Diigo is a site which provides social annotation and social bookmarking, which is basically a cross between Clipmarks and del.icio.us.
Diigo operates through a toolbar, which is available for Firefox, Flock and Internet Explorer. Also, you can run through a bookmarklet for Firefox or Internet Explorer. The bookmarklet is a very interesting use of AJAX, as it allows you to annotate (through highlighting) and bookmark any page without (visually) actually leaving it.
Annotating something through the toolbar is a simple case of selecting text, waiting for a menu to pop up and pressing ‘Highlight’. When you have annotated text, it is underlined with dashes, you can then add a sticky note to the selected text, and choose whether or not if you wish to share that sticky with other users. Your annotations are saved onto Diigo’s website, which allows you to access them on pretty much Internet-connected PC. You can also see who else has annotations on that page.
Diigo also shares many of del.icio.us’ features. You can bookmark a page through the toolbar or bookmarklet, you specify the page with a title, tags and description. You can also choose whether to make it private or public.
Diigo seems to have too many features. For example, when you select text to highlight it, it also gives you the options to search for it. This reminds me a bit of Hyperwords, but in my opinion a feature like that should be reserved for a separate extension, instead of getting integrated with Diigo. Also, Diigo allows you to blog, which is a nifty feature in all fairness - but not highly enough promoted. Another interesting feature is that you can configure it to bookmark to sites like del.icio.us when you bookmark with Diigo.
Diigo is still in a private beta, but I have 20 invites. So, if you’d like to check it out first hand, drop me a comment.
Tags: ajax, social bookmarking, bookmarking, bookmarks, web2.0, web 2.0, web2, web 2, social networking, clipmarks, del.icio.us, delicious
Hi, Joe,
Thanks for the coverage. In view of Diigo’s highlight & Sticky Note, right on the webpages, in situ, I propose that a more appropriate title is probably
Diigo: A bit of Clipmarks and a bit of del.icio.us and More.
Regarding whether there are too many features, our philosophy is that we will not integrate a feature unless it provides extra advantage or convenience.
So for example, the content selection menu is provided because it makes highlighting extremely easy (of course you can turn it off). Once the menu is there, things like “copy without format” are easily added, but can mean a great deal to some users. Related to this, I quote one user:
“The Unique Content Selection has become my favorite feature. The “copy without format” feature alone has saved me a great deal of trouble. Previously, when inserting quoted material into my blog from another web site, I would have to copy the text then dump it into Notepad to lose the formating, then copy and paste the text again into Wordpress. Likewise, it makes researching a topic much less painless when I can simply highlight the text and perform the search in one fell swoop, without having to copy & paste into the search bar.”
Additional user comments can be found here
http://forum.diigo.com/topic/28#new
and here:
http://www.diigo.com/help/testimonials
Very Useful Web 2.0 app. I would rate it 10 / 10
I don’t use any of this stuff, but I like it.
This week’s guest editor: Joe Anderson…
While Adam’s on vacation this week, Lifehacker reader Joe Anderson (aka computerjoe) will be contributing posts to the site this week. A self-described “non-tea-drinking British nerd,” Wikipedian extraordinaire Joe blogs about technology at Webby’s…
Sorry - I didn’t know you had written this; I didn’t mean to copy you. LOL! I linked to you from my post now.
you’re going to post at LifeHacker? way cool!
Hi - If you still have diigo invitations to spare, I would like one. I use Google’s mail service and my id is stacijon.
Thanks! And Great Blog by the way.
I found your blog from a post on Sponit.com. It looks like something I should be subscribing to! Congrats on the Lifehacker bit. That’s also an awesome site.
If you have any more of those Diigo invites to give away I’d love to have one. Thanks much and I’m looking forward to keeping up with this site.
[...] I’m a fan of Clipmarks, which is a site which basically allows you to take clippings of text and pictures of websites through browser extensions. The service is somewhat similar to Google Notebook and Diigo, both of which were released [well] after Clipmarks. Clipmarks has various social functions, such as the ability to share, describe, tag, comment and POP clippings. [...]
Nice app, eager to try it!!!
Hi.
Thanks for mentioning Hyperwords™!
A quick update;
We just released version 1.5 which adds a powerful Toolbar function.
This new version also addresses the issue of the menu popping up to frequently (which could make it a little annoying) by adding new Preferences so you can specify exactly how it should work.
In a month’s time version 2.0 will be launched, featuring full user customizability, as well as Microsoft Internet Explorer support.
Get this new version as well as more information at http://www.hyperwords.net
1.5 is borne out of user feedback and we’d be very grateful for any further thoughts and perspectives or questions. Please contact me via email ‘frode ‘at’ hyperwords.net’.
Frode Hegland
Project Director
The Hyperwords Company
http://www.hyperwords.net
[...] While I’m a big fan of Clipmarks, I must admit I rarely use it. Clipmarks is a service which allows you to take clipping of web pages: it’s reviewed by me more in-depth here, here and over at Lifehacker. Their main competitors are Diigo and Google Notebook. [...]
[...] years ago, I reviewed a site called Diigo which was still in beta. Basically, it merged the ideas of social bookmarking, like del.icio.us, [...]