Presentation of Context:Web Annotations (& Pundit)

during the StoM Project (May 2014 – Apr. 2016)

Luca De Santis – Net7 SrlStoM Final Review – Bruxelles, June 21st 2016

Why this presentation

• Presenting the most relevant events happened in the two years of the project regarding web annotation– (and why Pundit has become a relevant technology in this

Arena…)

Annotations? What are we talking about?• Def. “Annotation, or tagging, is about attaching names,

attributes, comments, descriptions, etc. to a document or to a selected part in a text.”

• My favourite definition when explaining Pundit: “Marginalia on digital documents”

Does it make sense (to talk about annotations on the

web)? #1Watch an excerpt from W3C TPAC Conference, Santa Clara, CA Oct 28-31,

2014

To see this part: http://bit.ly/291k8NG – for the whole video: https://youtu.be/m2cJNDs7y2Y

Does it make sense (to talk about annotations on the

web)? #2Watch “Perspectives on Annotating Scholarship” – Hypothes.is, published Dec

1st 2015

To see this part: http://bit.ly/28UKTWT – for the whole video: https://youtu.be/_XBBWD1OjPw

Yes it makes sense!

• Why? See the video excerpts shown before!– Growing need to provide tools to contextualise user generated

content, beyond simple “conky” comments– To provide powerful tools for students, researchers,

professionals (but also for general users…)– It might be a killer app for certain domains (e.g Scholarship)

• How should it be done?– Standard-based– Open interoperable systems– Avoiding locked-in, closed systems from commercial vendors

• Who did in the last months work in this “Arena”?– Evolutions in the Market– W3C– New Alliances

What has happened during StoM: the market• Who is annotating the web?• Note managing platforms

– Evernote– Microsoft OneNote

• Pure annotation platforms– Hypothes.is– Genius

What has happened during StoM: the market• Who is annotating the web?• Note managing platforms

– Evernote– Microsoft OneNote

• Pure annotation platforms– Hypothes.is– Genius

• How are they doing?– Quite good!

What has happened during StoM: the market• Who is annotating the web?• Note managing platforms

– Evernote– Microsoft OneNote

• Pure annotation platforms– Hypothes.is– Genius

• How are they doing?– Quite good!

It reached 100 million users worldwide in 2014. Now probably they are around 150 million!

What has happened during StoM: the market• Who is annotating the web?• Note managing platforms

– Evernote– Microsoft OneNote

• Pure annotation platforms– Hypothes.is– Genius

• How are they doing?– Quite good!

OneNote has been integrated in the Microsoft Edge browser, allowing users to create annotations on any web page (basically drawings over a screenshot)

What has happened during StoM: the market• Who is annotating the web?• Note managing platforms

– Evernote– Microsoft OneNote

• Pure annotation platforms– Hypothes.is– Genius

• How are they doing?– Quite good!

It received multiple investments. Amongst its backers there are also big names like the Shuttleworth Foundation

What has happened during StoM: the market• Who is annotating the web?• Note managing platforms

– Evernote– Microsoft OneNote

• Pure annotation platforms– Hypothes.is– Genius

• How are they doing?– Quite good!

Multiple rounds of VC investments!

What has happened during StoM: the market• Who is annotating the web?• Note managing platforms

– Evernote– Microsoft OneNote

• Pure annotation platforms– Hypothes.is– Genius

• How are they doing?– Quite good!

I said multiple!

(In total they raised around 97,7 million $ in VC funding!)

What has happened during StoM: the market• Who is annotating the web?• Note managing platforms

– Evernote– Microsoft OneNote

• Pure annotation platforms– Hypothes.is– Genius

• How are they doing?– Quite good!

• None of them supports a semantic data model!

What has happened during StoM: W3C

• The “Web Annotation Working Group” was born– Launched on July 15th 2014– https://www.w3.org/annotation/

• Working on the Web Annotation standard

• Web Annotation Data Model– Evolution from the previous Open Annotation “draft”– First working draft December 11th 2014 – Latest update March

31st 2016 (still a draft!)

• Pundit supports the W3C Web Annotation Data Model!

W3C Web Annotation: the vision

https://www.w3.org/annotation/diagrams/annotation-architecture.svg

What has happened during StoM: AAK

• Annotating All Knowledge Coalition

– https://hypothes.is/annotating-all-knowledge/

• Founded by Hypothes.is in 2015

• Goal: “to create an open, interoperable annotation layer over web content”.

• Who: scholarly publishers, platforms, libraries, and technology organizations

What has happened during StoM: AAK

• Annotating All Knowledge Coalition

– https://hypothes.is/annotating-all-knowledge/

• Founded by Hypothes.is in 2015

• Goal: “to create an open, interoperable annotation layer over web content”.

• Who: scholarly publishers, platforms, libraries, and technology organizations

• Pundit Joined in June 2016

iAnnotate 2016

• Held in Berlin on May 19th-20th

• First time in Europe

• Supported by Hypothes.is, W3C Germany/Austria, DFKI, Deutsche Telekom, SpringerNature, Microsoft

• Focus on Annotation Technologies, & Use Cases

iAnnotate 2016

• Net7 presented Pundit at the conference!– See the video at https://

t.co/mrXyTSSv4W

• Held in Berlin on May 19th-20th

• First time in Europe

• Supported by Hypothes.is, W3C Germany/Austria, DFKI, Deutsche Telekom, SpringerNature, Microsoft

• Focus on Annotation Technologies, & Use Cases

Conclusion

• Many events happened in the last two years in the world of Web Annotation and Pundit kept the pace!

• Pundit provides now (June 2016) one of the most (the most?) compliant W3C Web Annotation Data Model implementation

• Pundit provides a semantic data model, a distinguished value respect its main competitors

• Pundit main codebase (both for the client and for the annotation server) is open source

• Start annotating the web now with Pundit!

http://thepund.it

Thanks for your attention

http://www.stom-project.eu/

http://www.netseven.it/

@lucadexhttp://www.lucadex.it

https://it.linkedin.com/in/lucadex