Post Published on October 25, 2013.
Last Updated on April 29, 2016 by davemackey.
Diigo is a free service which offers higher-tiered features for those who need them. I’ve been paying for the Basic service ($20/year) for the last two or three years – and have no intent of canceling. Someday I might consider upgrading to Premium ($40/year). When I pay for something online – it means I really like it (duhh) and that would be the case with Diigo.
Diigo is a “knowledge management” tool. It allows you to highlight text and create sticky notes on webpages; create a library of links, pages, notes, pictures; archive webpages online for future reference, collaborate with family, friends, or strangers; and so on.
I use Diigo primarily for highlighting. As I’m reading and see something memorable I highlight it with Diigo – it is saved to my Diigo account and I can easily search Diigo to find the reference at a future time when I need it.
I also use Diigo for bookmark management. I moved from Firefox to Chrome as my primary web browser and the one feature I really miss from Firefox is its full-featured bookmark management. Diigo helps ease this pain a bit.
Diigo also provides one with the easy ability to categorize and tag ones links and highlights – this is a huge help in managing a large amount of information…and it doesn’t forget to provide users with intuitive security controls allowing you to decide what others can see. For example, there may be some topics you are researching (especially for personal reasons) you don’t want everyone else to be aware of (i.e. “how to deal with my annoying mother-in-law” [mine isn’t annoying btw]).
There are other tools out there. Zotero is one I’ve used in the past. It is pretty powerful and more aimed at academics. I’d suggest that these are the two frontrunners currently available. Anyone have any other suggestions? Or a preference between Diigo and Zotero?
If you want to see my publicly shared highlights, notes, and links you can see them here: https://www.diigo.com/user/davemackey.