Tips of the day

Webpage Caching Improved

~ diigo ~ 1 Comment

As Diigo users know, Diigo has always strived to provide the best capability on the market for your bookmarking and annotation needs.  One of the things that differentiate Diigo from other bookmarking services is that Diigo not only lets you save a link,  Diigo enables you to save the page itself! This provides several significant benefits:

  • Have a peace of mind that whatever you were interested in will always be there.

  • You can have more powerful search capability since our internal search engine can index the page text itself, in addition to meta data like titles, tags, and annotations.

  • You can cache multiple versions of the same page at different times to track the changes for purposes of competitive intelligence or whatever.

We are now releasing several improvements to the caching feature:

  1. The ability to view and add annotations on cached pages, so the same annotations will show up on both the cached pages and the original page.

  2. The ability to easily visit cached pages from your Diigo Chrome extension (other extensions and Diigolet to follow.) So when you browse to a webpage you bookmarked before, you will see a link to “Cached Versions” on the extension.  This can be a lifesaver if the page is not available for whatever reason.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Create a new Diigo List on the fly

~ diigo ~ 1 Comment

Diigo’s “List” is a great way to organize, share and display specific collections of bookmarks (For those not familiar with this feature, click here to Learn more >>)

What if sometimes you find a good webpage and inspire you to start a new list collection, but you don’t have a good list created yet to archive that page? No problem. We’ve just added a new feature in FF toolbar (FF Version 4.1.0.18) to make your research process flow even easier:

You can now create a new list on the fly while bookmarking. Here is how:

1) Click the Bookmark button on toolbar to open up the bookmarking window
2) Check the “Add to a list” box. Use the pull-down menu to select “Create a list”

3) Enter new list name, select privacy for the list, click “Create“, then “Save”

This new process enables you to create a new list, and add whatever page you’re reading to the new collection on the fly. Make sure that you have the latest Diigo FF toolbar installed. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

PS. Diigo IE toolbar will support this new feature very soon. Stay tuned.

Tip of the day: new "Diigo + Google" search box

~ diigo ~ Leave a comment

We have implemented some new changes to the toolbar search box.  As you start to type a word in the search box in the toolbar, the new “Diigo + Google” search will smartly auto suggest keywords from your diigo “My Tags + Search History” plus “Goolge Suggest“:

Your search result is displayed in two columns:  Google search result on the left, and result from your “My Diigo library” and Diigo community library on the right.

To access this search and other new toolbar features, make sure to get our latest toolbar installed (FF Version: 4.1.0.14 or IE Version: 4.0.2) at the Diigo Tools section: http://www.diigo.com/tools

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Note 1:   some users may have the search box setting hidden.   If you don’t see the search box on your toolbar,  here is how to enable it:

  • Go to toolbar:   Diigo >> Toolbar options

  • Under “Select Toolbar Buttons”, make sure the “Search” box is checked.  Click Ok to save the setting

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Note 2:  the “Multi-Category Search & Customized Search Menu” is being disabled in our latest toolbar version (click those 2 links to learn more.) Since currently there are only very few users taking advantage of that particular feature but it’s quite troublesome for us to maintain the ongoing support,  we’re re-evaluating to phase it out.   As with any software service provider, there are a lot of backend computing considerations and we always have to weight out the pros vs. cons for various features support.

During the evaluation period, for those users who still want to have access to the Customized Search feature, please install this “classic version” instead: http://www.diigo.com/tools?version=firefox_classic    Meanwhile,  if you feel strongly that we should consider keeping this feature, please email and share with us more feedback on how you use it and ways that you think we can improve it.   Thanks!

Sign in with your Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, OpenID account

~ diigo

Diigo team takes pride in our attention to detail to constantly innovate and improve your user experience. To make the sign-in / create new account process even easier for our users,  we’ve just implemented additional support for Facebook, Twitter, Google Yahoo, other OpenID account ID.   So now you can log into Diigo using any of your existing account credential:

Once you sign in with other account credential,

1) if you already have an existing diigo account, we can associate those 2 accounts together,  OR

2) if you don’t have a diigo account yet, we can auto-create a new diigo account for you:

After associating your other credential with your Diigo account, you will be able to login with your Facebook/Twitter/Googl ID/Yahoo ID.

Btw, another frequently requested feature:  “can I change my username?”   Yes, now you can!  Login first then visit https://secure.diigo.com/setting to change your diigo username and/or password  (note: min 6-character username restriction still applies.)

New! Highlighter Pen function

~ diigo

Along with the new V4 version release,  Diigo annotation features went through another round of new enhancements.  Here is another cool new feature called “Highlighter Pen”

If you like to highlight several paragraphs on a page quickly, besides the usual highlight feature, another way to highlight with Diigo is to turn your mouse into a highlighter pen (very cool when you demo this):

  1. Click the Highlight button on toolbar (without selecting text first).  When the highlighter pen is enabled, that Highlight button will become a Highlighter to indicate its status change.
  2. You will visually see your mouse becoming a “highlighter pen”.  Use the pen to mark up area(s) that you’d like to highlight on a webpage.
  3. When you are all done with highlighting on a page, make sure to click Highlight button again to disable the highlighter pen action

Here is a short video showing the Highlighter Pen in action: http://bit.ly/85Owyw

Multi-color highlights now available!

~ diigo

We have received numerous requests from users to allow multi-colored highlights on the same page. Well, we listen 🙂  and here is how to do it:

Use the Highlight >> pull down menu on toolbar (or use the right-click menu) to select preferred highlight color:

To change the color for a particular highlight,  first, mouse-over the highlight.  Then the “Highlight Menu” appears.  Scroll down and select a different color.

