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2 ISSN 2079-8407
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences
http://www.cisjournal.org
ABSTRACT
Many Web tools are available today to facilitate the information assimilation (IA) process. The tools fall into three main
categories – Web annotating, bookmarking and note taking tools. This paper reviews ten IA tools and highlights their
strengths and weaknesses, with the aim of helping users to select suitable tools to accomplish the IA process.
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means a dearth of something else that information the client side, and users can retrieve the URLs even if
consumes – attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of they are not connected to the Internet. Offline bookmarks
information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to are considered one of the features of browsers (Wikipedia
allocate attention effectively among the overabundance of - Internet bookmark; Wikipedia - Social bookmarking).
information sources. Thus, in the design of tools, focus
should not only be on the ability to gather information, but 2.3 Notetaking
also on the ability to reduce the net demand on users’
attention by offering a good strategy of organisation, The notetaking tool is a new category of tools to
revisitation, sharing, and etc. help users to collect a snippet of information from Web
This paper explores the roles of “Web 2.0” or pages. Information snippets refer to components from
“social Web” applications to augment users’ research within Web pages and these include texts, images,
tasks. It is found that users will use a combination of Web hyperlinks, etc.
tools to perform tasks such as to stay up-to-date, to
monitor development in specific topics, to perform
Table 2.0: Categories of Web Tools
specific searches, to recall information previously stored,
and to distribute and share information (Evans & Card,
2008). Web Bookmarking Tool Notetaking Tool
Among the tools that augment effective IA, annot Social Internet Online Offline
bookmarking tools are amongst the most popular ones. It ation bookmark bookmark
is found that users often build a very large bookmark Tool ing ing
collection for later use (Cockburn & McKenzei, 2001). (online) (offline)
The success story of delicious as a popular bookmarking
tool with the biggest collection of bookmarks, under the
Diigo Delicious Firefox’s Google ScrapBook
category of Web 2.0 tool (Delicious), serves as a very
good reference for researchers to study its role in Fleck Furl Bookmark Notebook
facilitating the IA process. Besides bookmarking, online
Stickis Ma.gnolia s Clipmarks
Web annotating and notetaking tools are considered the
next most popular tools favoured by users. Internet Notefish
The following sections describe the different categories of
Explorer’s Zoho
Web tools, and make a comparison of their features.
Favourites notebook
2. CATEGORIES OF WEB TOOLS Evernote
2.1 Web annotation
Ubernote
The online Web annotating tool is used to make Spartag
annotation on the Web application. It allows users to add,
modify or remove the information from the Web in the
form of a layer. On top of the existing Web page, some
annotating tools can make a layer visible or invisible to
other users who use the same annotating system. By
exploiting this category of tools, users are able to interact 3. REVIEW OF SELECTED WEB
with a Web application by manipulating the existing TOOLS
information in the form of layers (Wikipedia - Web
annotation). Ten Web tools from those listed in Table 2.0, are
selected for review. The tools are selected based on their
2.2 Internet bookmarking popularity judging by a few renowned online review
articles that include CNET (Wenzel, 2006), mashable.com
Bookmark is a function to store the Uniform (Ningthoujam, 2008), Janowski (2006) and Kaly (2007).
Resource Locator (URL) in a place that can be retrieved Spartag and ScrapBook are selected because of their
by users, when needed. This category can be divided into significance as academic research products, in comparison
two sub-categories - online bookmarks, and offline to other commercial ones (Hong, Chi, Budiu, Pirolli, &
bookmarks. With online bookmarks, users are able to store Nelson, 2008).
the URL of Web pages which can be accessed from Of the three categories, focus is given to the
anywhere as long as there is Internet connection. Some of notetaking tools as they offer a wealth of features that
these tools also allow the sharing of URLs between users, cover almost all phases of the IA process.
and are known as “Social Bookmarking Tools.” The This section describes briefly the functions and
modern and recent social bookmarking tools also provide features of the 10 selected Web tools.
