own Diigo online folders. To use WebSlides, users enter a feed or list of bookmarks and add background music or voice narration. By clicking “Play,” the list transforms into a slideshow. There’s a lot of competition in this space, but having looked at the product I can see why Diigo qualified for the demo pit at TC40. A widget that includes full content including advertising is a good thing for publishers, and it’s the first slide/ widget I’ve seen that does this. Combined with Diigo’s research capabilities it makes for a great product. Video demonstration is below. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Diigo To Launch WebSlides At TechCrunch40 Posted: 14 09 2007 14:43:10 CEST by Duncan Riley Tags:  Company & Product Profiles   [edit]

Diigo www.diigo.com Diigo is my personal favorite for social bookmarking. Users can not only import del.icio.us or other bookmarks, they can also update those other services using diigo. In addition, diigo’s informational video and screencasts—accessible on its home page—provide a great introduction to social bookmarking. Diigo’s secondary features include a rich set of browser tools that allows users to highlight passages and leave comments on Web pages for other diigo users to see (a great way for teachers to effectively assess student assignments). Diigo also lets you send an email or blog post directly from a Web page, automate a daily blog post of your bookmarks with comments, or create blog or site widgets with your bookmarks. Founded in 2005 by Wade Ren.

Diigo is my personal favorite

12/1/2007

Every so often you come across a service that really fits into your life. Diigo is that for me. I never understood what the excitement was over sites like delicious. I never saw any practical use for it. However, I see many uses for Diigo. A big one for me is how you are able to use it as a research and knowledge tool and how it will allow me to be more time efficient. For one of my freelancing jobs, we talk a lot over email since we are all over the country. I hate when I find a cool article and then I have to send it to each person (I am still trying to figure out how to make email lists on Gmail). This service would allow me to bookmark the article and each person on my team can then decide if it pertains to them (instead of me trying to figure that out). You can set up different groups too. My personal group wouldn’t have to wade through my work bookmarks. Another feature that I love is that you can highlight articles and leave notes for yourself. Currently, I have a ton of bookmarks that I did, and I can’t remember what was important in those articles and why I bookmarked them. When doing research, I would love to be able to note that I have already looked at different web pages.

On the more personal side, there are several features that are just fun to play with. First, you have People Like Me. That feature will show you what other people who have bookmarked the same site as you also bookmarked. It will also suggest people that are close to you in your bookmarking behavior. You are able to import your bookmarks from other sites, so you don’t have waste your time doing that again.

It is a tad overwhelming at first when you are trying to figure it all out. However, it is worth your time.

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.

Students Use Social Bookmarking Just like I learned with blogging in the classroom, I know that students get more out of methods of learning that they use in their free time. So, social bookmarking was a way for me to engage my students not only in the research, but in conversations with the research. Social bookmarking, regardless of the site used, creates a conversation among members interested in the same tag. Each time a member marks a bookmark, they are speaking to their networks and saying “Read this.”

I believe there is something very powerful  in this tool. I am in the process evaluating it for instructional and professional development purposes. So far these are my thoughts: I think I can easily mark up online student work with this tool. I think online students can mark up each other’s online work with this tool. and discuss. One of the course activities is to use a rubric to evaluate an online course that the students will each be building as the main project for the course. The course review, I think, can be done using diigo. I think… not sure yet. Online students can easily create annotated bibliographies of web resource in directed learning activities AND share and discuss them with others in the class. This resource can grow and be available for the online course from term to term. In addition, for webenhanced courses, this is an awesome, easy, slick, cool way to incorporate some very cool online enhancements to a f2f course that completely bypasses all the extra unnecessary flotsam you get with a full on CMS/LMS. you get a lot of functional features bang for the “buck” in this tool. It is a slick tool with a lot of functionality to suport interaction/collaboration, etc. When i have my university administrator’s hat on i also see great potential as a tool to facilitate and enhance community and for professional development. I have an extended staff of 50-100 online instructional designers that i could use this tool with to aggregate links and info and resources and networking. We have over 3,000 online faculty that we could use this with to support them with info and resources and networking - differenciating between the needs of new online faculty and experienced online faculty… there is potential for discipline specific resources and info for online faculty… and it goes on.

Diigo needs to try to get with Microsoft and Firefox to try to get it as an install option by default. This would open up their user base to more that just us tech geeks.

Diigo is perhaps one of the web’s premier research tools - this is widely accepted.

Diigo as a tool, could be viewed as a much more serious innovation by comparison.

