5 ms·

Annotations are a actually great idea if they are all in cloud by default and attached with my social IDs. Then I can follow friends, family and people and view

by sytelus 12y ago

Annotations are a actually great idea if they are all in cloud by default and attached with my social IDs. Then I can follow friends, family and people and view their annotations on web pages as I surf the web. For example, I'm visiting a restaurant website and my friend already annotated with menu recommendation or better direction. The feature can turn every web page in to a wiki. That would be a killer feature that can get viral.

jules 12y ago
_why made something like that years ago, with an intentionally high barrier to entry because it required changing your HOSTS file.
MichaelGG 12y ago
MS actually did this already like 15 years ago. It may have been an Intranet-oriented thing. The end result was that users could add notes to pages. I think it died off with the rest of the Office-web thingies. Edit: It was Office 2000 that enabled this, called "Web Discussions". You had a "Discussion" button in IE[1]. Here's a paper talking about how useful it was: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/coet/annotations/cscw2000/paper.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/coet/a... 1: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751423.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751423.aspx
- frik 12y ago
  > Intranet-oriented thing It used the discussion feature of Microsoft Office Server aka SharePoint Portal Server. The history of SharePoint is very complex but interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20120419073951/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joelo/archive/2007/12/28/7-years-of-sharepoint-a-history-lesson.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20120419073951/http://blogs.msdn... , https://web.archive.org/web/20080303180618/http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/12/27/sharepoint-yes-we-ve-certainly-come-a-long-way-and-happy-new-year-to-you.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20080303180618/http://blogs.msdn... , https://web.archive.org/web/20120409232321/http://www.joiningdots.net/downloads/SharePoint_History.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20120409232321/http://www.joinin..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharePoint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharePoint , https://web.archive.org/web/20120519235139/http://www.seoconsultants.com/frontpage/history/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120519235139/http://www.seocon... , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage I remember an SP2003 installation with thousands of sub portal sites, hundreds of GB (blobs) stored in SQL server. What I really don't understand is the almost non-existing upgrade paths (between versions '01, '03, '07, '10, '13) and the URL-hell (IIS URL alias would solve that). Instead of Cairo-OS, WinFS, an improved Explorer shell & improved file server, nowadays SharePoint fulfill various enterprise needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system) , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
minthd 12y ago
But in order for annotation to become a thing, don't they need to be integrated into most browsers ? And the annotation extension that supports all browsers will win once this becomes popular ?
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  I tried creating 'Peanut Gallery' about a decade ago. The main issues then were trying to figure out the best interface that could work across browsers. I also didn't know how to scale the solution up to allow it to work on every web page for every users. Also, I anticipated that there would be lots of privacy concerns as you'd basically be collecting every web page a user went to.
  - kenshaw 12y ago
    1. Scaling this would be a combination of selecting the right data store that would scale linearly on performance as well as on storage costs. There are many. 2. If you were concerned about privacy issues by exposing URLs, you would simply do the following: a) pass URLs only as hashes of the original text, b) have a policy of only storing URLs if they contained annotations This is actually fairly trivial to do right.
    - jsprogrammer 12y ago
      1. What data store can scale linearly on performance and storage (with no bounds)? I'm not sure it exists (or is even possible). We decided on horizontal partitioning with hashed URLs/IPs as the key. 2. We also wanted to provide real-time stats for pages, sites, and hosts. This requires IDing the user and page in a reversible way. Even if it's not reversible, you could easily use a rainbow table to reverse, especially with the limited IPv4 namespace. However, it seems that such URL collection isn't too big of a concern among the general population. You also have to maintain plugins or extensions across all the major browsers, which is a pain. This was a project I was working on before completing a CS degree and/or getting exposure to some of the solutions that could be used. I'd be interested in exploring it again, but I have a few more interesting projects on the stack for now.
Retra 12y ago
If it's done right, it could be useful. Done wrong, it'd just be a massive store for cartoon penises. It also sounds like the kind of thing some would want to use to overlay their own advertisements onto other people's websites...
lallysingh 12y ago
What happens when the page changes?
pinaceae 12y ago
relies on friends and family sharing similar interests, etc. also same geo space. hereby super limited in reality. and if it's people then you just invented comments. which are toxic most of the time. also invented (rap)genius. congrats, millions of funding for you.
fiatjaf 12y ago
Google Sidewiki? http://getpoint.co http://getpoint.co? http://hypothes.is/ http://hypothes.is/

by sytelus 12y ago

jules 12y ago

_why made something like that years ago, with an intentionally high barrier to entry because it required changing your HOSTS file.

