Same here. It seems like a combination of both would be quite optimal.
Prepare some strips of paper like this guy does, and make notes on them while reading. But then, also always take pictures of the page, with your strip of notes in the picture.
That would solve both of the problems he mentioned:
> The downside of this is that in order to annotations to make sense, it requires a physical copy of exact same book. Another one is that it doesn't have automatic timestamps, which somewhat bothers my #lifelogging OCD.
If you take a picture of the page and the strip of notes then you get the timestamp for free. And by including the page of text in the picture you have that context preserved as well.
I stick in one a4 size folded paper in each book I am reading.
Thoughts, references, names, dates, quotes, aha moments all go into that one page. Usually read a chapter, re-read it and then take notes, not while reading.
Page goes into a binder when I complete or drop the book. I like the index of one page summaries I've built up this way. Also nice to see my thought processes evolving.
A missing one I use is zotero. You can take a snapshot of the webpage and add notes and link related content.
For pdfs, you can use a zotfile addon where you can highlight, add notes, etc. using your favourite pdf veiwer and zotfile will then grab those highlights and notes and put them into the zotero entry for that file. You can then view these without having to open the pdf and search through them. This is particularly handy for when the pdf is large.
Of course the final advantage of zotero is that you can then easily cite things, which was its main purpose.
I would love for reMarkable to become a powerful ebook reader that supports sharable annotations. Couple this with excerpts and the ability to sync / cross-link with Obsidian.md and it would be a game changer.
If Anki cards could be generated from reMarkable or Obsidian, we'd have a full knowledge graph system with SRS. Powerful.
Zotero is great, but the current versions don't actually support web annotation. That's a shame not only because web annotation is useful, but because given its excellent support for PDF annotation, it feels like it could become a one-stop shop for annotation/organisation of documents of all kinds, something which I've been looking for in vain for some time.
Maybe someone out there in HN land will read this and make a web annotation add-on to zotero. One can hope at least. You're right hat it is the missing piece of an already very capable tool.
Hey there! Creator of Kontxt.io here, which was listed on the site. Quick correction.
- It's actually free.
- Still under development.
- It has a CMS and social network to organize, share, and discover with others.
- Anyone can add the annotative collaboration features directly to their own site with a single line of code to boost engagement and sharing to grow their audience.
New feature:
Stylize your highlights and add a promotion to every share. Perfect for fundraisers and charitable donations.
Description:
I highlighted a site. Put highlights on their own page. Added a background. And added a clickable promotion (to donate to the Red Cross) with analytics to see views and clicks.
>It has a CMS and social network to organize, share, and discover with others
What's your opinion on ActivityPub? Could you make the network compatible so that annotations can be shared on Mastodon and people with a Mastodon account can add comments to any highlight they find on Kontxt.io?
Would it be possible to export the data so that the notes, highlights and annotations can be used in case you discontinue Kontxt.io?
I am a strong believer in taking-notes so that I don't have to face a blank canvas every time I want to start a new essay.
My issue is that when I am in "the zone", I can't write. When I am very intensely focused on a topic, I am informing my internal conversation very efficiently by skimming papers. If I interrupt that with taking notes, then I am adding unnecessary friction that slows me down.
When I write notes, I feel that my ideas race ahead of my typing speed, and my working memory is not large enough to keep these ideas in a buffer. This is an issue I have had my whole life but only recently noticed it is an impediment and only now can I describe it.
All that being said, even if this wasn't an issue, there's a trade-off between how quickly you move across text and how much of it you store on notes. There's an optimal point, of course, and this can be raised with technology, focus, and practice.
Two important specifications (for me) for annotations:
1. Long term preservation (most important): I want to use the annotations in 10 years, 30 years, etc. Using them means they must be readable and be connected to the object they annotate.
2. Migration through updates to the object. That is, if I annotate a PDF of a book, and later a new revision or edition comes out, I'd like my notes to automatically transfer. I know there are some cases where that is difficult - e.g., if the annotated object isn't present in the revision - but most notes can be migrated.
