thanks for adding me as a contact on Ma.gnolia - I feel a lot less lonely there now!

Do you get the feeling that something that Ma.gnolia is missing is the conversation that goes on in, say, Flickr? I know there’s a menu item called ‘messages’ but I haven’t been able to figure out how to message anyone yet. And I think i would be great to be able to have a bit of a discussion around the relative merits of different links etc.

What do you think?

Basically Diigo allows you to add highlights and sticky notes, in situ, on any web page you read. Think of a giant transparency overlaying on top of all the web pages. You can write on the transparency as you wish, as private notes or public comments. And you can read public comments on the transparency left by other readers of the same page, and hear their “two cents” and interact with them. So in addition to being a great personal tool, it has a significant social component. Thus, the service is referred to as Social Annotation.

Several powerful features are combined in Diigo toolbar to make it a real “power extension”:

* A great web annotation tool - adding highlights and sticky notes on any web page, anywhere.
* A fully-customizable search tool - like google’s toolbar, but fully customizable, so you can add any other specialty searches.
* Content selection menu makes it extremely convenient to interact with every word on a web page - highlight, search, look up - whatever you want!
* Tagging your bookmarks, comments and clippings, and share them as your bookmark lists or publish as blogs
* Full-text search of your bookmarks!
* Plus, much more forthcoming…

Diigo is still under closed beta. I would like to invite you to try it out. We’d love to have your participation and feedback. Thanks.

Maggie

I noted in my response to Mike Reining’s comment above that the Blinklist interface was a little busy for my liking, and he emailed asking what specifically I didn’t like. It’s nice to be asked (I’m flattered to have Todd Sieling commenting here too); in response, I think one of the most appealing aspects of Ma.gnolia is the simplicity of the interface (no icons, no diagonal lines in the search box, etc.). Look at the screenshots. My page on Blinklist shows my imported bookmarks (at the moment I have 705) and my tag cloud.

A different feel than Ma.gnolia; that screenshot shows it is easy being green. And not to wave my lighter around (the Dead song “Sugar Magnolia” was the inspiration for app’s name), but I’ll stay for the atmosphere. To call the green scheme a little more immersive might be dangerous as social bookmarking tools aren’t games; I’m just not convinced that the whitespace + basic 80s neon palette in Flickr and del.icio.us appeals to more than webgeeks. The better to see the eyecandy with, you say? Maybe. Pretend it’s your first time logging in to Flickr after creating an account. This is what you see:

(yawn.)