Adobe NoteTag goes Web 2.0

We have been looking at tools that would allow annotation and tagging of information across a broad set of documents.

I came across an interesting new application from Adobe called NoteTag.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/NoteTag

I have not yet looked at it in detail but it appears similar to Microsoft OneNote in concept. It is much cruder in its interface and clearly an early proof-of-concept release. What is very interesting to me is how it uses the Web 2.0 approach for its functionality. Adobe NoteTag is openly dependent on two entirely external services: del.icio.us and Blogger.

This in itself makes it worth keeping an eye on. This represents a huge shift in how companies like Adobe are developing some of their software. It is also a further challenge to Microsoft whose OneNote product is highly dependent on internal links to Microsoft products. This does have the result that Microsoft has been able to create something which is much more functional at the moment. Indeed, the OneNote interface is the slickest I have seen in years.

But Microsoft will face challenges in getting their approach to cross-document annotation accepted by other big vendors. At the moment, for many document formats, this means simply creating an image of the output and then using an ink overlay. This means that you lose the ability to create semantic linking. There is a short screencast on this page that shows what NoteTag can do. As I said, the interface is crude and clunky. But it does also explain a bit more about how NoteTag uses Blogger and del.icio.us to provide some of its functionality. Worth watching. But the concept, and more importantly the approach, definitely are worth watching.