SideWinder: Check Google SideWiki Bookmarklet
Posted by Stuart Robertson | tools
SideWinder is a quick and easy way to check posts about a website in Google’s new SideWiki service.
SideWiki is a service hosted by Google that allows users to leave comments about any website they are visiting for other SideWiki users to view. This isn’t a new idea, and other companies have tried to introduce similar services in the past. What makes SideWiki more likely to succeed is it’s ease of use by being integrated into Google’s search toolbar and the large number of established users that represents.
Despite this you may not be using Google Toolbar, or otherwise not want to install it just to check into what people are saying about a particular website. In that case you can still get the SideWiki information through Google’s new SideWiki API.
SideWinder is a simple implementation of this API letting you add a bookmarklet to your browser and click it to load SideWiki data for any website you might be visiting.
Drag this link to your browser bookmarks toolbar: SideWinder
Click on the SideWinder bookmark to load SideWiki info.
Note: I put this script together this afternoon, and as I only heard about SideWiki this morning, and the API this afternoon it’s entirely possible I’ll be able to update this script to make it more user-friendly and useful over the next few days.
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Stuart Robertson is a Freelance Web Designer and Consultant, the Web Manager for the University of Guelph, and Faculty in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Guelph-Humber.
September 24, 2009 at 7:57 am
what could be treated as a kind of web graffiti certainly still raises concerns. As a veteran of “stickie” services like Diigo, I will grant that I prefer the aesthetic of the sidebar’s framing mechanism to cluttered adhesions on the content itself, but I’m not sure thatDesignMemeis right to celebrate just yet. Note, however, that RISD’s dean John Maeda has used SideWiki and is featured in the promo video above. TechCrunch provides more history of the idea here.
September 27, 2009 at 11:25 am
I want to try this, but I don’t want to.
LOL.
Something seems “wrong” with this idea.
RM
September 29, 2009 at 2:33 am
[...] SideWinder Bookmarklet Checks SideWiki without Google Toolbar [...]
September 29, 2009 at 8:37 am
I agree – I’m really not sure I like the idea of SideWiki. I wrote this bookmarklet so I could check it out without having to install Google’s Toolbar.
October 8, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I’m positive that IE5 or IE5.5 or something included a “feature” like Sidewiki which was hastily removed when people kicked up a fuss. But now I can’t find any record of it – not really sure what the product name was. Anyone have a clue?
Slightly amused that there appear to be no Sidewiki comments on this page to test with
Thanks for a nice tool!
October 9, 2009 at 10:09 am
I tried the Bookmarklet, but I wish there was a way to comment and completely replicate the Toolbar functionality.
In the meantime, you can completely hide the Google toolbar and keep the Sidewiki icon unobtrusively .
Hope that helps some people out.