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Hoovernotes - The annotating Mozilla add-on for the Mozilla Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge 2010

HooverNotes is a concept for a platform whose goal is to combine “book-like” annotations with collaborative processing.

The HooverNotes concept was first established for the Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge 2010 where HooverNotes was a selected finalist and was presented at Austin, TX. The feedback received during the Jetpack for Learning Camp at Austin, TX encouraged us to continue developing the HooverNotes concept.

HooverNotes is a JetPack plugin for FireFox for annotating and highlighting Web content – but so far only locally at the user’s browser. For the Drumbeat Challenge, we would like to turn HooverNotes into a truly collaborative tool backed by a powerful Web application.

These two separate parts of the concept can be described in more detail as follows:

• The first part of the HooverNotes is a browser plugin allowing the users to highlight and leave comments about Web content related to a topic. Such annotations can span several Web pages. They will take the form of text, hyperlinks, and multimedia content such as videos, images or maps. In this way, the actual Web content will be augmented and enriched by the users – be it for learning or other purposes. This plugin will also inform users if anyone else has taken notes for the URL he is watching at the moment. This will allow users to see annotations for other users on the fly.
  For the moment, there is a prototypical implementation of the plugin for FireFox’ JetPack platform. Though we’re aware that this is a Mozilla call, we’re thinking about implementing similar plugins for other platforms in order to increase our share market. Beyond of those plugins, we are also thinking an application for Google Android, IPad or the IPhone would increase our outreach and bring us closer to our goal of ubiquitous availability of annotations.



• The second part of HooverNotes is a Web application where users can browse, search and “socialize” over annotations and export annotations to different formats: from the browser’s plugin to the cloud. The annotations will be synchronized between the browser plugin and the data store underlying the Web app. The user will have the freedom to export his annotations, both to different file formats (PDF, HTML, perhaps RTF or OpenOffice) and other services. For instance, annotations may be exported as bookmarks to del.icio.us. Annotations may be personal or shared with others through HooverNotes, hence enabling knowledge exchange in a classroom setting. Furthermore, we will implement features allowing users to get to know one another over their annotations. One example for this is the feature of being able to see who else has been doing annotations for a given page. Other features will analyze the annotations and find similarity between users and allow users to get to know one another. At the same time, we will have a defined API accessible via Web services allowing other services to access the data stored in HooverNotes repository. Annotations may be personal or shared with others through HooverNotes, hence enabling knowledge exchange in a classroom setting. Finally, all of those annotations would be stored using standardized languages enriched with semantics and every annotation will have its own URI.

This was the Hoovernotes presentation at the Jetpack Mozilla Camp at Austin, Texas.



And these are the slides of the presentation.

If you have any comment, don't hesitate to contact me :)

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