As part of ensuring the Web is available to all people on any device, W3C published a new standard on February 10th to enable interactions beyond the familiar keyboard and mouse. EMMA, the Extensible MultiModal Annotation Markup Language, promotes the development of rich Web applications that can be adapted to accept more input modes (such as handwriting, natural language, and gestures) and output modes (such as synthesised speech) at lower cost.
“As a common language for representing multimodal input, EMMA lays a cornerstone upon which more advanced architectures and technologies can be developed to enable natural multimodal interactions. We are glad that EMMA has become a W3C Recommendation and pleased with the capabilities that EMMA brings to the multimodal interactions over the Web.”
Layers.com is a soon to launch Web Annotation service.
Another one?
Yes, another one.
There have been countless efforts to create a usable Web Annotation service. Diigo is one, Fleck is one (our own version) and there was the once popular Third Voice. Nobody seems to have found the right combination of scalability, user interface, compatibility and viral growth that you need to turn such a service into a widely used successful service.
“Imagine if you could pull a transparent layer over any webpage and then you could create upon it. You could annotate, draw graffiti, embed video, photos or do whatever you want. Then, by providing a link, others could see your layer (with the original content beneath it) and you could see layers created by other people. You could follow your friends and see all the layers they create. You could go to any webpage and see any of the layers that have been created over that site.”
They are still in closed beta but the preview video looks amazingly cool and looks like exactly the service you would want to use. Check it out and sign up at Layers.com with invitation code “create1108” for an account.
Firefly is officially a chat service but could just as easily be describes as ‘Twitter on other sites’. Site owners add two lines of Javascript to their pages and get a widget that gives their users the option to add little floating text balloons on pages.
The service looks very simple to use and extremely cute. All images are shiny and well designed and installation and usage are very simple. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that contrary to Twitter the chat is extremely fragmented. Competitors to Twitter never take off because everybody keeps coming back to Twitter. Firef.ly is everywhere an might as well be nowhere.
Then there is the debatable value of the comments. It is a problem that affects a lot of annotation, (DISCLOSURE: I started Fleck.com, another annotation service) chat and comment services. Given the chance to say something it often turns out that most people don’t actually have anything to say. As you can see in the screenshot a typical Firef.ly enriched site generates a bit of uninteresting buzz on a page but hardly any meaningful conversation.
That doesn’t mean the whole service is useless though. If you have a site with a large userbase and tight community it might be interesting to see what happens if you add Firef.ly to your website. Give it a try and let us know how it works for you.
Google has acquired Omnisio, a service that allows users to annonate video’s and mash-up videos. Omnisio was founded by three Australians about six months ago. Youtube had its own “remixing” feature before, but had been abandoned ever since. Google announced that the Omnisio team will join Youtube, to integrate the technology in a attempt to make Youtube more interactive.
Another cool feature that the service might bring to Youtube is the ability to synchronize Slideshare presentations. Users where also able to import videos from Youtube, Google video and Blip.tv.
Omnisio is a Y Combinator company, a investor in early stage ideas. They also successfully sold Reddit. TeaxtPayme and Anywhere.FM. Nobody mentioned any numbers about the Youtube deal, but Techcrunch heard whispers of a deal in the $15 (€10) million range.
Most functions on the Omnisio page have been disabled, with a notification that refers to the Youtube page.
Viddix also aimes at the same market by offering the possibility to show presentation slides next to video’s.
No, this has nothing to do with tasty fish, the name of this service refers to the process of fine tuning a design. Irish design agency Spoiltchild Design came up with a handy tool that helps you and your colleagues to address every detail in an image, without bothering to describe the spot you’re talking about. You just put a note on the desired spot and email the image to a colleague, who can also easily edit the picture as well.
This can come in particularly handy when discussing a site design. I know from my own experience that instead of sending a 3-page email, you just paste some notes on the design. One minor thing though, this experience comes from using Fleck. This Amsterdam-based service offers you the possibility to note specific places on any web page with a bookmarklet or fancy flash browser tool. A disclosure is in order here, as Fleck sponsors this blog. I think though, that for tech-savvy users, Fleck is the better tool. Yet for people who just want to add some text to an image, Finetuna is a good alternative since it’s really simple.
A bit too simple maybe, as Finetuna could use some extra features like an embed option and Twitter integration. Speaking of which, I’ve praised web development companies in the past who make Twitter mash-ups to promote their services. These companies add something to the web, while working on their PR. It’s probably the same story with Spoiltchild Design, as there are no advertisements on Finetuna, nor do visitors have to register. The consultants of Spoiltchild just needed a tool like this and then decided to make it publicly available. And before you know it, some blogger mentions their company name three times.
I’ve read some rather interesting news on Gabe Jacobs’ blog. He reports that YouTube has added an annotation feature. Users can now give background IN the video, instead of the ‘more info’ box. Comes in handy when you don’t have the time to edit the whole video in iMovie. It reminds me of the Flickr note-functionality, only this one looks more fancy as it showed against a moving background:
As Gabe notes, YouTube should add a public note feature as well. On one condition though, that users must switch it on. Otherwise other people can ruin your video by adding Bob Saget-like lines. We can’t have that, as we don’t want to go back to the pre-YouTube area. Now you can just skip the America’s Most Funniest homevideos-like content. Let’s keep it that way.
Written on 12th February 2009
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