such features as organising, searching, and managing the
URLs. On the other hand, offline bookmarks are stored at
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Volume 2 No. 2 ISSN 2079-8407
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences
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anything. A single click on the bookmarklet link will instead of page level. This reduces the need for users to
activate a javascript-controlled panel for all the sift through multiple pages to find materials. Collecting
functionalities needed for collection purposes. Evernote, web components enables users to focus only on the exact
UberNote, Delicious, and Diigo have their own variations material that they need rather than referencing the entire
of bookmarklet which are appropriate for the various page. As shown in Table 4.0, among the tools analysed,
browsers. almost all tools support clipping of Web components
E-mail is a collection method supported by except for Diigo and Delicious which are classified under
Evernote and Ubernote, in which users can send the Web Annotation and Social Bookmarking categories,
collections to their accounts on the online tool through an respectively.
e-mail. This method could be a good alternative to the ScrapBook is the only tool that supports editing
conventional way of collecting contents. A study has before clipping. This feature is useful when a user wishes
shown that sending the collections to a personal e-mail is to edit the Web page on the browser before collecting it.
the second most popular keeping method used, besides On the other hand, UberNote expands its clipping platform
making a bookmark or adding to favourites (Bruce, Jones, to support clipping using instant messaging (IM), phone,
& Dumais, 2004). and iPhone, while Evernote supports only clipping from a
In their work, Schraefel et al (2002) stated the phone.
need to collect Web information at the component level
Evernote X X X X X X X X
Spartag X X
UberNote X X X X X X X X
Zoho
X X
Notebook
Diigo X X X X
ScrapBoo X
X X X X
k
Google
X X X
Notebook
Delicious X X
Clipmarks X X
Notefish X X X
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researchers suggest that the success of social and offline notetaking tool which offers annotation in offline
collaborative systems is dependent on the architecture of mode. Zoho Notebook views every element as a layer that
interaction, as well as on the costs and benefits of can be placed on top of each other, hence, it is considered
interaction to the individual user (Pirolli, 2007). Owing to as a tool that offers Sticky note or annotation feature.
the importance of the tagging system, almost all the The modify feature refers to the capability of
selected tools offer this feature. Spartag helps to reduce changing, adding or removing the Web components or text
the cost of interaction and attention switching by making after collecting them. As shown in Table 5.0, only the
each word of the paragraphs clickable and allowing users Notetaking category supports this feature, because most of
to simply click on a word to add it to the tag list without its tools provide a text editor to modify the text except for
typing (Hong, Chi, Budiu,Pirolli, & Nelson, 2008). The Google Notebook and Clipmarks.
comment feature is an option that lets users add some Highlighted texts can be used to augment the
descriptions for future reference to the captured Web document representation. Studies have shown that the
collections or bookmarks. concatenation of the highlighted texts are helpful to
The drag and drop function provides a convenient understand the topic of a document (Denoue & Vignollet,
way for users to organise the collected web contents or 2000). It is believed that an interactive, two-way system
bookmarks. This feature provides a means of transferring, where Web users can mark-up Web pages in a similar way
and moving the captured Web components or bookmarks as they take notes when they read books, will allow for a
to the desired place using a mouse. greater exchange of ideas on the Web as other users could
Annotation can be formally defined as a value- comment on the contents highlighted (Heck, Luebke, &
adding note or marking that is linked to an extant Obermark, 1999). Two types of highlighting editors have
information object, representing a record of interaction been identified - Web and Online Text Editor. The former
between the reader and the information object refers to highlighting of text in Web pages, and the latter
(MacMullen, 2005). Annotations reduce the cognitive refers to highlighting of text in the online Text Editor. The
overload imposed on the users when they retrieve a online Text Editor is provided by some of the Notetaking
document which has previously been annotated (Marshall, tools for their authorized users. Diigo and Spartag support
1998). With annotations, users have indices to understand online Webpage highlighting, whereas Scrapbook
what is important in the document, thus, making provides offline highlighting, that is, Web pages are stored
navigation inside the document easier (Denoue & in the local computer. Ubernote and Zoho Notebook
Vignollet, 2000). Annotation or Sticky notes are mostly provide a rich text editor, which allows users to highlight
supported by tools in the Web Annotation category. Diigo the captured text in text editors such as Wordpad.
