Library clips

Webride enables you to discuss the webpage you are on, this comment you make will also be bookmarked in the Webride discussion tagging service.

NOTE: this is different to 3bubbles, gabbly, mobber, and conversate (private), where you can chat about the webpage you are viewing.

Homepage (Discussion)

Sort by popular or new…here you have a stream of the latest webpages commented on, if you click on a bookmark it will launch into a split screen (the webpage you are discussing on the right, and the left pane will have the discussion)…also displayed is a running number total of comments for each bookmark.

Each bookmark has a details link:
- Discuss (choose split or full to add to the discussion or to just see the discussion)
- Address (the actual native webpage)
- Top Tags (popular tags assigned to the webpage)

I wonder why you have to click split or full or click on the actual bookmark itself to see the discussion, I’d like to expand the discussion and add to it from where I am (I suppose it is a bit hard to add to the discussion if you haven’t seen/read about the webpage yet…point taken).

The details link lacks a link to see which users have commented on this bookmark, so we can hyperlink straight to their user space…again I suppose if you click on the bookmark or click discuss (details) you will see all comments and hyperlinks to the user spaces.

On the sidebar is a tag cloud to view the current stream of posts by tag…when you click a tag it also list related tags to refine your browsing.
Another view for the homepage is by tag, this is a tag cloud for all the bookmarks in the system…also search a tag.

You can also view a domain tag cloud, eg. you can view all discussions on blogger blogs, via the blogspot domain tag…also search a domain.

Now I did a search for my URL which is great as I can see who has commented on any of my blog posts using Webride, but where’s my ego feed.

[ADDED: coming to think of it, Webride can also double up as an alternative to collecting comments you make on blog posts, the only thing is that they live at Webride and not in the blog post].

Users page

Sort by Top or New Users or search a user…each entry has a link to the user space or a link straight to a tag in the user space.

User space
- Rate your relation to this person: like, dislike, don’t care (when you click the Relations view you will see a list of who this user likes, dislikes, doesn’t care about)
- Personal Tag cloud (Top 25)
- Tag cloud (all tags)…also search for a tag

Clicking on a bookmark will launch to the discussion…from your bookmark stream you can see just your comments (not all) by expanding a link…hmm this is what I was refering to earlier on for the homepage.

Add a comment

Almost forgot, add a comment manually in the search box on the homepage, or via the bookmarklet.
When you add a comment it launches to the split view, where you can see all current comments (if any) with links to these users…you can also add tags.

RSS

When you leave a comment you will notice you can grab the RSS feed, there is also a subscribe feed (this is a spliced feed, of all new comments for the discussions you have subscribed to).

NOTE: Webride does not have an inbox to view the latest from your subscriptions, it just offers feeds which you can read elsewhere.

Blog integration

You can embed a link into your blog, this expands into a box showing the discussions for your blog post…this kind of competes with your inhouse comments.
An alternative is to just link to a discussion from your blog post (this is what the bookmarklet does).

You don’t have to register for inhouse comments, but you do have to be a user of Webride to add a comment in the Webride box…so it’s not really doubling up, it’s complementary, and also remember that this comment is not only on your blog but is also now promoted (listed) in Webride.

Webride is simple to use and has a great purpose, especially if you don’t have comments on your blog (only thing is people would need to register with the Webride service just to leave a comment on your blog…not good if they don’t care to join Webride).
Although, you sometimes have to register for some inhouse comments eg. PingWare (Ottergroup).

Learn more about Webride and check out their blog.

Click to discuss this web page!

Diigo is a social bookmark service with a difference as it also annotates webpages (sticky notes)…it has a bunch of powerful features.

The interface is super clean and friendly and the tour is magic…learn more…help.

It’s been around for a while but it is still invitation only…they are going to launch soon.

Bookmarking

Similar to many of the other services…tags, users, etc…

When you look at bookmarks on the home page you can expand a bookmark to see comments, you can see all the comments users have left on that bookmark (you don’t even have to bookmark the page yourself in order to comment).

The only thing is, where can I see all bookmarks I’ve commented on (whether I’ve bookmarked it myself or not)…when you comment on a bookmark you can choose public/private, if I comment on a bookmark not in my collection and mark it private, where do I see this, I can’t seem to see it on the home page.
There must be a section to see bookmarks I’ve commented on, I just can’t see it.

