annotation

Do Kindles (and other e-readers) need better ways to annotate?

An interesting report from Princeton University regarding its pilot program to test Kindle DX units in an academic environment has revealed something notable: namely, that Kindles still feel awkward to students currently in college. Feedback from some students complained about the Kindle's annotation system being "too slow" to keep up with the thinking of a reader who wants to effortlessly mark up text. Others called the entire Kindle device "a poor excuse for an academic tool."

This matches a fear I've had since using my iPhone as a makeshift mini-Kindle, replacing my own reading of paper books for recreation and research: while I enjoy the portability and capacity that e-readers provide, their lack of tangible material creates a helpless feeling for those who enjoy note-taking, highlighting, or otherwise interacting with their books. Unlike my iPhone, however, the Kindle DX was intended to be a savior for universities, an educational aid to rival the old textbook industry. According to this first wave of Princeton feedback, however, it still has a long way to go.

Rather than focus on size or screens, maybe the real holy grail for e-readers of the future lies in finding ways to make digital text as easy to interact with as possible. Apple, we hope you're listening, because if the doorway's open for you to take over the e-reader industry with your magazine-redefining tablet, this might be the best path to true success.… Read more

Powerful annotation program

PDF Annotator is a powerful program that allows users to make a variety of different kinds of notes on PDF documents. The program's many features and intuitive interface make it a great choice. We wish we'd had it when we were in grad school!

The program's interface will be familiar to users of Microsoft Office products. Nearly all of PDF Annotator's features are accessed through the program's customizable toolbars. Although it may not be immediately obvious what all the little buttons do, a few minutes of playing around with the program makes most functions clear. … Read more

For power Web users

We've been impressed with Diigo, a content sharing and bookmarking tool. It pulls double duty as a way to clip things from the Web, as well as share them with others. What makes the service really interesting is that you can use it to grab entire Web pages, and make annotations right on top of the content. Then you can share it with others, or view it even when the source site is no longer there, like a personal archive.

The service has a plug-in that lets you clip and save text from Web pages, or just page URLs … Read more

Web annotation tool Webnotes gets pro flavor

Webnotes, a service that lets you highlight and add floating sticky notes on top of live Web pages, now has a pro version. For $9.99 a month, users get the option to mark up not just normal Web pages, but PDFs too.

Some competing annotation services like Diigo and SharedCopy do not offer the capability to make annotations or leave highlights on PDFs, so this is a big deal for students and business users who are likely to run into them frequently while doing research.

If you come across a PDF you want to mark up, Webnotes can convert … Read more

Overlay.tv gets an API, labs sandbox

Overlay.tv, a service that lets users add links, images, and even other videos on top of Web video has a new API for developers to build applications on top of its technology. The company has also put out a new labs page where developers can promote their applications and see what others have built.

One of the early stars of the bunch is a special YouTube uploader built using Adobe AIR. It lets you upload videos from your desktop without having to use YouTube's Web-based uploader. Once a file is up and hosted on YouTube you can then … Read more

YouTube gets closed captioning support

In a move to make videos easier to understand without volume or for the hard of hearing, YouTube has given users the option of embedding closed captions that show up as semitransparent overlays. Caption files that have text dialogue synced up to the proper timestamps can be uploaded during the time of upload or afterwards, and YouTube has provided multiple language support to let viewers swap between different languages of a single video without having to leave playback.

Videos with closed captioning have it as an option in the lower right-hand corner menu; a part of the user interface that … Read more

Google acquires Omnisio for video annotations

Apparently Google concluded it could use a little help with its own YouTube annotation technology:the company said Wednesday it's acquired Omnisio, a start-up that lets people add annotations to video.

Google announced the acquisition on its YouTube blog Wednesday but didn't disclose terms.

"We're big fans of anything that lets people interact with online video and gives the YouTube community the chance to express themselves in creative ways," Google's YouTube team said. "The Omnisio team has tremendous technical expertise when it comes to advanced video tools and having this kind of talent … Read more

YouTube adds annotation tool for video creators only

Bugged by the overlay ads popping up on some YouTube videos? The purity of those home videos is about to get a little more cluttered with the inclusion of video annotations.

Wednesday morning the video-hosting company rolled out its own tool for adding text bubbles, links, and call-outs to uploaded videos. The feature is available as part of its TestTube service, which showcases some of the technologies the company is testing, but is not ready to unleash on the general YouTube populace.

Unlike some other Web video annotation services, you can only add them to a video if you're … Read more

Give documents dynamic sticky notes with A.nnotate

This afternoon I've been playing with a real fun annotation tool (at least fun compared with Microsoft Word). It's called A.nnotate, and it's one of the simplest tools I've come across, letting you add small (or very large) notes, corrections, or scribblings that float on top of the document like little widgets.

By default the notes are anchored to where they've been put on the document, but you can simply move them about, or sort them on a one-page listing that will organize them by time or who wrote them.

Power users will get … Read more

SimpleBucket hosts photos, lets you add sweet interactive notes

Looks like I've found a partial replacement for my beloved dead-pooled photo annotation tool 2view. Check out SimpleBucket, an aptly named photo host that lets you upload and share up to five photographs at a time, and let others mark them up with onscreen notes. It's one of my favorite features in Flickr, and I'm glad to see it beginning to reach elsewhere.

Adding notes works just as it does on Flickr, although there's a nice option to toggle them off entirely, which means the accidental mouse over won't make them appear (which can be … Read more