Woohoo. I just created my first annotated webpage using JKN. It’s an interview with Benny Morris, who wrote ‘The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem’, and it’s absolutely fascinating reading. My annotations aren’t too deep (half are things like ’shocking!’), but there are a few important ones, like the one at the very end. It’s amazing to hear this guy, who has literally spent decades enumerating the shocking events of 1948 justifying ethnic cleansing and advocating building a ‘cage’ for Palestinians without betraying any conscience at all. Even so, it’s better to hear someone who at least acknowledges the war crimes committed, rather than someone who stubbornly refuses to hear any criticism at all.
I really liked being able to make notes as I go along, because that’s when my thoughts are most coherent and best-expressed. It’s a bit of a shame annotations are attached to single words (rather than entire paragraphs) because you wonder sometimes where exactly to attach them. Still, the JKN tool is very usable, and lets you save to del.icio.us or Digg or wherever after you’re done with your annotations.
Protonotes is a similar services – less functionality but easier to use, expecially when you need to continuously share notes with a large group. http://www.protonotes.com/