Here is what it looks like with multiple color highlights on a page:

Quite simple & handy. Give it a try!

Tip of the day: Diigo Snapshot ~ create your personal wayback machine!

~ diigo ~ 3 Comments

Archive pages forever and make them searchable, too

The new Diigo Snapshot is a very powerful feature that you have got to give it a try!

When you bookmark a page to Diigo, you can choose to upload the page and capture a snapshot, even if it is dynamic or hidden behind the password protection.  If you are interested in seeing how a page changes over time, you can also capture multiple versions of the same URL at different times, ie. snapshots, of moments in time.

Cool features:

  • Bookmark and capture a snapshot of a page — including dynamic and password-protected content.
  • Archive multiple versions of the same URL ~ snapshots, of moments in time.
  • Snapshot available in both webpage (html) and screenshot (picture) formats.
  • Other online file formats such as PDF, Word (under IE browser), etc can also be archived.
  • Diigo 4.0 now enables you to search your entire Library, including archived items

Snapshot ~ it is best suited for important or temporary / dynamic pages that you really want to keep track of, and also for pages that are behind password.   Archiving dynamic web pages makes bookmarking so much more useful. For example, you can now archive your online receipts, or that promotion ad you see. Or,  you can archive your stock portfolio periodically so you can easily see how it evolved over time.

To try it, all you need to do is to check “snapshot” box when you add a bookmark via Diigo’s Firefox or IE toolbar:

Once saved,  you should see the snapshot in your library within seconds to few minutes or so.  When you see the snapshot camera icon appears, click it to view the snapshot page:

The side panel will show you the snapshot history sorted by date and format type:

Check it out and see how easy it is to build your own “personal wayback machine”, the way you want it 🙂

Tip of the day: "Get Annotated Link"

~ diigo ~ 1 Comment

Have you ever wondered how you can share your “diigoed” page with someone who may not be a diigo user?  No problem ~ it’s actually quite easy with Diigo’s  innovative “Get Annotated link”!

Diigo’s “Annotated Link” is a special URL provided by Diigo that allows you to share the current webpage complete with highlights & sticky notes to anyone.  Here is how:

  1. Click “Send >>” pull -down on the toolbar, and select  “Get Annotated Link”

  2. Copy the URL and paste it into your website, email,  or IM message….   If you only want to share your own annotations, click Options and check off your desired filter

    You can also do a quikc preview or Twitterthis right away.

Check it out and see how easy it is to share more of your online discoveries with your friends and colleagues!

Tip of the day: Use Diigo + Del.icio.us Simultaneously

~ diigo ~ 5 Comments

====================

Repost: Allowing Diigo to Play Nice with delicious
By Michael Richards, Technology Integrator, Mildred L. Day School, Arundel, Main

(Thanks, Michael for writing and sharing this handout!)
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1. Install the Diigo Toolbar

2. Restart your browser

3. Login to your diigo account on the toolbar

4. Go to your Options button on your toolbar

5. Click “Set-up >>”  to validate your del.icio.us account with diigo
Fill in the necessary information and click the “Validate account” link.  Make sure you click “Save”

6. You’re ready to rock n’ roll.  When your bookmark a site with diigo, it will send a copy (with tags) to your del.icio.us account 

(For Twitter users, you can also twitter your online discovery! Find out more here)

7. Final result in diigo

8. Final result in del.icio.us


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Also check out this video by PalmBreezeCAFE (School District of Palm Beach County)  where Lee Kolbert and Lee Keller explain how to use Diigo’s crossing posting feature and much more.

This simultaneous cross-posting feature serves dual purposes:

  • It allows you to easily keep up with your de.licio.us network while taking advantage of all the powerful features diigo has to offer.
  • It acts as a great online “backup” system.

“Double cloud coverage” ~ now, that’s a good thing 🙂

"Tip of the day" ~ Diigo's (Annotated) Twitter-This

~ diigo ~ 12 Comments

Twitter is nothing short of a phenomenon.  There are lots of reasons why Twitter has become popular, one of which is due to the many different ways to post and view Tweets.

Good news for Twitter fans:  check out  Diigo’s  “(Annotated) Twitter-This”  ~ we’ve combined the convenience of bookmarking / annotating with Twitter, and made it super easy for you to post interesting (annotated) link with a shorten URL to Twitter.   Most importantly, these are not just ordinary simple shorten urls… Diigo’s “(Annotated) Twitte-this”  also allows you to easily add highlights and sticky notes to any webpage, and then share the annotated page with your twitter followers.  Result?   They will just see an ordinary link in the twitter message; however, when clicking on the link, they can also see your highlights and sticky notes right on the webpage!  Cool, huh?!

There are two easy ways to do this:

1) Click the “Bookmark” button on the diigo toolbar to open up the bookmarking window. Simply check off  “Twitter this” and bookmark as usual.

When you click “Save”, a Twitter-this input window will pop up with a shorten URL and link title.  You can further edit the 140 characters.  Click “Send”  will automatically send this tweet for your Twitter account.  It will also automatically save it as a bookmark in your diigo account.   That’s it!

2) Similarly,  click “Send” >>  “To Twitter”  on the toolbar.    Use this when you’ve already bookmarked or don’t plan to bookmark the link into diigo.

Whatever method you prefer,  Diigo’s “(Annotated) Twitterthis”  seamlessly integrates your workflow and makes it easy to share your online discovery to Twitter without having to open up another app.   Check it out and let us know what you think!