Comments on Anatomy of a Webapp: TechCrunch covers web annotations

I've been following your blog since the TechCrunch...

2007-04-18T16:45:00.000-07:00

I've been following your blog since the TechCrunch article. Good to see innovative thinking in this area. A couple of things:

1. Are you guys familiar with XLink/XPointer? This came up as a W3C Recommendation in 2001 and hasn't moved since. See http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/ for details and potential ideas.

2. Your assertion that an annotation cannot stand on its own is limiting. There are at least a couple of cases where they can, and where they provide great value.
(a) Annotating a fragment of a web page with personal comments - think of this as Personal Enriched Bookmarks, e.g. a fragment of source code in a listing.
(b) Two-way communication where user A annotates something of interest to user B (annotation = select the object of the annotation + add comments pertaining to the selected object) and sends the marked-up page to user B. The incumbent solution is for users to paste a URL into e-mail and add comments, which is clunky.

If you check out my little project at dashnote.com, you can see one particular implementation. And if you're really bored you can read the blog for further rationale.

Ranjit
ranjit@dashnote.com -- happy to discuss this further by e-mail

Sure, Identifier/Resource/Representation has absol...

2007-04-13T18:39:00.000-07:00

Sure, Identifier/Resource/Representation has absolutely zero creativity. But try using neologies when talking to an engineer. You'll get buried.

Whoever ends up being the big player of this field - and I think everyone reading this knows it will happen - they'll be in the position to create a vocabulary from scratch.

I would take a look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Annotation

It's a graveyard. Maybe you should include in your proposal why your app will be more successful than the handfuls of others.

Maybe it will be obvious just from a description of Artoo.

Oh yeah, holler if you're going to be in SF for Web2.0.

Thanks johnny cakes. In the first draft of my prop...

2007-04-13T08:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks johnny cakes. In the first draft of my proposal (which I'll post later) I am not consisent between identifying URIs and resources, but I probably should be. Resource is just such a technical name and I don't want to scare off more people than I need to.

Good luck talking to investors, by the way.

Jason,In describing the Overlay Web to investors a...

2007-04-12T22:32:00.000-07:00

Jason,

In describing the Overlay Web to investors and partners, it's helped to describe the following three concepts:

Indicator/URI - the address. A Myspace profile. An RSS document or widget location.

Resource - The "thing" itself. The FLV contained in the embedded Youtube player. The feed data inside the JSON feed.

Representation - How your browser depicts the resource - the "version".

The most important question is how to reach critical mass.

Or maybe, not.

Johnny Cakes

(thejohnnycakes Shift-2 gmail.com)

Hi Jason, I'm the founder of Fleck and read your c...

2007-04-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

Hi Jason, I'm the founder of Fleck and read your comment and critique with great interest. It seems we have the same goals and dreams and I hope one of us will succeed in adding real annotation to the web. Good luck and keep in touch!