The idea of annotating the Web has been around for a long time. It goes back to a failed Web 1.0 startup called Third Voice. Today there are a handful of Web startups (Diigo, Fleck, Stickis, ShiftSpace, TrailFire) that let you mark up any Web page by adding virtual sticky notes or comments in a sidebar. One of these, ActiveWeave, had to reboot as BlogRover and eventually sold itself to BuzzLogic.
Now, a new startup that officially launches today, Reframe It, is trying its hand at the same game. The company has raised $700,000 from AD Gilhart & Co., and it boasts an impressive advisory board which includes Esther Dyson, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Howard Rheingold. But it is not clear how Reframe It will distinguish itself from the other Web annotation startups that have so far failed to spark a lot of interest among users.
Reframe It is a browser plug-in for Firefox or Internet Explorer that lets you highlight passages of text on a Web page and add your own comments in a side pane. Comment can be private, public, or visible only to certain groups. Anyone with the Reframe It plug-in can then see those comments in their side pane as they browse the Web. Reframe It also has a Twitter-like social feature that lets you follow other people’s comments, as well as comments within groups. You can follow these comments in an RSS feed, which you can track in your blog reader or other services such as FriendFeed. To help get you started, Reframe It allows you to import your contacts from Gmail, Facebook, and (soon) LinkedIn and other services. → Read More
In 1999, Eng-Sion Tan and two friends launched Third Voice, a browser plugin that would let anyone make annotations on webpages. The intent was to encourage freer speech on the internet, but many slammed it as “Web Graffiti.” The company eventually shut down. The idea of web page annotation didn’t die with Third Voice, though. New services, each with unique features, have carried on. Diigo A must have for researchers Diigo is a research tool that lets you share bookmarks and annotations on web pages using a browser plugin or bookmarklet. Notes are anchored to highlighted text and bookmarks save a cached copy of the site. Diigo will also let you save to multiple other bookmarking services (all the big ones) and email your annotated pages to friends who don’t have the plugin. We covered Diigo earlier. Diigo has some advanced search functionality built in as well. With Diigo, you can search for the highlighted words on the web with any of four search engines, social bookmarking systems, on blogs, within the current site, amongst inbound links, and seven different content verticals (TV, stock sites, etc.). Diigo also lets you post links to your blog through posts, or a “linkroll” widget listing your most recent annotations. Fleck Bare bones Fleck is the most basic of the annotation services, letting you simply post public or private text notes on a page. Notes can be posted by using a browser plugin or by ajax when Fleck feeds web pages through its servers and adds the necessary annotation code. Permalinks to annotated pages can be emailed to friends and posted to blogs. We covered their launch previously and expect the company to be rolling out more features. ShiftSpace Have your way with any webpage ShiftSpace is an opensource browser plugin (FF only) being developed by NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program and is pretty close to internet graffiti. The plugin allows their users to annotate and remix a website saving it as a communally editable alternate version revealed in your browser by pressing Shift + Space. ShiftSpace allows users to leave notes, highlight text, change images, and edit the page source. It kind of reminds me of the web page analysis plugin Firebug, which allows you to carry out live edits of any web page. For web surfers with the plugin, modified pages are marked with a small ShiftSpace icon (ยง) in the bottom left → Read More
Seattle-based Trailfire just launched. It’s a combination of a social bookmarking service (such as del.icio.us) and a social web page annotation tool (see our coverage of the yet-to-launch Stickis). Basically, your comments and annotations are published on both your personal Trailfire page as well as on the website itself, for viewing by you and others with the Trailfire extension. To use Trailfire, download and install the extension (available for Firefox and IE). This will add two buttons and a menu bar item. Use the buttons to open and close the Trailfire sidebar, and to mark a page (see screenshot). When a page is marked, a popup appears where you enter a trail name, a title and a description. When you mark other pages using the same “trail name”, they are grouped together. marks can be set to public or private, and users can choose to view just their own, or everyone’s, annotations on a website. Their product roadmap calls for the addition of social networking features like adding friends and having the ability to set group-based viewing permissions. Annotated pages can also be shared with others, even if they don’t have the extension installed. Trailfire serves the page through their proxy server and adds the appropriate code for the annotation. More information about Trailfire is on their About page here. Companies continue to tweak the del.icio.us model of social bookmarking in an attempt to find the right mix of features and usability to appeal to a mass market crowd. I like the ability to bookmark and annotate a page in a single action – others may like Trailfire, too. Trailfire was founded by CEO John O’Halloran and CTO Pat Ferrel. They closed a $2 million venture round from Voyager Capital and individual angel investors. → Read More
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