The Serendipity of Annotation

by Richard Reeve on March 15, 2009

in @CCSeed

Strange annotations
Image by gadl via Flickr

“Chance” would have it that while seated in the bloggers lounge at sxsw, I’d end up next to Bobby Fishkin (@bobbyfishkin), the mind behind Reframe It, a web annotating tool that captures and shares your annotations of any webpage.   Fishkin has an interesting story.  He spent four years studying under Harold Bloom at Yale.  His project tracked the annotations twenty authors made to their copies Shakespeare’s complete works.  His insights into the annotating mind provided the context and vision for the functionality of Reframe It.

What’s of interest to me is how annotation can add a new layer to ones social media strategy.  Keep an eye out for my future tweets with the embedded reframeit url to see how this potential unfolds.

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  • Zoe

    Richard -- True indeed. Great way to envision it...

  • Zoe

    Really intriguing...heading over to check out Reframe It....

    <abbr>Zoe´s last blog post..Community Contemplation: Get Paid For Doing What You Love?</abbr>

  • Hey Zoe,
    Many authors scribble from the margins of one book into the pages of their own...It's like pulling a flame from Prometheus' torch.

  • Hi Richard -

    I must be experiencing serendipity to some degree as last night I was at dinner with some friends and we were discussing Shakespeare and annotation. Then today I followed your tweet here, and this post [finally] brought me to Reframe It. After hearing about it here and there I decided to jump in and explore - thank you.

    Anyhow, I was surprised that there wasn't a Twitter group at Reframe It yet, but there is now. The only other potentially similar group is called Social Media Education but it is restricted.

    I'm interested to know what you think about this tool for annotating the web.

    - Cody

  • Hi Cody,
    Can't tell you glad I am to be a part of that story you share. Each time what I do here has has such efficacy, I know that what I'm doing to some degree works. I'm still making my way into Reframe It, but plan doing a review of the software after I do 50 or so annotations.

  • It was an absolute pleasure finally meeting you Richard. And when I did meet you I saw that you were writing a post and it intrigued me so I had to find out what you were writing about ;) Thanks for the link to Reframe It! Looks like an awesome way to comment. Signing up now.

    Best.
    k.

    <abbr>Khayyam´s last blog post..Hot Buttered Soul #15</abbr>

  • So glad you took the time to track it down Khayyam. I've been enjoying meeting so many folks that I've been swimming in the twitter stream with. The portrait in your avatar captures an accurate glimpse of your spirit.

  • Read a little more about ReframeIt and find the whole idea of a "transparency engine for the web" very compelling. Looking forward to following your blog as it unfolds on this subject.

  • Hi Susan,
    The interesting thing about Fishkin is that he took me into his study of the Shakespearean annotation as he had a copy on his laptop. He pointed out his delight in how great writers like Tolstoy responded to passages in Hamlet, how their minds wrestled with the content, how their own ideas were shaped by the engagement. He comes to the process of web annotation with this value at the heart of his vision. The reason I'm quite smitten with it comes from my own discovery of the value of annotation from my years digging into the archive of the beat poet Charles Olson. In Olson's books I would track the development of his ideas into the margins, and then out into his notebooks until they would appear in his poems. I'm reminded of Caliban injunction to burn Prospero's books, "for without them he's but a sot."

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