Diigo goes a step further. Diigo is really more like a mash-up of social bookmarking and social networking. It is as if Facebook and del.icio.us had a child and named it Diigo. Like del.icio.us, Diigo allows you to post your bookmarks online, tag them and share them. However, Diigo allows to to create a network of friends and see what their recent activity is - much easier to see the new items bookmarked by your friends than in del.icio.us. There is also a comment wall which allows for friends to engage in conversation or discussion about sites. Additionally, Diigo allows you to create lists in addition to tags. Tags allow for a dynamic set of resources to be viewed. Lists allow you to create a static set of resources when necessary. It is another option for organizing bookmarked sites. You can also designate sites as favorites. Finally, Diigo allows you to create groups so that people who might have something in common can share bookmarks with the group that they think the other members of the group might find interesting. Diigo is quickly becoming a favorite resource from what I can tell by listening in the twitterverse. Good site to check out.

Thanks for a great post. Interesting “analogy” Like to add: Diigo’s web annotation (the ability to add highlight, sticky notes) to any part of a webpage is another very unique and core competence of Diigo’s offerings. As you read on the web, instead of just bookmarking, you can highlight portions of web pages that are of particular interest to you. You can also attach sticky notes to specific parts of web pages. Unlike most other web “highlighters” that merely clip, Diigo highlights and sticky notes are persistent in the sense that whenever you return to the original web page, you will see your highlights and sticky notes superimposed on the original page, just what you would expect if you highlighted or wrote on a book! Moreover, all the information — highlighted paragraphs, sticky notes, and the original url — are saved on Diigo servers, creating your personal digest of the web, your own collection of highlights from the web - ones that are meaningful to you!

3. Diigo has shown a committment to listening to its users. Well at least the educational users, and they have been making small changes almost daily since Lisa Parisi held the elluminate session this past Sunday. Maggie Tsai and Wade Ren have been in and out of multiple conversations on Diigo and posting on edubloggers pages (Look up) to actively understand our needs and look to make changed in Diigo to fit the educational model… You can be offended by the “hate” comment Wade made, but this is his company and he wants to make change to satisify folks… I really like delicious since I was introduced to it a year ago. Easy linking, I can tag from a tool bar with comments I can build a passive network… But Delicious is not listening to folks or making changes even though they “introduced” their version 2 about a year ago, and it has not appeared. Even the tech bloggers are taking delicious to task for this. The responsiveness that Wade and Maggie have shown so far is really impressive in my opinion. Just wanted to share my thoughts on why I am continuing to investigate and use Diigo. I know that you feel a bit targeted for “not drinking the coolaid” but I think what you are getting hit hard on is if you don’t like the service you do not have to use it. Or with the participation Wade and Maggie are showing get involved and see if it can become what you would like to see… Just my thoughts, Scott

# Scott Weidigon 02 Apr 2008 at 10:27 pm Jim, I went to post this on Diigo and then hit my back space and went to a different page and lost everything boo… but I thought that I would post here instead. I am becoming more enamored over time with Diigo. At first I didn’t get the hoopla… I don’t “do” facebooks and myspaces etc. and I have enough of a hard time keeping up with twitter (don’t know how coolcatteacher and Dembo follow 1000+ folks… ) so I didn’t think much of the social side. But it could host links and re-post them to delicious so not too bad… here is what is changing my mind. 1. Bookmarking… on one hand it is the same as delicious tags yadda yadda… but I can now tag a s ite, send it to friends in the diigo network and outside of it, forward it to a specific topic group and throw it into a specifically designed list at the same time! That is efficient in my mind. the Twit thing is neat too so I don’t have to tinyurl it and post to twitter… and I can even keep my delicious account updated through Diigo so I don’t have to do double work… (and when i imported it brough my delicious notes that was a nice touch)

2. Annotation/stikites/highlighting. We all research and move information into different places, google notebook, MS OneNote, Zoho Notobook… but those pieces of information are then only our notes and ideas… Diigo’s highlighint and annotation allows you to make any page a conversational document. That is powerful. I just played with it for the first time today and was blown away with ease at which you could do this. those notes can then be seen by any diigo user. The collaborative possibilities are astounding. if you have not tried this or seen it go to http://lisaslingo.blogspot.com and scroll down to the Best Day Ever post. If you have your Diigo sidebar open you will see two notes, and the Highlighing that Steve Kimmel did. Also, I don’t know if it is showing up yet I tagged a sticky note next to the first picture there… my comments appear in the side bar, but I see the note markup and I am thinking others will to eventually, but am not sure. Think of all the times your teachers ahve been trying to teach textmarking but can’t in the Textbooks… now we can do this to the web.

In conclusion, I’ve not seen any social networking tool that has sparked my imagination nearly so much as Diigo.

But it’s got me thinking. It is an interesting blend of human networks and social bookmarks, of people can content.

Perhaps this is what sets Diigo appart, that content becomes the place. It isn’t the place that’s the place. It’s the content.