MichaelGG 12y ago

MS actually did this already like 15 years ago. It may have been an Intranet-oriented thing. The end result was that users could add notes to pages. I think it died off with the rest of the Office-web thingies. Edit: It was Office 2000 that enabled this, called "Web Discussions". You had a "Discussion" button in IE[1]. Here's a paper talking about how useful it was: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/coet/annotations/cscw2000/paper.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/coet/a... 1: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751423.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751423.aspx

frik 12y ago
> Intranet-oriented thing It used the discussion feature of Microsoft Office Server aka SharePoint Portal Server. The history of SharePoint is very complex but interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20120419073951/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joelo/archive/2007/12/28/7-years-of-sharepoint-a-history-lesson.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20120419073951/http://blogs.msdn... , https://web.archive.org/web/20080303180618/http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/12/27/sharepoint-yes-we-ve-certainly-come-a-long-way-and-happy-new-year-to-you.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20080303180618/http://blogs.msdn... , https://web.archive.org/web/20120409232321/http://www.joiningdots.net/downloads/SharePoint_History.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20120409232321/http://www.joinin..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharePoint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharePoint , https://web.archive.org/web/20120519235139/http://www.seoconsultants.com/frontpage/history/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120519235139/http://www.seocon... , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage I remember an SP2003 installation with thousands of sub portal sites, hundreds of GB (blobs) stored in SQL server. What I really don't understand is the almost non-existing upgrade paths (between versions '01, '03, '07, '10, '13) and the URL-hell (IIS URL alias would solve that). Instead of Cairo-OS, WinFS, an improved Explorer shell & improved file server, nowadays SharePoint fulfill various enterprise needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system) , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

minthd 12y ago

But in order for annotation to become a thing, don't they need to be integrated into most browsers ? And the annotation extension that supports all browsers will win once this becomes popular ?

jsprogrammer 12y ago
I tried creating 'Peanut Gallery' about a decade ago. The main issues then were trying to figure out the best interface that could work across browsers. I also didn't know how to scale the solution up to allow it to work on every web page for every users. Also, I anticipated that there would be lots of privacy concerns as you'd basically be collecting every web page a user went to.
- kenshaw 12y ago
  1. Scaling this would be a combination of selecting the right data store that would scale linearly on performance as well as on storage costs. There are many. 2. If you were concerned about privacy issues by exposing URLs, you would simply do the following: a) pass URLs only as hashes of the original text, b) have a policy of only storing URLs if they contained annotations This is actually fairly trivial to do right.
  - jsprogrammer 12y ago
    1. What data store can scale linearly on performance and storage (with no bounds)? I'm not sure it exists (or is even possible). We decided on horizontal partitioning with hashed URLs/IPs as the key. 2. We also wanted to provide real-time stats for pages, sites, and hosts. This requires IDing the user and page in a reversible way. Even if it's not reversible, you could easily use a rainbow table to reverse, especially with the limited IPv4 namespace. However, it seems that such URL collection isn't too big of a concern among the general population. You also have to maintain plugins or extensions across all the major browsers, which is a pain. This was a project I was working on before completing a CS degree and/or getting exposure to some of the solutions that could be used. I'd be interested in exploring it again, but I have a few more interesting projects on the stack for now.

Retra 12y ago

If it's done right, it could be useful. Done wrong, it'd just be a massive store for cartoon penises. It also sounds like the kind of thing some would want to use to overlay their own advertisements onto other people's websites...

lallysingh 12y ago

What happens when the page changes?

pinaceae 12y ago

relies on friends and family sharing similar interests, etc. also same geo space. hereby super limited in reality. and if it's people then you just invented comments. which are toxic most of the time. also invented (rap)genius. congrats, millions of funding for you.

fiatjaf 12y ago

Google Sidewiki? http://getpoint.co http://getpoint.co? http://hypothes.is/ http://hypothes.is/