is categorised under this group as it offers online
annotation. Scrapbook, as described in Section 2.0, is an
Highlight
Sticky note
Web Tools Tag Comment (Description) Drag and drop Modify
(Annotation) Online
Web
Text- Editor
Evernote X X X
Spartag X X X
UberNote X X X X
Zoho Notebook X X X X
Diigo X X X X X
ScrapBook X X X X X
Google Notebook X X X
Delicious X X
Clipmarks X X
Notefish X X X
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Volume 2 No. 2 ISSN 2079-8407
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences
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4.3 Extension Feature Sharing has costs that trade against other activities of
information assimilation, and it has been observed that in
The Extension feature refers to a mechanism that socially-oriented systems where the cost of sharing was
an IA tool has to show URLs of related Web sites. Out of lower, more sharing occurred. As shown in Table 6.0, the
the 10 IA tools reviewed, only Diigo and Delicious have ten selected tools illustrate different ways of collaboration
this feature. These two tools are placed in the annotation and sharing information. Most of the tools support the
and social bookmarking categories. Owing to their nature, sending of email, and sharing of collections. Sending
they provide a mechanism to show URLs of related Web messages is only available in Diigo and Delicious.
sites which commensurate with the captured bookmark by Creating Group and Socialising in Group are supported by
the users. Diigo only. The only tool that supports collaboration when
working on the same collected Web components at the
4.4 Share/Collaboration Feature same time by different users, is Zoho Notebook which
belongs to the Notetaking category. Scrapbook is the only
tool which does not have the share feature because it is an
Researches have shown that users have several offline Notetaking application, apart from Spartag which
motivations for sharing information with others. Also, is expected to add the Share Feature in the next version
they might be the beneficiary of the information at a future (Hong, Chi, Budiu, Pirolli, & Nelson, 2008).
time. However, they may additionally seek the accrual of
social capital by aiding friends or colleagues, or sharing
information in a public community (Evans & Card, 2008).
Web Tools Create Send Collaboration (multiple person working on Share Send
group message the same document) collections email
Evernote X
Spartag
UberNote X X
Zoho X X
X
Notebook
Diigo X X X X
ScrapBook
Google X
Notebook
Delicious X X
Clipmarks X
Notefish X
4.5 Revisitation Feature that because of the importance of searching among the
collected Web contents and also the social tagging
One of the users’ tasks in the IA process is to systems, all the selected tools, except for Zoho Notebook,
recall information previously stored. Users sometimes support the searching of text in the content of the collected
make use of information saved from previous activities components and tags. Moreover, with the text recognition
(Evans & Card, 2008). Tagging has become a useful way technology, Evernote also provides the capability of
for users to recall information sources for later use as well searching images in the form of text in the collected
as to communicate interesting nuggets of information to components. However, this capability is not yet available
other users (Chi & Mytkowicz, 2008). Table 7.0 shows in the other tools.
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Clipmarks X X
Web Tools Search
Notefish X X
Tag Text in Image in
contents contents
Evernote
Spartag
UberNote X
Zoho Notebook X
Diigo X
ScrapBook
Google Notebook
Delicious
Clipmarks X X X
Notefish
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can only send e-mail. Scrapbook has the richest collection [12] Heck, R. M., Luebke, S. M., & Obermark, C. H.
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incorporates all the desired features of the tools reviewed ons/Summer1999/Papers/survey_paper.html
in this paper.
[13] Hong, L., Chi, E. H., Budiu, R., Pirolli, P., & Nelson,
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