With January traditionally being the month where people throw out some wild predictions, allow me also to make one; in the very near future we will be able to write inside any webpage! I can almost hear the cries of derision ... "madness, never going to happen, content owners would never allow for it", while others will say, "we've seen it all before, this is old news, didn't Third Voice do this 10 years ago"?
Well as it so happens Third Voice did allow for web-annotation ten years ago and we salute them as pioneers in doing so. We've seen many derivatives of Third Voice try to capitalise on this idea too; in particular we tip our hat to the efforts of Diigo, and more recently Google SideWiki and Re-frame it (the subject of significant Silicon valley funding over the past 6 months). However any service we've discovered to date that allows you to create content on any page in a universal way has enabled this by using invasive sidebars and/or layers of user content that live on top of the web-page, often obscuring the content of the original page. Significant portions of the browser real estate are taken over by these tools.
In our opinion we think this kind of obstruction on the user's interface is the reason why these services have typically focused on a very specific kind of web user - e.g. the research industry and academia. These web annotation services have not seen much traction among the more casual market of web-users (of which there are hundreds of millions) which we think is largely down to the clunkiness and interface complexities; a user that works with these services needs to have a certain technical awareness not to mention tolerance. The trade-offs in the browsing experience has completely overwhelmed the value these services can offer for large numbers of people.
It is frustration with these services, and the disconnect between the potential value of this idea and its implementations to date, that drives the development of YayTrail. We thought, wouldn't it be cool when you are browsing the web if you could just click and type on any page like it was an editable document, where any input you make can be a seamless part of the original page? Where you can become an editor of your own web? Without having to decipher the various bubbles, and "post-it" comments that were all over the screen or taking up valuable space on top of or in the margin of your screen?
We believe YayTrail is the first web service to provide this level of true in-line user enrichment of webpages. We feel that the technology provided by YayTrail will have a much better chance of attracting a more general audience of web users, by realising the value of the vision of a personal web without the technical and user-interface baggage carried by previous annotation services. The YayTrail concept can enable that "open-web" vision where you can connect to your friends in a universal way across any web site and have their collective intelligence follow you around the web. This is the idea that we are striving for, that of a web that becomes more personal to each individual user. Where the web becomes your "view" of the web; your personal view of the web made by you and your peers, almost like a distributed social network, where you and your friends can express yourselves as powerfully as any webpage creator.
We believe this cross-website, universal content creation platform needs to be a lot simpler than what we have to date, but simplicity is just one part of the equation. Services like Twitter are so so simple and spontaneous, yet they have the weakness of being completely out of context. As with blogs before them, a lot of users end up abandoning Twitter accounts as active participants because creatively it's like a blank piece of paper. In our opinion it is far more difficult to create content out-of-context - when you put people in their own context, many of them have difficulty finding their voice. Context is good, and we want to make the whole web a context for your voice. But the services we've seen to date that offer this kind of in-context user expression have stumbled severely on the simplicity issue.
We think the first step toward addressing that (and a pretty big one) is to remove all the visual and UI bloat, and allow for in-line editing of web-pages! Yes, we are repeating ourselves and shamelessly so! We think doing this brings a wide array of benefits. It's much simpler, and it's much more spontaneous. Click, type, and click again to save, how cool would that be? We believe that this type of editing is far more intuitive and gives far greater value to the user's content than when it's part of a non-native content layer or on the side of a web-page. It's visually far more seamless and lightweight to boot.
To quote some of our early beta testers; Cheeky Christine " Think about it-my mother is looking for a recipe for sausage stuffing. I find one, but believe there should be changes. If I log onto Yaytrail, I can now double click to the exact ingredient I think should be changed and leave my comment. My mother will log into her Yaytrail account, see my post and will know exactly what changes need to be made instead of worrying about the changes herself. She’ll be able to see my changes directly in front of her without any further work. What’s even better, is if she disagrees, she too can double click and leave additional comments as well. The extraordinary thing is that there is no miscommunication. My mother can no longer claim she “has no idea what changes I am attempting to make” because they are right there, in front of her, noted exactly at the precise spot I am referring to"
YayTrail is still very raw, but that’s our vision. Upcoming blogs will outline how we'll develop this concept further. For now though you can try out our preview if you wish, with FireFox at http://www.yaytrail.com. From next month you will be able to use YayTrail with Internet Explorer and a whole host of other popular browsers too. Now about that wild prediction I mentioned.... hmmmmm, still think it's not possible?!
