Annotorious

We read. We take notes. We share. We learn. And in the past couple of decades, we’ve been doing more of all of this on our computers and, more recently, handheld devices. The problem is that we don’t really have a great piece of software to facilitate the entire experience. That’s where Annotator comes in.

Working in partnership with the Hypermedia team under the Comparative Media Studies group at MIT, the open-source developers at Annotator have been building the code-base to turn any piece of digital text into a place for collaborative learning. As the project’s code-base moves closer to a full public launch, Skeptic was called in to research, design, and build the tool’s handheld interface.

The result is Annotorious, a beautiful browser-based application that allows users to read, annotate, and share content on their mobile devices. If you’re curious about installing Annotator (http://okfnlabs.org/annotator/) onto your website or mobile app, check out its GitHup repo here (https://github.com/okfn/annotator/). If, on the other hand, you’re more the read-and-jot type, rather than tinker-and-build, stay tuned for the full Annotorious experience.

annotorious-4.jpg
A complex flowchart of mobile app screens connected by lines, showing various user interfaces and options in a detailed app design process.
Screenshots of three mobile app interfaces. The first shows a login page for an app called Annotorious with fields for username and password, and options for forgotten password, creating an account, and continuing without login. The second shows a member profile page for Zack Kaiser with tabs for marks, documents, folders, and groups, with a list of book titles under the documents tab. The third image displays part of a text or story in an app, with navigation options at the bottom labeled Docs, Folders, Groups, and Search.
Screenshot of a mobile app displaying a list of documents and a detailed view of the novel 'Jaws' by Peter Benchley, published in 1971, with a description of the story set in Amity, Long Island.
Screenshot of an e-book reader displaying pages from Alice in Wonderland with highlighted text, annotation options, and a progress bar at the top.