Google Sidewiki offers fresh way to annotate web

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 24 Sep 2009 at 08:52

Google has created a new service called Sidewiki that allows people to leave comments and additional information on the websites they visit.

Sidewiki is a part of the Google toolbar, and creates a vertical bar down the left-hand side of the webpage you are visiting. In this bar people can add notes and annotations about the article they're reading, or associate their comments with a specific snippet of text - say if you strongly disagree with a phrase in a PC Pro review.

This information is then shared with any other Sidewiki users who visit the site. It can also be shared through social-networking sites, and voted on by other users.

Powering this is a new algorithm, which Google says should ensure the most relevant and informative entries rise to the top. "We worked hard from the beginning to figure out which [entries] should appear on top and how to best order them," the company writes on its blog.

"So instead of displaying the most recent entries first, we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed," it says.

Bizarrely, the feature is currently only available for Firefox and Internet Explorer, though Google says it is working on implementing Sidewiki as a feature within Chrome.

You'll need a Google account to try it out.