Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

webslides from diigo - slideshows of bookmarked pages September 7th, 2007 · No Comments Webslides is a useful add-on feature from what I already consider to be the premier social bookmarking device on the web - diigo. This feaure allows you to create a slide show from your bookmarks so they become more interesting and you can highlight what you want. This lets you convey a series of points quickly and gives rise to an overall effect. Kind of like the difference between a picture and a group of pictures that run together to make a short movie. Each frame is meaningful, but in the aggregate they gain much, much more meaning and impact. Okay, enough about that. Just try it and see if you agree.

By the way, if you’re not familiar with diigo, it’s a collaborative bookmarking tool available for free on the web. It fits in and becomes part of your browser so you can capture information of any kind (words, audio, video, URLs, etc.) while browsing, doing research, etc. So far I’ve just described bookmarking, which we’ve all been doing that since Internet Explorer and Netscape were duking it out in 1995. So what’s the difference? The twist is diigo (like many competing services such as del.icio.us, furl, spurl, Yahoo!, Windows Live, and others) makes your bookmarks available to all other users of the service, while doing the same for you. Instant sharing. Of course you can also restrict your bookmarks to a particular group or keep them to yourself. But where’s the fun in that?

I maintain a few groups on diigo myself on topics such as legal technology, real property law, the current mortgage meltdown, divorce, immigration … you get the idea. You can check out my diigo groups and join them yourself (yes, I’m encouraging you to do so) by going to http://groups.diigo.com/. As always, thank you for your support.

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.”

Strongly Recommend: Use Diigo! According to our surveys, many oD readers are involved in research in some form or other: as students or academics or media-folk or policy makers and influencers. So here is a recommendation that might well change the quality and usefulness of the web for you. The best research tool I have come across in a long time - it has really transformed my web habits - is diigo.com, which gives me the ability to make notes as I read the web, to collect all my notes in one place and to share the notes with collaborators. After joining, my recommendation is that you download and install the diigo toolbar - it makes adding notes and index-files of what you read very easy. It also has a number of other nice features that you'll probably end up using - for example, you can highlight a word and perform a Google search on it without any further typing, which I liked ... Once you have joined diigo, make sure you sign up to the openDemocracy group on diigo. Joining the group will allow you to see the bookmarks and annotations from everywhere on the web of others who have chosen to share their notes with the openDemocracy group. You'll see when you create a note - the options are pretty clear. Once you have signed up to the openDemocracy group, you can have a look at an example of the group annotation feature here where Anthony and I have commented on the UK Labour Party Deputy Leadership attitudes gathered by OurKingdom. diigo.com is the web tool I use most. I have met with Wade and Maggie, the brains and business minds behind it - I feel they really understand what researchers need and are working hard to supply it. I really look forward to using diigo.com more extensively on openDemocracy and exploring various collaborative experiments using it. More later ...but in the meantime, do sign-up to diigo.com

Scheduled Groups Maintenance

September 28th, 2009

Diigo groups won’t be accessible

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”)