One of the most exciting things (to me) about Mozilla's Ubiquity is the ability to annotate pages directly in the browser. Really. There is not much there in the 0.1 release to make the feature useful or justify my enthusiasm, but the fact that it saves all my annotations in a browser storage area (at least temporarily) and includes sharing functions already makes it dangerously close to a new variant of social media.

Assuming that Ubiquity incorporates features to: a) add annotation elements to a page, b) stores annotations locally, c) lets me organize & collect annotated pages, and d) above all provides an easy way to share annotations socially, it seems like it could become my new bicycle! It would be:

• a standard XHTML container that works everywhere, on/offline
• a place to stash pages rather than remembering links
• a notebook with bits and pieces of other pages
• host an annotated page instead of drawing on a screenshot
• add video/images/media to a page, make snarky comments on it, and send it around
• make 2 or 3 pages into one page
• make a page into a wiki, an exquisite corpse, etc. etc.

And some cumbersome scenarios become really easy:

• I can email a web page that has a message, a highlighted portion, and a link to the original page, as an attachment that needs no internet connection.
• I can email a map that has text pointing to a place on the map
• I can choose and send 12 books for preschoolers from amazon (with titles, authors, thumbnail, price, and link) via an email
• I can turn the NL east division part of the MLB standings into a widget that appears on my blog, with the erratic Mets highlighted and have it update as they surge, then collapse again.

(I know there are ways to do all these things now via other services and tools. But most of them require a good chunk of time, an account on something, etc. The thing that will make web pages into a medium for sharing stuff (instead of just a url) is making it easy, three-four clicks, simple, etc.)

I love all the other features of Ubiquity (I'm an old Quicksilver user). And there are plenty of no so great aspects of this. But I think this part of Ubiquity has the most potential to make sharing things on the web a whole order of magnitude easier, in a way that no bookmarklet, plug-in, greasemonkey script, or single-purpose site could.

Posted by ben on August 28, 2008 11:40 PM | Permalink

Assuming that Ubiquity incorporates features to: a) add annotation elements to a page, b) stores annotations locally, c) lets me organize & collect annotated pages, and d) above all provides an easy way to share annotations socially, it seems like it could become my new bicycle! It would be:

• a standard XHTML container that works everywhere, on/offline
• a place to stash pages rather than remembering links
• a notebook with bits and pieces of other pages
• host an annotated page instead of drawing on a screenshot
• add video/images/media to a page, make snarky comments on it, and send it around
• make 2 or 3 pages into one page
• make a page into a wiki, an exquisite corpse, etc. etc.

And some cumbersome scenarios become really easy:

• I can email a web page that has a message, a highlighted portion, and a link to the original page, as an attachment that needs no internet connection.
• I can email a map that has text pointing to a place on the map
• I can choose and send 12 books for preschoolers from amazon (with titles, authors, thumbnail, price, and link) via an email
• I can turn the NL east division part of the MLB standings into a widget that appears on my blog, with the erratic Mets highlighted and have it update as they surge, then collapse again.

(I know there are ways to do all these things now via other services and tools. But most of them require a good chunk of time, an account on something, etc. The thing that will make web pages into a medium for sharing stuff (instead of just a url) is making it easy, three-four clicks, simple, etc.)

I love all the other features of Ubiquity (I'm an old Quicksilver user). And there are plenty of no so great aspects of this. But I think this part of Ubiquity has the most potential to make sharing things on the web a whole order of magnitude easier, in a way that no bookmarklet, plug-in, greasemonkey script, or single-purpose site could.