louisgray.com - Latest Comments in louisgray.com: WebNotes Makes Annotating the Web Easy

Re: louisgray.com: WebNotes Makes Annotating the Web Easy

sabr — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:27:53 -0000

I just signed up for the Web Notes service and will certainly be taking a look. I have currently settled on Diigo as my bookmarking/annotation service of choice. This is primarily because I want a service that does both well.

Web Notes looks interesting on the surface as a basic web annotation tool. It reminds me a lot of what Onfolio used to offer. Curious if anyone on the Web Notes team used to work with (or use) Onfolio?

Re: louisgray.com: WebNotes Makes Annotating the Web Easy

Ryan Damico, CEO, WebNotes — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:30:09 -0000

Wade,

We really appreciate Wade's comments on Mashable, Read Write Web, LouisGray.com, etc. At WebNotes, we have the utmost respect for Diigo and the social annotation tools they provide. They have a great product for consumers interested in social annotation and facilitate a wonderful intermediary service for those who wish to discuss articles and build communities around their annotations. We certainly wish them the best of luck as the endeavor to create greater value for their communities.

Before I begin my response to Wade's assertions, we should first realize that the annotation market is largely untapped. Web researchers make up far greater numbers than Diigo's 500k users, or the dwindling audiences of the other social annotation sites. A recent survey by Forbes and Gartner noted that over 60% of C-level executives got a majority of the information on which they base their decisions from the internet. Millions of researchers are currently surfing the web without a solution to fit their needs. Part of the problem is that they haven't yet found the right solution; the other part is that they haven't yet been educated about a better way to research. Here at WebNotes, we strongly believe that all annotation sites can greatly expand our respective market shares by increasing the education available to the public.

That said, we agree completely with Wade and believe that everyone should compare both Diigo and WebNotes. Use both and pick whichever one resonates with you. We are confident in our design choices and feel that there is most certainly value in simplicity, intuitive interfaces and ease of use. So how about it bloggers? Which do you prefer? Research analysts should do the same. Spread the word to your colleagues. Anyone who has ever needed to research online should view this as the perfect time to learn a better way to complete such a task.

Most of all, let us know what you like, what you need and what you hate. We are trying to make a product that is perfect for you and the louder you are, the better our products become.

Thanks for your help!
Ryan Damico

Re: louisgray.com: WebNotes Makes Annotating the Web Easy

Daniel J. Pritchett — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:54:19 -0000

Thanks a bunch for the insider's perspective, Wade! I hope we can get Ryan Damico of WebNotes in here for a counterpoint.

Re: louisgray.com: WebNotes Makes Annotating the Web Easy

Michael Fidler — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:17:18 -0000

Nice description of what appears to useful service. I've been experimenting with it for about an hour now, and I like what I see.

Re: louisgray.com: WebNotes Makes Annotating the Web Easy

Wade, CEO, Diigo — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:06:03 -0000

I think it would be fair to say that Diigo is the most popular and mature web annotation tool on the market today. With over half a million registered users, It has been continuously refined over the past three years.

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So it would be helpful to compare any new entrant in the space to Diigo. If webnotes is aiming at serious web surfers, then I must say that side-by-side comparisons would show that Diigo is a much more powerful (and mature) tool. For example, Diigo provides rich tagging capability as well as folders for better information organization, and group annotation for better collaboration. Diigo automatically caches the page so it is always available to you. Diigo allows you to search the full-text of your collections, or just within your highlights. Diigo allows you to easily extract your research findings or publish them to blogs .....

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One could argue that webnotes' is simpler because of less features. Well, if you want real productivity, I should like to argue that it just falls far short of what Diigo enables. In addition, Diigo's rich functionality has been designed with painstaking care so that if you will be completely comfortable just using a subset of the features to begin with. For tools that are really simple, I would say delicious and google notebooks are hard to beat.

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Diigo team continues to dedicate itself to make Diigo the best tool for research productivity and knowledge sharing. (In the meantime, other web annotation tools such as fleck, i-lighter, jump knowledge, trailfire, etc have essentially stopped development or simply shut-down, to the best of my knowledge. )

Re: louisgray.com: WebNotes Makes Annotating the Web Easy

Uri — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 04:31:41 -0000

Or simply, if you are using Google Reader, use that for organizing your notes. I prefer to have my stuff in one place, where I'm already keeping links and most of the information I have online. It's simpler and more effective. Plus, what tells if WebNotes will even survive?