Diigo 4.0 Release

I have been a nut for social bookmarking tools for quite some time.  It started a long time back with Delicious and then moved to Ma.gnolia and recently has been on Diigo.  The Diigo tool offers the additional feature of annotation, which really sets it apart from other services.  Regardless, I have been storing my bookmarks online for a long time now, and I have used many services over the years.

For the past five or so months I have been working with the new Diigo 4.0 release in it’s alpha stage, and the work that the Diigo team has done on this new version is now publically available at http://www.diigo.com/.  I wanted to record some videos to show off some of the new features and give people a glimpse of some of what is new in this release.  I recorded 6 videos, each about 4-5 minutes long, covering some of the different aspects of this new release.  I used Jing to capture the videos and Windows Movie Maker to do some minor edits.  The audio was recorded through my Blue Snowball which I love.  Hopefully the audio quality is good (I know I talk way too fast at times).

I will let the videos tell most of the story, but I wanted to make a couple general comments on this new Diigo release.

1. The UI for Diigo is much cleaner now.  I feel that it is easier to find things, especially for new people to Diigo.  Experienced users may find it difficult to find things initially, but I am sure that will pass.
2. Diigo has made huge strides in terms of search speed and accuracy.  This is perhaps the most noticeable thing after the UI changes.

Without further delay, lets get on with the videos.  You can also check out some Diigo recorded videos on Vimeo.

Video #1 – Diigo 4.0 Introduction
This video looks at the new My Library bookmarks UI, the snapshot view and the new meta view.

Video #2 – Diigo 4.0 My Network
This is perhaps my favorite new feature of Diigo.  This is Diigo’s social sharing and discovery tool and if you can build the right network of people it can be a great way to find new content.

Video #3 – Diigo 4.0 Groups UI
The groups UI is perhaps the area of Diigo where the change to the UI will have the most impact.  They made the right choice combining the discussions and the bookmarks into a single river of information.

Video #4 – Diigo 4.0 Other Stuff
This video highlights some of the minor changes at Diigo to tagging, lists and the friend function.



Video #5 – Diigo 4.0 Bookmarking with Google Chrome
This video walks through a sample bookmarking exercise using Google Chrome and the Diigolet.  I will be posting a more indepth review of the Diigo toolbar in Firefox later this week.



Video #6 – Diigo 4.0 Search
As I mentioned above, searching is much nicer in Diigo 4.0.  I walk through some of the changes in this video.



I will be following up with a few more posts, and a couple of additional videos through the week.