There is a URL history feature…who else has bookmarked the same page.

You can also copy a link to your collection, but the tags copy as well, I wish I could tag it before I submit.

Save pages via a toolbar or a bookmarklet or mouse…at the time of bookmarking it will suggests tags or view your tag set, it also shows all comments, and you can mark it unread. You can also select a box to save it in other bookmark services at the same time, and save it in you browser favourites as well. Even more, you can send it to a friend while you are bookmarking the page…so much can happen when you save a page to your collection.

Every page is cached (click on snaphot)…this means full-text search.

Each tag has a feed, and you can also quick subscribe to each tag so you can read the latest from your inbox section (My Subscriptions).

Here is the community page.

Annotation

Not only can you bookmark pages but you can highlight and leave sticky notes in multiple sections of the page…this helps you remember why you bookmarked a page in the first place…also great for research purposes.

These highlights and notes are left on the page, next time you visit the page the highlights will be there, just hover your mouse over to read the sticky notes.

Furl has a clippings field, but it just appears in your bookmarks…it won’t appear when you re-visit the page…Clipmarks also clips sections of the page/s, but again it only appears in your bookmarks.

So this is the power of Diigo, you get to annotate pages and see these when you re-visit the webpage…also in your bookmarks you can expand a link and it will display notes/highlights you have left on the page (this is the same expand button that show comments), so you don’t have to go to the native page to see the annotations….you can even add more notes to the same highlight from here.

Earlier this month I posted, Granular Tagging or Index Tagging, this is basically tagging sections of a webpage, Diigo can highlight/note sections but not tag these highlights/notes…this may be a handy integration for personal research purposes.

Mouse

Right-click
- bookmark
- forward (email)

Highlight and Right-click
- bookmark and highlight
- highlight and forward
- blog this

Highlight (Left-click)
- bookmark and highlight
- highlight and forward
- blog this
- Search the web, bookmarks, blogs, etc…
- Copy with or without format

Back to it

Why not share your notes, email (forward) some of your bookmarks with highlights/notes to a friend, or if your notes are made public, others from the Diigo community will be able to see your notes when they visit a webpage (best of both worlds)
…so if several Diigo users highlight and leave sticky notes on a given page and make their annotations public, there will be a lot of useful information…I wonder if it will look cluttered or if you can turn off the annotated view for that session, or choose just to see your annotations…a little manual override [ADDED: found it in the view mode in the toolbar].

What I like about the user space is that each bookmark has a box, you can tick boxes (or tick the all box) then select from the action menu, such as forward (email), edit, delete, mark unread, etc…actually another choice is extract highlight, this takes you to a permalink where you can see just your highlights for that bookmark.

So you can see your highlights at the native page, via the expand link in your bookmarks, and at a permalink via the extract selection from the action menu.

There are 3 views for your collection: bookmarked recently, commented recently, unread.

If I decide to leave a comment on an old bookmark of mine, it will go to the top of the commented recently view, this must also happen if someone else comments on this same bookmark…still no section to see just bookmarks I have commented on (whether it’s in my collection or not).

Search

The toolbar can search your bookmarks, all bookmarks, users, even full-text…it will even search other engines: web, bookmarks, blogs, etc…clever idea as the toolbar can be used for stuff other than Diigo.

Watch out Simpy because these search features are just as comprehensive, check it out:

- with the words in Tags
- with the words in Title
- with the words in Text
- with the words in Comments
- with the words in Highlights
- with the words anywhere
- without the words anywhere

tag: word1 - find bookmarks with word1 in tags
word1 word2 - find bookmarks with both word1 and word2
word1 or word2 - find bookmarks with either word1 or word2
“word1 word2″ - find bookmarks with the phrase “word1 word2″
word1 -word2 - find bookmarks with word1, but not word2
word1* - find bookmarks with words containing word1 as a prefix
tag:word1* - find bookmarks with tags containing word1 as a prefix
tag:word1 -word2 - find bookmarks with tag word1, but not word2 anywhere
tag:word1 tag:word2 - find bookmarks with both tag word1 and tag word2
tag:(word1 word2) - same as above
tag:word1 -tag:word2 - find bookmarks with tag word1, but not tag word2
tag:”word1 word2″ - find bookmarks with the phrase “word1 word2″ in tags
title: word1 - find bookmarks with word1 in title
text:word1 - find bookmarks with word1 in text
c:word1 - find bookmarks with word1 in comments
h:word1 - find bookmarks with word1 in highlights

Once again using this to tag your blog posts is handy, you wouldn’t have trouble finding any of your blog posts.

