There’s a new Web 2.0 service called Fleck, which lets you make annotations on websites in a graphical format.
For starters, here’s what I did for my own blog.
Fleck will probably be useful in making notes on academic websites and other sources which currently do not have any feedback mechanism, such as the comments feature in most blogs.
It can also be used as an instructional tool, guiding beginners on using certain technical online services.
Fleck has some room for improvement. For one, it is dependent on the annotator’s screen resolution in its placement of notes. I’m using my Dell widescreen laptop, which is set at 1280×800. My current blog layout is set to 700 pixels wide. If you viewed the above link at a different resolution, some of my labelling may not make sense as the notes would be pointing to the wrong areas.
For blogs which are comments-enabled, it is very unlikely that Fleck will be used at all, because extra effort would be required from the person posting the comment. His comment will also be lost as most other readers will not think of going to Fleck to see if they missed anything (unless Fleck suddenly becomes as popular as Twitter, which is unlikely).
Still, it is fairly unique in its offerings and will probably be around for a while.
[Update: Duh, just learnt of a similar homegrown service, Sharedcopy. Why not support them instead! ]
Technorati tags: Fleck, Web2.0
Comments
This looks a lot like the long-discontinued Third Voice:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/04/42803
Died for lack of ad revenue, it seems.
Haha, I said the same thing: ThirdVoice. But I think times have changed.
On the limitations of Fleck, I think that’s where SharedCopy does better… our very own Choon Keat with his latest web service is like web page annotation on crack. It’s del.icio.us + tinyurl + annotation + Google Cache (saves the page) all in one!
Both services are neat as they both do not require user to install anything!
Hi Van,
Thought I should let you know that I did pose an interview question to Choon Keat about how SharedCopy distinguishes itself from Fleck. That question came about because of your post. 🙂
Heyy thanks, BL! Good to know.