Thing 6

I already have some familiarity with Del.icio.us (despite not having my own account) so for this week's task I decided to look into Diigo in more detail.

My overall impression of Diigo is that it is incredibly comprehensive, offering not just one, but a multitude of functions and thus distinguishing it from other web 2.0 applications. To put it crudely, it could be said that Diigo is both a personal organiser and a social networking tool.  However, both of these facets have many layers. Diigo aims to provide all of the tools that a researcher might need including a means to bookmark favourite websites and the ability to develop a personal taxonomy to organise websites with personalised tags. Indeed the social bookmarking and tagging is one of the ways in which Diigo facilitates collaboration and social networking as it enables you to find others who have bookmarked the same pages or used the same tags.  I felt that one of the most impressive features of Diigo is that it takes interactivity to the next level, enabling users to treat the computer screen as if it were paper. Users are able to 'highlight' passages on screen,  add 'sticky notes', and 'photocopy' (take screen shots) of web-pages. This almost 3D-like interactivity that Diigo offers is, I believe, a glimpse into computing of the future.  Overall, I was very impressed with Diigo, it truly seemed to offer something different and exciting. For a PhD student it would be the ideal tool as it is a way of comprehensively managing all aspects of a large research project. However, I did get the sense that it is a tool that requires complete commitment; it seems that to get the most from it, all aspects should be fully embraced.