One of the longstanding laments about our move to digital literature is how difficult and cumbersome this makes marginalia, those notes and annotations we make in the margins of printed text. A story in The New York Times earlier this year went so far as to call the future of marginalia "dim," not only due to our inability to write comments in the margins but because there's not been any good system by which to track and preserve our notes.

TechStars alum Highlighter believe it has cracked this nut, with one line of JavaScript (inserted into site's footer) that lets publishers enable marginalia on their websites and in turn allows visitors to highlight, annotate, save, and share passages and comments.

Annotations & Academics

That exercise in annotation is something most scholars and students are very familiar with, and no surprise Highlighter says it plans to market to this group specifically. By installing Highlighter on a class blog, for example, teachers will be able to enable commenting and highlighting by individual students and will also have a means to track students' level of engagement with the text. Part of what publishers (and let's use that word loosely here, after all, with blogs and Tumblr and the like, we're almost all publishers now) get with Highlighter is analytics - the ability to see who's reading, who's highlighting and who's sharing.

Visitors needn't sign up for a Highlighter account in order to write marginalia and share highlights and comments. They do, however, need an account if they want to track and store their own annotations. With an account you can also choose to make your highlights and comments public, semi-public or private, meaning that you can share your notes openly or just with those in a particular group, or keep everything to yourself.

This sharing of notes and annotations is important, but it isn't something that's widely available or supported. Take Amazon Kindle highlights. There's no way to share your notes with others. There's no way to follow other readers (or authors) and see what interests them, what they've highlighted, and what notes they've jotted down. Highlighter solves that problem

Encouraging Engaged Readers --Something Teachers, Authors, and Publishers Alike Want

This social component is important in classroom reading, but it's also great in general for building an engaged audience. Highlighter co-founder Josh Mullineaux says that authors, many of whom are increasingly turning to self-publishing efforts, will be able to take advantage of turning over sample chapters and the like to their fans, not just their editors, eliciting feedback not just on a whole piece, but on a word, a phrase, a paragraph.

Much like blog comments, publishers will be able to monitor comments and have a number of administrative controls so that comments and highlights must be pre-approved, for example, or that commenters are forced to give their name and email address before leaving or sharing notes.

Highlighter's official launch today will bring it into competition with a number of other startups that are trying to tackle the problem of digital marginalia, including OpenMargin and Readum.

What I noticed most about WebNotes were the features that weren't there, and quite frankly, weren't missed. And that focus on "being a pencil instead of a Swiss army knife" is what makes WebNotes worth a second look.

Anyone who has spent a great deal of time doing research by sifting through printed materials will immediately notice that WebNotes offers the two most critical research tools for any bookworm: sticky notes and a highlighter. But it also offers a filing system that allows users to categorize notes and pages under topical areas, as well as the option to share your findings with others.

Unlike other overly complex systems, the tool is incredibly straightforward and easy to use. Once the WebNotes toolbar is installed, it's simple to begin adding sticky notes and highlighting pages. I was impressed with the responsiveness of the app and the ease of managing my sticky notes and highlights.

After you've finished adding notes, you have the option of saving the page for your own reference or sharing it with people via email or link. The best part? The users with whom you share pages don't need WebNotes installed to access your annotations. (To see an example of the annotations in action, take a look at this marked up ReadWriteWeb page.)

Not interested in installing another toolbar? Then the bookmarklet may be more your speed. Once you're logged into the system, the bookmarklet enables a similar set of features - sticky notes, highlighter, and filing - and provides you with access to all of the sticky notes and highlights for your particular pages, whether you saved them with the toolbar or the bookmarklet, at the office or at home.

For a closed beta, the product is pretty solid. I experienced some minor issues - like putting the bookmarklet toolbar away and having to restart my browser to get it to return. But in terms of functionality, the product worked exactly as promised.

Another minor issue I noticed - which likely has more to do with the underlying technology than the tools - was the inability to float sticky notes over embedded objects like videos and widgets. This was unfortunate but it wasn't a show stopper.

Finally, as a regular Skitch user, I found myself really wishing that WebNotes had a simple arrow tool or the ability to circle things. But again, those features would be nice to have - not necessary.

Clearly, the creators - a team of young MIT alumni - have already spent a fair amount of time doing their own research. And the app shows it. For people who use the Web for research this could prove to be a very interesting offering.

I've spent the better part of a week testing WebNotes. I continue to find new uses for it. And I continue to be impressed by how well it works. I'm going to keep using it to see if I can make it a permanent part of my workflow.

Interested in trying it for yourself? WebNotes is currently in closed beta, but we've managed to wrangle a few invites to the service. If you'd like to try it, be among the first 500 users to register for WebNotes using this link. Or visit WebNotes to see demos of the product in action.