I don't know anything that does #2. #1 is only available in PDFs (and especially PDF/A), afaik.
If someone can explain how to use this for Firefox/Android and/or EinkBro (Android), My Dumb Friend would appreciate the pointer.
Otherwise, hypothes.is appears largely to be a server-side implementation --- that is, included into page source, not something trivially applied client-side.
And it works as well as in Firefox desktop, which is to say, it irritates me to have to log in all the time, but otherwise peachy.
I'm not totally clear on what you mean about the implementation being "server-side". There is a server-side implementation to save the annotations. The client and annotation format is also complicated enough that I can't really imagine hacking a different version together for non-browser-based use. But at the same time, it's simple enough to apply where the JS can run that I feel like "trivial" isn't a terrible descriptor.
I recommend everyone who's looking for a single solution to annotating common online media to check out Readwise Reader. It just went into public beta. It can annotate Web pages in original or in a beautiful reading mode, PDFs, YouTube, and probably more things that I haven't tried yet.
What I am missing from tools like Hypothes.is is the ability to interact with ActivityPub accounts. There is too much frictions if others have to create a hypothes.is account before they can react to a highlight or annotation.
Several useful tips in here, but I was expecting to see some strategies for using a ReMarkable with this workflow and it's a glaring omission... perhaps this site is a bit dated now?
Hey, it's a bit dated, I've been meaning to update the post for a while, but haven't had time.
I actually bought a remarkable 2 since, but I didn't really end up using it much.
IIRC main reason was that annotations are a custom format, and they are basically drawings with highlighter (as opposed to plaintext). I think there were some projects to match them against books and try to extract text, but it didn't work reliably for me. I may be wrong though, maybe things changed since.
That said if you install Koreader on it, then you get proper annotations, and I've been meaning to try to incorporate them in my flow.
The complexity and medium-specificity of all this just shows that computer-based annotations (considered as semi-permanent artifacts) aren't worth the trouble. Our systems aren't ready for them, and will only become so when we have some kind of interoperable standardised protocols or data formats. Possibly never, but certainly not now.
Until our systems have reached some sort of maturity (not guaranteed of course), consider annotations as transient, and if an ongoing artifact is needed, incorporate them into notes or papers or whatever in your long-term format of choice.
Readwise Reader has completely changed the way I consume articles/PDFs/ebooks and annotate, especially with the Ghostreader (AI/LLM) feature. Easily my favorite app of the year - will be even better if/when an offline mode comes out.
Also Explainpaper and Elicit for research papers - hard to go back to the 'old' days after using all 3 of these.
Another intriguing project from the same author is Promnesia, a browser history enhancement extension, which surfaces context like previous visits (including referrer etc) and annotations whenever you visit a page.
31 comments
[ 818 ms ] story [ 1568 ms ] threadPrepare some strips of paper like this guy does, and make notes on them while reading. But then, also always take pictures of the page, with your strip of notes in the picture.
That would solve both of the problems he mentioned:
> The downside of this is that in order to annotations to make sense, it requires a physical copy of exact same book. Another one is that it doesn't have automatic timestamps, which somewhat bothers my #lifelogging OCD.
If you take a picture of the page and the strip of notes then you get the timestamp for free. And by including the page of text in the picture you have that context preserved as well.
I stick in one a4 size folded paper in each book I am reading.
Thoughts, references, names, dates, quotes, aha moments all go into that one page. Usually read a chapter, re-read it and then take notes, not while reading.
Page goes into a binder when I complete or drop the book. I like the index of one page summaries I've built up this way. Also nice to see my thought processes evolving.
For pdfs, you can use a zotfile addon where you can highlight, add notes, etc. using your favourite pdf veiwer and zotfile will then grab those highlights and notes and put them into the zotero entry for that file. You can then view these without having to open the pdf and search through them. This is particularly handy for when the pdf is large.
