Diigo, Wikipedia, and Web 2.0

So as I mentioned last time, one of this week's goals is to familiarize myself with Diigo ("Dee-what?" is what I was still thinking about an hour ago.) It's been an interesting hour, and while I'm a long way from fully understanding the best uses of this tool, here's what I've learned so far.

Diigo provides a little widget (called "Diigolet") which sits in your browser favorites. When you access it, it doesn't launch a new page, but provides tools you can use on your current page to highlight, add sticky notes, etc. Sort of like Track Changes for the Web, plus the ability to create a personal bookmark list.

So I installed said widget and began to visit a couple of my favorite pages. I'm a major movie fan, and there was something I wanted to look up on www.imdb.com, so I went there first. I couldn't really think of any of the tools I wanted to use while doing my search, so I moved on to Wikipedia. As no immediate topic came to mind, I typed in "Web 2.0," accessed the Diigolet, and voila! sticky notes and highlighting magically appeared from past readers of the page. It appears reading the page was an assignment to introduce a class to Web 2.0 (and perhaps Diigo as well, given the "Can you see this?" sticky note I encountered.)

In this setting (Wikipedia), it appears that Diigo could be used as a breadcrumb trail while researching, particularly if you think you're going to need to refresh your memory, or maybe use the source for another purpose in the future.

I did happen to think of one thing I might use Diigo for on www.imdb.com, which is highlighting things I might want to see on a particular actor or director's profile. I really like the two films I've seen by Mira Nair - "Monsoon Wedding" and "Vanity Fair" - and I remember there's another I want to see, "The Namesake" (great book, by the way.) So, I've gone back out there to Mira Nair's page, highlighted "The Namesake" and added a private sticky note - other Diigo users out there will thank me for not cluttering their view, I'm sure. While I was at it, I bookmarked the item as well with a note to see the movie, since I'm not sure yet if the bookmarks will be more useful to me or the highlighting.

Now, if IMDB would simply add buttons saying "Add to Netflix Queue," life would be even better!

Diigo is an interesting tool, one which I will continue to explore and fine tune my use of in order to figure out how it suits me best. I'd be very interested to hear how you, dear reader, are using it as well.