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
"Finally a medium I can sink my words into"
Just a heads up on a blog written by YayTrail user Christine Sherwood (AKA CheekyChristine, on her thoughts about YayTrail and how she sees it fitting into her social networking world.
To quote Christine: "Sinking my words and thoughts into the pages I care about transcends just commenting on random articles about the 2010 World Cup or recipes for my mom to peruse. It’s the ability to communicate and expedite thoughts to change ideas, transform projects, help students, colleagues and anyone else you need to reach.
The concept behind YayTrail is one of the more innovative ideas I’ve seen. It’s an efficiency tool. A tool to work along side any other social networking site; any other website in general. It’s a tool to enhance your online experience not take away from anything else you are currently using."
Head over to Christine's blog and check out her full thoughts at: http://www.cheekychristine.com/2010/01/yay-for-yaytrail-finally-medium-i-can.html
To quote Christine: "Sinking my words and thoughts into the pages I care about transcends just commenting on random articles about the 2010 World Cup or recipes for my mom to peruse. It’s the ability to communicate and expedite thoughts to change ideas, transform projects, help students, colleagues and anyone else you need to reach.
The concept behind YayTrail is one of the more innovative ideas I’ve seen. It’s an efficiency tool. A tool to work along side any other social networking site; any other website in general. It’s a tool to enhance your online experience not take away from anything else you are currently using."
Head over to Christine's blog and check out her full thoughts at: http://www.cheekychristine.com/2010/01/yay-for-yaytrail-finally-medium-i-can.html
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"YayTrail has the power to begin to change the way we all use the web" - a User blog
What follows is a blog by YayTrail user 'BH' (http://www.yaytrail.com/BH)
My relationship with technology is always changing. I was a technophile in the mid 90s when I built my own PCs and worked in the IT sector. But my thoughts and feelings towards technology began to change about 8 years ago when I left the industry to follow my dream of training as a psychotherapist. Technology was no longer the centre of my day and in recent years the arrival of social networking and video sharing websites intrigued me but never enough for me to pay them more than passing interest. They were different and useful but seemed to me to be mostly adaptations of old and existing technology.
So when I first heard about YayTrail I found it more than a little difficult to shake off my weariness of ‘new’ technology. But the more I looked into what YayTrail allowed and might be capable of the more I became excited by what seems to me to be the first true innovation on the world wide web in years. I realised that YayTrail was offering something revolutionary where the internet could for the first time become a fully interactive experience.
Of course social networking, fan forums and so on have for some time allowed some degree of online participation but the problem is that getting involved in that way still has too many constraints. I visited an online TV show forum recently and one single topic had over 20,000 replies posted. Who on earth has the time, energy or desire to wade their way through that many posts most of which aren’t saying anything of particular interest to anyone other than the people who wrote them? I have found similar problems with well known online book and DVD retailers. There are often hundreds of customer reviews from strangers that don’t say anything more revealing than “5/5 Great movie! I loved it” or “1/5 I hated it”. Then there are others who give ‘one out of five stars’ for the strangest of reasons such as not liking the picture on the cover of a novel or DVD.
YayTrail changes all of this and more. YayTrail allows you to perform tasks like posting your opinions of a book you’ve read, movie that you’ve seen or anything thing else that catches your interest. You can do so anywhere, anytime, on any web page and anyone on YayTrail can decide whether or not they want to see your edits and comments so unlike email there is no danger of SPAM. If you don’t like what someone else on YayTrail has to say you can simply choose not to trail them. You are no longer forced to wade your way through pages and pages of largely uninformative reviews of a product you are thinking of purchasing. You can simply choose to see the review posted by a friend, by a select number of people or everyone as you wish and all of this can be done without compromising the integrity of the original webpage.