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.

this recession will be good for innovation because recessions generally are

A recession means technologists cease to be paid vast amounts to duplicate the work of others

low-cost high-impact physical events we've created (Ignite, hacker meetups, coworking spaces, foo/bar camps) will thrive

A few months back, after checking out the options available, I switched over to using Diigo.  It offers more options, and has some nice grouping features.  Also, I primarily use it because it can send links to delicious every time I make a new bookmark, and would import from delicious when I started, but delicious doesn’t offer the same options.  This way I have a backup of my bookmarks, as well as access to tools that interact with delicious.  This way, too, if I’ ever someplace that blocks one but not the other, I won’t find myself lost in the middle of a lake without a paddle. Like most of the social networking tools, I more or less exclusively use it as a professional resource.  I do the personal posting thing in Twitter to some degree because everybody does, and it’s what makes the community a way of getting to know people, but I’m really there for interacting with other educators.  This blog primarily, but not always, deals with education.  Any nings I belong to are education-related, and of the major social networking sites, the only one I’m on is LinkedIn, a professional resource.  Diigo is the same for me.  It’s all about things tangentially related to education.

Flock + Diigo + Wordpress = Disruptive Leap

But there is one thing missing, which is being able to store bookmarks and share them with friends. Sure, there are a few great social networking sites out there, del.icio.us being one of them. But they lack the ability to highlight parts of a story and add sticky notes that stays on that website. Diigo offers these two brilliant features via their Toolbar. It’s just like when you read an interesting book and highlight the important parts and somtimes add a comment via a Post-It note. Not another Toolbar you say. Well, Diigo has actually replaced all my other toolbars. Flock offers a toolbar with favorites which is more than enough to cover my favorite online destination hangouts: Yahoo!, Google, Amazon, Wikipedia et cetera. All other bookmarks are tagged in Diigo and News I get directly to Flock via RSS feeds.

I spent this afternoon installing, connecting and testing the above applications and instantly my online experience and productivity took a huge forward leap

Social search has a brand new contender - Diigo Currently social search appears to be the hottest topic on the internet. The theory is that more useful and meaningful search results can be gathered regarding the true value of sites by getting users to recommend websites rather than utilising a series of computer generated algorithms.Traditional search engine results, such as those supplied by Google and Yahoo!, are primarily based on objective criteria such as counts of the backlinks from other sites. These links are seen as votes on the importance of that page for a given set of criteria. Social search allows users to assign their own votes regarding which sites are worthwhile, by sharing bookmarks of favourite sites, adding their own subject tagging, or making annotations to listings. This creates a more subjective set of results, which some feel can more accurately reflect which sites are most meaningful for particular search terms. The concept of social search has been continually evolving since social bookmark sites like Del.icio.us and Shadows first appeared through to more involved services such the social networking sites MySpace and MyWeb, or the social news source Digg.Now a new player has appeared on the scene. Diigo (Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff) which was launched on Monday aims to combine a number of features such as shared bookmarking, blogging and web page tagging into a single service along with a powerful toolbar search tool.Diigo promotes itself as an online social research and "social annotation" tool, allowing users to:"Collect, share and interact on online information from anywhere”. By letting users quickly create their own comment on sites as well as highlight, clip or make sticky-notes for webpages, and providing access to organic search or their own social search results, which can be adjusted to suite the users preferences, Diigo has created a service with several interesting resource sharing and community promotion features. By taking onboard search features normally associated with search toolbar extension filters such as the ability to restrict keyword searches to the site you're currently viewing, the usability of the search functions have been increased to make this a useful service regardless of whether the user is looking to fully immerse themselves in the online social environment.While there is currently no direct official link between social search results and organic results obtained on the traditional search engines, many users have recently started to find information from the likes of MySpace creeping in. With Google and Yahoo! both having their own networks it looks likely that more of the features and results will either be merged together or be offered alongside each other so that you can get different sets of results depending on your preferred search method.Whether Diigo is here to stay or is set to quickly disappear like many other social search sites, remains to be seen, however the simple customisable interface and powerful set of useful tools make this one of the best offerings for some time.

I’m finding these new tools I’m capturing them with my Diigo tool that allows me to annotate, tag and share the findings and from there I can find other links, tool or people that have also found this site interesting.

So many ways of discovering that rely on others, but through effective ways of collecting, organising (and sometimes sharing), a really complex web of information can be navigated.  So in the spirit of sharing, feel free to browse my Diigo space - it’s a developing set of tools that I think could be useful, are interesting or quite simply cool.

While the for: tag is well known among delicious users (and specifically supported by delicious), some delicious users use the via: tag to track who provided a link. That allows people browsing your links to know who else they might want to add to their network on del.icio.us. Ric Hayman of Aqualung proposes that this could form the basis for a reputation economy online.