Web Annotation

The Concept

"Annotations are a broadly useful mechanism that can support a number of document and database management applications":

provide a trace of use
third party commentary
information sharing
information filtering
semantic labeling of document content
enhanced search

"But it continues to be hard to publish to the web. If better tools are provided to information consumers then readers will be able to add commentary, make new connections, interpret content, and otherwise promote an accretion of both structure and content on the web. This process will add new semantics to the web and this new information will be the source for new approaches to searching and filtering of information." 6jan2011

from http://www.paulperry.net/notes/annotations.asp

"The solution to our problem is the instantiation of an annotation tool that can be used to make private, public, or shared annotations, or notes, on already existing Web pages. Annotation systems are meant to give electronic documents some of the same note-taking possibilities as paper documents. There are varying beliefs of what note-taking capabilities should be offered in an annotation system. Readers often take notes in the margin of a page or on a separate page. Another common form of annotation is underlining, highlighting, circling text or writing between lines. A different type of annotation is one meant to be shared with other readers, such as discussion-like comments or questions. [Ovsiannikov 1998]"

from http://www.math.grin.edu/~rebelsky/Blazers/Annotations/Summer1999/Papers/survey_paper.html

Annotations and Semantic Web

The Web community has been exploring a variety of strategies for building Annotation systems for Web content. Onee such system is the recent RDF-based Annotation systems which has shown potential and is offered via the Semantic Web. "For the Web to reach its full potential, it must evolve into a Semantic Web, providing a universally accessible platform that allows data to be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people. The 'Semantic Web' is a recent initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), with the goal of extending the current Web to facilitate Web automation, universally accessible content, and the 'Web of Trust'. However,if the semantic web is going to be adopted and assimilated a clear migration path from present technologies to new ones is required."

from http://www.bitd.clrc.ac.uk/Activity/SWAD-Europe+1147

and http://www.bitd.clrc.ac.uk/Activity/SWAD-Europe+1132

Local Personal Storage of Web and other documents with Accompanying Annotation and Documentation.

"Web annotation systems are not new and their weaknesses have been presented in [7]. Most of them were preliminary designed so that everyone can leave comments on the Web. Their design thus focused mainly on providing a platform/browser independent solution and a remote server to store annotations. These design choices are not the same when designing a personal annotation system. When browsing the Internet, users should be able to quickly highlight texts, like they do on paper. This is in contrast to a remote server approach where delays can appear and where the system forces the browser to reload the entire document in order to display the new annotation. Furthermore, the server rises important privacy issues. We think that annotations should be stored locally, still allowing users to send them by email or publish them on their Web page like they do with bookmarks."

from http://www9.org/final-posters/poster46.html

One such annotation system which in addition to allowing the storage and annotation of WebPages? by capture methods, allows side-by-side documentation with scanned hand notes, annotations on virtual printouts and other methodologies is the schema known as PaperPorting.

The Annotea concept allows local (private) annotation storage, but the feature seems implemented only in AmayaBrowser, which is the only implementation to also natively support Annotea. The Amaya model is that private localhost-stored annotations are moved to a selected public server when the user wishes to share them. Viewing can interleave annotations from several servers, including the local store.

Annotea -- A Shared Web Annotation System

"From a general viewpoint, annotations can be considered as metadata: they associate remarks to existing documents. ... it allows us to concentrate on the general details of the infrastructure without getting lose with the more specific details of the application."

from http://www.www10.org/cdrom/papers/pdf/p488.pdf

Web annotation services

PageSeeder (http://www.weborganic.com/distributed_doc.html)
Gibeo (http://gibeo.net/) - no plugins/Java required, has a powerful set of tools and open developer access.
Annotateit (http://www.annotateit.org) - an open source solution with a front-end (https://github.com/okfn/annotator) in JavaScript/CoffeeScripit?, extensible with plugins and back-end options (https://github.com/okfn/annotator-store Python/Flask/Couchdb or SQL or ElasticSearch?) and a wordpress plugin (https://github.com/okfn/annotator-wordpress ) . No special client required (JavaScript/jQuery/HTML).
WikalongExtension - MozillaBrowser plugin
Annotation for Moodle (http://www.geof.net/code/annotation/) - highlight text and add notes in the margin. Open source for integration with web apps. No special client.
Warichu (http://www.warichu.com/display/5c079bc57545391fcd6e9f116556dfef/) - extensible annotation system (through open API.) Currently has sticky notes and page highlighting, and potential for more.. Here's an annotated version of this page too :) http://www.warichu.com/display/092792d75f308a5119485a3ad752231e/
- Besides bringing my browser to its knees, this link showed the older version of the page. Perhaps it is not the ideal annotator for wiki pages.

Former annotation services

AlexaDotCom http://www.alexa.com - seems to have been transformed into a special purpose shopping navigation tool, since taken over by AmazonDotCom?.
CritLink (defunct as of 2003)
ThirdVoice (As of April 2, 2001, no longer supported the consumer version of the search and annotation tools)
Zezame (http://www.zezame.com/) - not a service but a server you can install locally. No special client required (JavaScript/HTML). Zezame, Inc. has ceased operations, but their home page is (as of 6Jan2011) still accessible.

User defined Twin Pages: http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WebAnnotation

CategoryMetaWiki CategoryExternalLink CategoryWebAnnotation CategorySemanticWeb