But that is only the beginning because YayTrail doesn’t just allow you to insert comments but allows you to fully edit any web page. You can then share these edited web pages with your friends, who in turn can make further changes or edits and then share them with yet more people. As a student I could, through YayTrail, have a completely interactive discussion about a poem, book or scientific theory online. I would no longer need to write in an email or message board something like “on page 26, paragraph three..........”. With YayTrail I can simply insert a comment at that exact line on the page and other students or teachers can in turn add their own comments in the same way. A whole discussion can grow but at any stage you can still switch back and forth between the original and edited page at the click of a button.
YayTrail is still in its infancy. At the moment edits and comments can only be made in the form of text but I hear that pictures and video edits will be possible soon. Like social networking it depends on its user base. It requires people to get involved in order for it to work at its best. YayTrail has the power to begin to change the way we all use the web but that will only happen as more and more people get involved. I’ve only touched upon one or two possible uses of YayTrail here so why not take the few seconds it requires to sign up and see what YayTrail can do for you. So get involved, give it a try and see the future of the world wide web unfold before you. I look forward to meeting you there.
My relationship with technology is always changing. I was a technophile in the mid 90s when I built my own PCs and worked in the IT sector. But my thoughts and feelings towards technology began to change about 8 years ago when I left the industry to follow my dream of training as a psychotherapist. Technology was no longer the centre of my day and in recent years the arrival of social networking and video sharing websites intrigued me but never enough for me to pay them more than passing interest. They were different and useful but seemed to me to be mostly adaptations of old and existing technology.
So when I first heard about YayTrail I found it more than a little difficult to shake off my weariness of ‘new’ technology. But the more I looked into what YayTrail allowed and might be capable of the more I became excited by what seems to me to be the first true innovation on the world wide web in years. I realised that YayTrail was offering something revolutionary where the internet could for the first time become a fully interactive experience.
Of course social networking, fan forums and so on have for some time allowed some degree of online participation but the problem is that getting involved in that way still has too many constraints. I visited an online TV show forum recently and one single topic had over 20,000 replies posted. Who on earth has the time, energy or desire to wade their way through that many posts most of which aren’t saying anything of particular interest to anyone other than the people who wrote them? I have found similar problems with well known online book and DVD retailers. There are often hundreds of customer reviews from strangers that don’t say anything more revealing than “5/5 Great movie! I loved it” or “1/5 I hated it”. Then there are others who give ‘one out of five stars’ for the strangest of reasons such as not liking the picture on the cover of a novel or DVD.
YayTrail changes all of this and more. YayTrail allows you to perform tasks like posting your opinions of a book you’ve read, movie that you’ve seen or anything thing else that catches your interest. You can do so anywhere, anytime, on any web page and anyone on YayTrail can decide whether or not they want to see your edits and comments so unlike email there is no danger of SPAM. If you don’t like what someone else on YayTrail has to say you can simply choose not to trail them. You are no longer forced to wade your way through pages and pages of largely uninformative reviews of a product you are thinking of purchasing. You can simply choose to see the review posted by a friend, by a select number of people or everyone as you wish and all of this can be done without compromising the integrity of the original webpage.
But that is only the beginning because YayTrail doesn’t just allow you to insert comments but allows you to fully edit any web page. You can then share these edited web pages with your friends, who in turn can make further changes or edits and then share them with yet more people. As a student I could, through YayTrail, have a completely interactive discussion about a poem, book or scientific theory online. I would no longer need to write in an email or message board something like “on page 26, paragraph three..........”. With YayTrail I can simply insert a comment at that exact line on the page and other students or teachers can in turn add their own comments in the same way. A whole discussion can grow but at any stage you can still switch back and forth between the original and edited page at the click of a button.
YayTrail is still in its infancy. At the moment edits and comments can only be made in the form of text but I hear that pictures and video edits will be possible soon. Like social networking it depends on its user base. It requires people to get involved in order for it to work at its best. YayTrail has the power to begin to change the way we all use the web but that will only happen as more and more people get involved. I’ve only touched upon one or two possible uses of YayTrail here so why not take the few seconds it requires to sign up and see what YayTrail can do for you. So get involved, give it a try and see the future of the world wide web unfold before you. I look forward to meeting you there.
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