

AnnotateIt and Annotator: a new mode of communication on the web - nickstenning
http://blog.okfn.org/2012/04/03/annotateit-and-annotator/

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quinndupont
I've been trying it out for a few minutes, and there's plenty of room for
improvement. 1) I cannot edit a previously highlighted notation (it just shows
me the content) 2) My notations do not show up in my Account (->recent
notations). Is there maybe just a lag? Is there going to be a central place to
organize/manage all notations? Perhaps notations can be combined with catching
the URL (a sort of fast bookmarking service, since the data is already there).

I'll be looking forward to see how it develops.

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PaulHoule
I have to admit that I'm pretty skeptical.

People have been talking about web annotators since 1994 and we haven't seen
one hit the mainstream yet.

Now, "online bookmarking" was one of those things that failed in 1998 and
everybody knew it didn't work until delicio.us proved that it did, but to do
so they've got to find the "missing link" that other people didn't find.

~~~
nickstenning
Just a brief note to say I totally agree! There's a long list of people who've
built similar things and failed.

There are two really tough problems in web annotation: 1) changing content and
2) reputation. I freely confess that Annotator/AnnotateIt address neither of
these major issues satisfactorily, but work is already underway on problem 1
(assisted greatly by <http://mementoweb.org>), and we're working closely with
<http://hypothes.is/> who have assembled the world's experts to attack problem
2.

In short, we're aware of the history, but we think this is an idea whose time
has come.

~~~
jerf
No, the two largest problems are the 1. The boil-the-ocean nature of the
problem of getting anything like a critical mass going when your ocean is the
size of the entire web, and then if you do 2. you will piss off a lot of
websites, the only reason you haven't seen this is that none of them have had
enough success to rise to that threshold since Third Voice, and relatedly,
Microsoft's Smart Tags. The merely technical problems are quite boring in
comparison. Changing content is probably barely in your top five and
"reputation" definitely isn't.

~~~
nickstenning
I'm not so sure. I don't think success (whatever that is) depends on a
critical mass. In particular, while AnnotateIt has a bookmarklet (and soon
browser plugin) use case, it's also possible for it to be useful to individual
sites who can use AnnotateIt in the same way that they currently use Disqus.

To address your second point --- well, yes, that's kind of the point. Not to
piss people off, of course, but to provide a commentary layer that doesn't
necessarily _require_ the consent of the site owners. I don't think that
should be seen as a downside of the software.

~~~
jerf
"Not to piss people off, of course, but to provide a commentary layer that
doesn't necessarily require the consent of the site owners."

You mean like Hacker News, this very site we're conversing on?

Another problem in your top five is precisely that nobody thinks there's some
sort of dearth of places to discuss things without the "consent" of the site
owners. Third Voice at least preceded even Slashdot as a big site, let alone
everything else, and they could make the argument with some faint trace of
plausibility, but now the solution that should have won, did: There's all
sorts of aggregators, forums, and more to the real point, _communities_
everywhere. Want another one? Five minutes on any of dozens of free blog
sites, free forum sites, free wiki sites, free aggregator sites, bam, another
community. There is no missing commentary layer out of the control of the main
site, the web has long since created it, refined it, and even moved through
several generations of them.

This is a solution searching for a problem, which is a major part of the
reason none of these attempts have ever reached critical mass.

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jreposa
One quick note: I tried to select something on this page and nothing would
happen. I finally figured out that I had to sign up for a service first.

Have you considered creating a bit of javascript that any site can embed on
their site that would allow a visitor to annotate? This could be a really
powerful channel for getting sign ups. Especially if you partner with some
quality sites.

Also, have you considered making it anonymous to start like github:gist? It
would be great to test it out without making a commitment of signing up. I.e.,
"Do I really have to sign up for something, before I even know if it will
provide value to me?"

~~~
nickstenning
"Have you considered creating a bit of javascript that any site can embed on
their site that would allow a visitor to annotate?"

Yes, we have. It's there on the front page if you scroll down!
<http://annotateit.org/#develop>

"Also, have you considered making it anonymous to start like github:gist?"

Well, you can certainly try out Annotator using the demo at
<http://okfnlabs.org/annotator/demo/>

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mdwrigh2
This reminds me a lot of Google Sidewiki [1]

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki>

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thisischris
New mode? Like Sidewiki, Reframeit, Highlighter, etc? If I'm missing something
that makes this any different I would appreciate it if someone could point it
out.

~~~
nickstenning
We freely admit that there have been many people who've tried to do this, but,
to answer your question: Annotator is more granular than Sidewiki (you
annotate specific passages within the page), and unlike Reframeit and
Highlighter works across the web rather with no requirement for the developers
of those sites to have enabled it.

~~~
newobj
Okay, then it sounds like DotSpots :)