Of course the final advantage of zotero is that you can then easily cite things, which was its main purpose.
https://www.zotero.org/
http://zotfile.com/
If Anki cards could be generated from reMarkable or Obsidian, we'd have a full knowledge graph system with SRS. Powerful.
- It's actually free. - Still under development. - It has a CMS and social network to organize, share, and discover with others. - Anyone can add the annotative collaboration features directly to their own site with a single line of code to boost engagement and sharing to grow their audience.
New feature: Stylize your highlights and add a promotion to every share. Perfect for fundraisers and charitable donations.
Example: https://www.kontxt.io/document/d/QNebKRiN9ghcqTb1U8StSZJEwlT...
Description: I highlighted a site. Put highlights on their own page. Added a background. And added a clickable promotion (to donate to the Red Cross) with analytics to see views and clicks.
What's your opinion on ActivityPub? Could you make the network compatible so that annotations can be shared on Mastodon and people with a Mastodon account can add comments to any highlight they find on Kontxt.io?
Would it be possible to export the data so that the notes, highlights and annotations can be used in case you discontinue Kontxt.io?
My issue is that when I am in "the zone", I can't write. When I am very intensely focused on a topic, I am informing my internal conversation very efficiently by skimming papers. If I interrupt that with taking notes, then I am adding unnecessary friction that slows me down.
When I write notes, I feel that my ideas race ahead of my typing speed, and my working memory is not large enough to keep these ideas in a buffer. This is an issue I have had my whole life but only recently noticed it is an impediment and only now can I describe it.
All that being said, even if this wasn't an issue, there's a trade-off between how quickly you move across text and how much of it you store on notes. There's an optimal point, of course, and this can be raised with technology, focus, and practice.
1. Long term preservation (most important): I want to use the annotations in 10 years, 30 years, etc. Using them means they must be readable and be connected to the object they annotate.
2. Migration through updates to the object. That is, if I annotate a PDF of a book, and later a new revision or edition comes out, I'd like my notes to automatically transfer. I know there are some cases where that is difficult - e.g., if the annotated object isn't present in the revision - but most notes can be migrated.
I don't know anything that does #2. #1 is only available in PDFs (and especially PDF/A), afaik.
Otherwise, hypothes.is appears largely to be a server-side implementation --- that is, included into page source, not something trivially applied client-side.
* Bookmark a different site.
* Go through the bookmark management to edit that bookmark
* Replace the URL with the javascript:// in the bookmarklet here (https://maya.land/technicalities/hypothesis/dark-mode/) for dark mode, or from the ordinary Hypothes.is bookmarklet otherwise
* Navigate to a page you want to annotate
* Select that bookmarklet
And it works as well as in Firefox desktop, which is to say, it irritates me to have to log in all the time, but otherwise peachy.
I'm not totally clear on what you mean about the implementation being "server-side". There is a server-side implementation to save the annotations. The client and annotation format is also complicated enough that I can't really imagine hacking a different version together for non-browser-based use. But at the same time, it's simple enough to apply where the JS can run that I feel like "trivial" isn't a terrible descriptor.
(See also, for desktop: a user script to get around people's irritating browser policies that interfere with the client https://maya.land/user-scripts/hypothesis/ )
At which time I had Things To Say: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21661868>
I actually bought a remarkable 2 since, but I didn't really end up using it much. IIRC main reason was that annotations are a custom format, and they are basically drawings with highlighter (as opposed to plaintext). I think there were some projects to match them against books and try to extract text, but it didn't work reliably for me. I may be wrong though, maybe things changed since.
That said if you install Koreader on it, then you get proper annotations, and I've been meaning to try to incorporate them in my flow.
Until our systems have reached some sort of maturity (not guaranteed of course), consider annotations as transient, and if an ongoing artifact is needed, incorporate them into notes or papers or whatever in your long-term format of choice.
Also Explainpaper and Elicit for research papers - hard to go back to the 'old' days after using all 3 of these.
Often save a tweet and want to add personal notes.