Webnotes: Notating the internet

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I first heard about WebNotes from a blog I frequently read, and found it incredibly useful ever since. To quickly did it become my main means of highlighting links, taking notes, and even sharing interesting stuff with people (to the dismay of their inboxes).

To put it simple, WebNotes lets you take notes on web pages. By this, I literally mean on web pages. WebNotes allows you to highlight text on pages in several different colors, and add sticky notes to whatever area of the page you want. Its rather addicting, actually, and it makes things like reviewing online course notes incredibly easy. To get a feel for what it looks like, click here to visit their website, and then click the big “DEMO” icon on the right side of the page. Looks good, doesnt it?

Downloading webnoter is open to the public, but you need a beta account to log into their service (I might have invites coming soon… I’m in the process of talking to the website’s owner). It comes in two flavors: A toolbar for Firefox 2+ or Internet explorer 6/7, and a bookmarklet that works, well, pretty much with anythi

ng. The toolbar integrates better into your browser (for example, you can drag and drop stuff around, etc.) while the bookmarklet is more compatable AND lightweight (in otherwords, it takes up a bit less processing power).

All your notes are organized by site in an organizer sidebar added to your browser (if you have the toolbar) or in a dropdown window (if you have the annotater widget). All the notes on a webpage are grouped together, and these groupings can be arranged in a folder (or folders if you so please). 

You can share your notes via email or via a direct link (or permalink, for those who are more technologically literate

 than others). The cool thing is that people don’t NEED a webnotes account to view notes. I noted up a page of mine to try it out: 

http://share.webnotes.net/?id=224f8db3fff540618b123baeff047b81

Click the link, and check it out. I mean, come on. Even Google makes you sign up before messing with their stuff. Keep it up, Webnoter.

In all, I’m thoroughly impressed. The only thing that bothers me is that sometimes their service takes to long to respond, and the toolbar on my end times out (meaning you have to reload the toolbar before it will work), but I’m sure thats temporary, seeing as Webnoter is still in private beta. 

Check back here in a bit, and I’ll tell you if I can get beta keys to anyone.