Google SideWiki Brings Comments To Everyone 221
Rophuine writes "Google has launched a product called SideWiki. It takes the form of a plug-in to Firefox and Internet Explorer which allows users to mark up the web by adding comments which can be seen by anyone else running SideWiki."
Google's version joins a long line of attempts to impose a layer of comments on the Web, including
Microsoft's Smart Tags and Third Voice.
Re:No Chrome? (Score:4, Informative)
1960: Ted Nelson, Project Xanadu (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, it's a great idea, the only problem is making it actually work. Some folks have been trying for almost fifty years. [wikipedia.org]
Warning - It installs a bunch of crap (Score:1, Informative)
The installation installs a toolbar that is stuffed full of all sorts of crap that I DO NOT WANT, like trying to get me to log on to google and sending usage data to google and a redundant google search field. Hopefully someone will do this better, like Third Voice used to do it.
Re:Terrific. (Score:3, Informative)
"astroturf" means fake testimonials, not ads, which are generally called "spam".
So saying "you can get this cheaper elsewhere" is not "astroturfing". A fake post from a "customer" saying "I bought this and it is wonderful" or "it really sucks" would be astroturfing.
Of course this will collect plenty of both spam and astroturf.
I had a plugin for Netscape 4 that did this (Score:3, Informative)
Back in 1996 or so I had a Netscape 4 plugin that did this.
Someone tries to do it again every few years.
*sigh*
People need to study their history.
Google may succeed in this because of the wide distribution of their toolbar, but that is the only difference in this effort.
wiki ? (Score:3, Informative)
It's called a wiki, but from what I've seen I don't see any wiki functionality at all. It looks a lot more like a blog, or rather the comment section of a blog to me.
Why do the call it wiki when I can leave a comment, but not participate in a kind of "review of this page" site? Basically, when it is not a wiki?