Author: Joel Liu

Simplified “Focused Research”

~ Joel Liu ~ 19 Comments

Focused Research is a  feature that allows you to re-use your saving preferences with minimal effort.  Once you are in the research mode, the same set of tags, outliner and group are automatically applied to every item you save or annotate. This can be a big time saver when you are doing research on a particular topic.

This feature was hidden in extension options when we redesigned the Diigo extension previously. We simplified it and renamed it to “Remember saving preferences”.  Now it can be easily accessed in a bookmark window.

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You can simply switch between focused research mode and usual bookmarking mode by turning on or off the “Remember saving preferences” option anytime you like.

Let us know whether you like it!

 

 

Introduce a new way to retain knowledge from Kindle books

~ Joel Liu ~ 34 Comments

Many Diigo users are lifelong learners and love reading books.  However, reading a book is one thing, retaining the knowledge from the book is another.  If you search “retain book” there are 122 Million results!  Many people struggle with how to better retain knowledge from books.

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Highlighting is an important way to help retain knowledge.  As Diigo users, you’re familiar with highlighting on the web, and as Kindle users, you may be familiar with highlighting on Kindle as well.
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Highlights can help to retain knowledge, but they are not enough. We still only remember the broad idea and message of a book.

“Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.”  — Charlie Munger

Isolated highlights are just like the isolated facts, we don’t have them in a usable form.    

Diigo provides a 2 step method to help you make the best use of your kindle highlights.

Step 1:   Import your kindle highlights to your Diigo library.

With the new Diigo chrome extension,  it only takes one click to import all of your highlights from a book to your Diigo library.

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Step 2:  Organize highlights from a book in your own knowledge structure.

 After Kindle highlights are imported in your Diigo library,  it’s easy to add them to an outliner where you can then organize these highlights in your own structure.

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As  avid kindle users, we have used this method for a long time and found it to be a very efficient way to integrate knowledge from a book to the knowledge network in your brain.

How many highlights are sleeping in your Kindle?   Import them into Diigo and  integrate them into a latticework of knowledge network now!   

 

Here is how to do it:

  1. Update to the latest Diigo Chrome extension
  2. Visit your kindle highlights page https://read.amazon.com/kp/notebook
  3. Click “Import to Diigo” button
  4. If you have highlights for personal documents on your kindle device,  you can follow instructions here https://www.diigo.com/import_all/kindle  to upload the kindle highlights file to Diigo.

Outliner sidebar in Diigo Chrome extension — Organize knowledge while you collect them

~ Joel Liu ~ 18 Comments

The normal research process works like this “Collect first, Organize later“.  However, it becomes “Collect first, Organize never” very often.  Then, our library is cluttered with unorganized content.  This further causes   “Read a lot,  Retain a little” issue.  When the knowledge is not organized and connected together, it’s easy to forget them.

With the new outliner sidebar in Diigo chrome extension ,  you can organize your knowledge in a structured way while you collect them.  It  makes your research process much more efficient.

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Check the video to see how it works.

 

Diigo outliner supports image now

~ Joel Liu ~ 11 Comments

Outliner is a great way to organize your research systematically. This new update allows you to insert images into an outliner directly on Diigo website.

Here are some features in this update:

  1. Choose images from the sidebar and insert them into an outliner
  2. Better search in the sidebar panel
  3. Expand all annotations in an outliner

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Don’t hesitate to let us know your comment!

New Diigo extension released

~ Joel Liu ~ 30 Comments

As we said in Diigo’s Refocus Back to Annotation  last April, Diigo would shift our primary focus back to “annotation”.  We made a big upgrade to Diigo website in October 2016.  Today,  we are glad to release the new Diigo extension for Chrome.

Here are some new features in this new version.

1. New design with simplified extension menu
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2. Annotate articles in an ads-free reader
Annotating web article is a common use case among diigo users. However, many article pages are cluttered with ads, sidebars, headers and footers. A better reading experience comes together with a better annotation experience in this new version. Once you experience it, you will never go back!

3. Annotate your local PDF files directly in Chrome
Previously, to annotate PDF files, you needed to upload local PDF files to the Diigo website. Now with the built in PDF reader, you can annotate them in Diigo Chrome extension directly.  It’s  now faster and much more convenient to annotate PDF files.

4. Get support from extension
With the built-in “Send message” feature, it’s much easier to send support messages to the Diigo team and get  problems solved quickly.

5. Other features are still available in this new versionextension1.png

If you like Diigo extension,  please help us spread the word by giving the extension a 5-star rating on Chrome web Store.

The Most Powerful Tool for Writing Papers: Diigo 7.0 Released!

~ Joel Liu ~ 30 Comments

Diigo 7.0 is perhaps the most significant version upgrade in Diigo’s history. We are confident that you will find the new Diigo to be the most powerful personal knowledge management tool that can help you harness information, build coherent knowledge, and speed up learning.

From pieces of information to a coherent knowledge structure

With this upgrade, Diigo makes it significantly easier to go from pieces of information to a coherent knowledge structure, which all pedagogy theorists agrees is one of the most important steps in learning, memorizing, and writing.

An important innovation introduced in Diigo 6.0 is Outliners, which allow you to organize information as knowledge trees.   The importance and benefit of knowledge trees in learning are perhaps best articulated by one of the greatest innovators of our times, Elon Musk:

I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying.

One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.

— Elon Musk

While outliners are powerful, going from information collected and digested to knowledge trees  still feel disjointed and awkward.  So a key innovation in this upgrade is to enable a split view with outliners and my library side by side:

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With this split view,  one can

  • Read an article on the left side,  drag-and-drop specific bits to specific locations of the outliner tree shown on the right side.
  • Drag an item in My Library shown on the left side  to specific locations in the outliner tree shown on the right side.

After the user has built a coherent knowledge tree, he can then export the outliner to a word processor for further editing.   The split view therefore seamlessly integrates the multiple steps involved in writing papers, from collecting, reading and digesting information, to connecting and organizing pieces of information coherently.

Heads-up for future improvement:    The Diigo extension is being reworked to provide the same seamless experience from reading, annotating to outliners.

Better UX with modern feel.   

With its advanced annotation capability, Diigo has been the best way to collect, read and digest information, both webpages and PDF documents. This upgrade just makes it even better with a sleeker UX and modern feel.

The new UI is not only better looking, but also simpler and easier to use.  There are many small improvements waiting for you to discover, such as “in-place tag editing”, new “bulk edit” feature,  better “Generate report”  etc.

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Annotate directly on Diigo.com without the extension.   

Previously, if you want to annotate an article, you need to install Diigo extension or Diigolet. Very often, the article webpage is cluttered by ads.  Now, you can have immersive reading experience for articles in an ads-free environment in the new version.   Even better, you don’t need to install extension or Diigolet to annotate on web pages.   

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We want to  express our appreciation to all users who participated in our beta testing. Your input has been valuable and helps to shape the new Diigo. And we are not done innovating yet!  Just wait and be pleasantly surprised 🙂

        

Scheduled Maintenance Notice 2

~ Joel Liu ~ 27 Comments

The scheduled maintenance is the second step for a backend upgrade.  We will move Diigo from current data center to Amazon cloud.  You will experience a faster and more stable Diigo after the migration.

The planned maintenance window is Wednesday, Feb 11th at 0:00PM US PST.  We expect the actual downtime to be approximately 1 hour.