Hypothesis

I’ve been playing around with Hypothes.is lately. Partly, this is because I was using the free version of Diigo, but ran into some limits. I have a couple of different groups that I created in Diigo. I went to add a fourth person to one of the groups and discovered that I had tripped over the free account restrictions. Being over the limit (didn’t really know this limit was coming), meant that one of the people that I wanted to collaborate with couldn’t be involved.

Now, it’s only fair that for profit companies make money. But it is also up to each one of us to determine the value and worth of each opportunity that we have. I like Diigo. It is a good service. It allows for bookmarking that isn’t tied to a single browser. It allows one to share bookmarks with a group (but, apparently there are limits on that one).

So, I started looking around for alternatives. I love open source software. Partly, this is because it is usually maintained by someone who has a specific need.

My research led me to Hypothes.is. Hypothes.is is slightly different from Diigo, but really fits a need for me. It still allows me to create groups. It allows me to bookmark sites and share those. It also allows me to Annotate web pages (this is actually the main purpose of Hypothes.is).

We’re a nonprofit on a mission to bring an open conversation over the whole web. Use Hypothesis right now to hold discussions, read socially, organize your research, and take personal notes.

I added the Hypothes.is extension into Google Chrome. One of the nice things about the extension is that you have to turn it on per page. It is not always running until you turn it on. In Safari, or FireFox, it is a bookmarklet. Either way, it is easy to use. One click and it is ready to go. (This also works very smoothly on an iPad, Chromebook, heck, it even works on my phone).

The workflow goes like this.

• Turn on the Extension (or bookmarklet, depending on the browser that I’m currently using).
• Select the group that I’m bookmarking to in tool bar in the top right hand side of the page.
• Highlight the title of the page (usually) and click on the little Highlight button that pops up.
• Click on the edit button (a pencil icon) in the Annotation and add a tag (I tend to tag just about everything). This way, I can find things quickly later. Click the Post button so that the others can see my notes. (You can also post only to yourself).

There are just a couple of current shortcomings.

• There seems to be no way to remove someone from a group that you’ve created. It is easy enough to add people. I’m just concerned that someone could join a group and then turn out to be a “bad actor” (yep, I’ve been on the Internet for a while now).
• There are no settings to receive an email when others in the group have bookmarked or annotated items. (The only notification is when “someone replies to one of my annotations”).

That’s it. I really like Hypothes.is. I’m not sure if they will heed my call for the two improvements for my use case, but I hope so. Check out Hypothes.is and let me know if you like it too.