Trailfire: More-evolved Web stickies

Trailfire, like the recently-launched ActiveWeave Stickis, lets you attach notes that other people can see to Web pages, and then link your notes together in a trail, like a old-fashioned Web ring. The product has been out since August, but at Demo 07 the company will show how it has evolved its product in a few smart ways.

A Trailfire pop-up on an old Wired News story.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Users can now leave comments on annotations, making them nice jumping-off points for focused discussions. Also, each "trail" gets its own Web page as a "trailhead." That's so Google will pick up the trails and index them.

Anyone can read Trailfire notes and follow trails without a browser add-on. You need the the Trailfire software to create trails, though.

I like the Trailfire (and Stickis) concept, and this one is nicely executed. Web annotation is an interesting form of hypertext (CEO John O'Halloran even dropped the obligatory Memex reference when he demonstrated it for me). I'm not sure the world is ready for yet another way to navigate the Web, but for particular uses--leading people on tours of various Web sites, mostly--Trailfire looks very handy. Follow my brief Web sticky note trail for a real-world example.

See also: Squidoo, YooNo, Diigo.

[yaakovsash]

100% web-based annotation tool

JumpKnowledge located at http://info.jkn.com is a new annotation tool which builds upon our previous successful email web page tool.

Some advantages that JumpKnowledge has over a tool such as Trailfire:
1. Fully web-based. All you need is a browser with JavaScript to create annotations. (To read annotations, you don't even need JavaScript)
2. Comments are inserted "in vivo" (between the words), so nothing of the original page is obscured and comments can be read in context. This means the full page can be printed for offline reading.
3. Easy emailing, bookmarking, and linking to blogs.

We just launched at the beginning of the year and already have blogs using JumpKnowledge to annotate news stories.

These are from delawarewatch.blogspot.com

http://jkn.com/View?j=769689.822373765400
http://jkn.com/View?j=769415.711601110177
http://jkn.com/View?j=768238.596599802649

And here is my take on Third Voice:
http://jkn.com/View?j=769749.238267476265

Full disclosure: I am a founder of JumpKnowledge