Integration

Blog - Highlight a page and mouse click blog this, it will open a new blog post and insert the hyperlinks and text

Linkroll - re-syndicate the latest

Tagroll - coming soon

Similtaneous tagging - you can set it to save a bookmark in up to 9 other bookmark services everytime you save a page to Diigo…in my trial it seems to just save in a default or first tag (so you’d have to go to your other services and re-tag)

Blog synch - I wonder if it will save a blog post at the time of publishing your blog post…if so this could be a consideration of using Diigo to bookmark my blog posts (just wait for the Tagroll).
Even if you have to manually bookmark your blog posts, at least you can do this to 9 services at once and then later choose which service you really want to use…just this feature alone could be another product.

This is an awesome tool, some of the features, like the toolbar and the synching go beyond the call of duty

…it seems there will be some more social features coming soon like contacts/groups.

I like the idea of groups as Diigo will extend from personal research to a group research…at the moment you can share/forward your bookmarks, but the annotation viewing choices are either none, yours, or all.
In a group environment you could foward someone your annotated bookmarks or they could just login to the group account, and inturn annotate the same page, and hopefully the toolbar would let you view annotations from your group only (kind of has a wiki feel to it).

More coverage:
Library Stuff
Corante Web Hub Editorial
TechCrunch
Solution Watch

[ADDED: I’d like to see folders like Clipmarks, Spurl, netvouz, this way I can have channels or different research portfolios…bookmarks could live in multiple folders and have any tag, but I like the idea of having a bucket for a research project (all the bookmarks for that project in one URL).
I could use a tag as a bucket, but I’d rather a defined section for this purpose.]

Wow, the other day I just posted on an idea like podcasting but for text, and now it’s a reality, it’s called textcasting.

Basically, you download an RSS feed to your iPod (or whatever), but instead of listening you read.

This is cheaper than using an online mobile feed reader, just dump into your device daily so you can read it offline.

So who is going to be the first textcast hosting service, eg. Talkr…there’s money to be made here, loads of it.

Now we’ll start see blogs with textcast feeds where the posts are the latest chapter in a daily book (I remember seeing a blog once where the blog posts were chapters in a book)…just download to your device every morning and read the latest chapter on the train.

I’d love to read an offline electronic version of the latest feed content on the train (save printing), but then I need to synch it…is there such a thing as a downloadable RSS Reader for your mobile.

[via LibrarianInBlack]

I get so many emails from start-ups to check out their new product and possibly blog about it…it’s could almost become a day job, I just can’t keep up with the web2.0 frenzy…plus I don’t get paid by any of these new start-ups.

I’m sure there are lots of other bloggers experiencing the same thing, we are free publicity…is their a way to make money besides ads…plus you don’t really make money from ads unless you have 1000’s of subscribers.

Imagine having a web2.0 blog agent service, if the agent accepts you, your blog lives in a gallery, new start-ups can browse this gallery and request for some blogs to do some user testing and publish a blog post to promote there service…for a price (kind of like how some blog ad services work).

There is no real change to your blog, you are just registered with a service, and every now and then you do some testing and posting on commission.

TechCrunch probably have a proper fee setup in order to blog about new start-ups, and once it’s on TechCrunch it is out there (over 50,000 subscribers)…everyone reads TechCrunch, would start-ups bother approaching anyone else…once TechCrunch blogs it, blog posts from everyone else just proliferate.

Forgot about this one, ShortText was posted by Micro Persuasion a while back.

Make a post, and it will generate a URL and feed…kind of in the same field as some features of FeedXS, LinkRSS, feedbite, publi.sh (but not really)

Some note services like webnote have feeds, but I suppose ShortText also gives you a URL…TechCrunch has more on notes…or see a massive list (includes a section on public notes pages).

Here are some similar selections:
YourDraft
Duesto
barewiki.com
ChangeToLink
ZohoPlanner
Sabifoo (IM to webpage)

Some case uses.

[ADDED 08/01/07: 20 Different Ways to Manage Your To Dos]