WebNotes is a free online tool that allows you to highlight web pages and put sticky notes on them. Not just that, you’ll then be able to share the page (with the annotations + notes) to anyone.
An example of an annotated + sticky noted page can be seen here.
To be able to highlight and start making notes, you’ll need to install the WebNotes Toolbar.
Once installed, annotating web pages and putting sticky notes on them are as easy as walking in the park. You simply go to a web page like you normally would using your browser and you can then use the toolbar to annotate texts on the page that you are visiting or put sticky notes on it.
The sticky notes are drag-able across the screen and every time you visit that page, the notes will be displayed automatically, as long as you still have the WebNotes toolbar installed. This is handy to serve as a reminder whenever you visit a specific site. If you are a blogger and on the Entrecard community, you can also use WebNotes to write notes about the site that you are dropping.
WebNotes is highly useful if you are doing lots of research on the net. For example, let’s say that you are researching on Triglyceride (the amount of fat level in your blood). You can then highlight important sentences of web pages related to your research.
You can also choose to display the Sidebar that will display all of your annotations and sticky notes (the WebNotes Explorer/Organizer). It includes the annotations, texts, and also the web page URLs.
You can easily organize notes and annotations into folders (meaning, you can categorize them to whatever you want).
As shown earlier on my introduction paragraph, you can then share your annotations & notes. If you are in a group of researcher (or even on a university group assignment), then this feature will come in handy.
WebNotes is still in Beta and therefore, expect a few problems to occur. So far, the only complaint that I had is the loading time of the notes, annotations, and the organizer. It’s not slow, but it’s not really that fast either. Hope that they can optimize it a bit further during the track.
If you are interested in trying WebNotes, I have 25 free invitations for you. Simply post a comment here and I’ll invite you in!
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds perfect — I do a lot of web research, this would be great for me — any chance of an invite?
I use Firefox’s extension called Scrapbook – not EXACTLY the same as WebNotes, but certainly as effective and does the job for you just as well. Allows you to highlight, save copies of the web page on your hard drive (and they look exactly the same too) and more stuff… Check it out – maybe you’ll blog about it. xD
Heh, Firefox is so awesome – I can almost find an extension for every toolbar and free browser service out there (adblockers, stuff like webnotes, monitoring web pages for changing [i use updatescanner] and so much more…)
Scrapbook? Hmm..never heard of it before. You do find lots of good extensions for Firefox
I have been sitting here wondering if this is something that I could use when reviewing sites. I could annotate all my stuff while I am browsing through the site and when I am ready to write the actual review I will have all the relevant info at my fingertips.
Good idea, Lyndi. You can probably put notes on the main page and redirect your readers to the shared notes. It’s easier than taking bunch of screenshots on the selected areas that you want to talk about.
I’ve send an invitation to you anyway in case you want to give it a go
Thanks for the invite, it works great. I do however experience a small problem, when this add-on is enabled Google Reader does not open (this is in Firefox). This is strange but true. I think it is this add-on that somehow clashes with the Google Reader Watcher add-on. I will however work around this, I will only enable this one when I want to do a review. Thanks again.
Hm a weird bug. Seems like a hassle though as you need to restart firefox whenever you enable/disable an add-on
Hi Lyndi,
I just wanted to let you know that we fixed the issue with Google Reader on Friday, so you shouldn’t have to enable/disable WebNotes anymore. Hope that helps!
Thanks Bennett, that is very nice to know. I have only used WebNotes once for a review and it worked like a bomb. Now I will be able to activate it and leave it activated. Michael, my thanks to you as well.
Thanks for letting us know, Ben
I’m was wondering how is webnotes different from google note? I’m being using google note firefox plugin for sometime, so far so good.
I’ve never heard about Google Note before, apart from Google Notebook, so unfortunately I can’t give any answer on this one
Hey, can you send me an invitation too?
Just so I can try it out?
Invitation sent
As a personal tool, I also think google Notebook is a lot more useful. Webnotes also falls short if you need to do serious web research, organization and group collaboration. For that, I found Diigo quite useful.
Thanks for sharing that, Beth. I’m using Google Notebook to store important informations
this looks just what I’ve been looking for have tried several other simular ones to this going of what I’ve seen from here it looks great would love to try it out.
Thanks
regards DG
Great to know if it’s gonna work for you. The feature is a bit too much for me (since I rarely do annotations)
could you please send me a invitation to try it out. Thanks
Invitation sent! Sorry, I didn’t realize that I was meant to send an invitation lol
Nice blog Michael, think I will return to check it in the future =)
I would like to try out WebNotes (if you have any invites left that is…)
Thanks
Thanks, Joel. I’ve sent the invitation to your email
can you send me a invitation? thanks
Invitation sent
is there an invitation left? or someone else – that would be great
thank you so much (and sorry for – you know – false english…
)
Hi, invitation has been sent to your email address