Annotation Stickies with Automatically Generated Bidirectional Links between Web Contents by Web Agents

Abstract

We propose a web annotation system that has functionalities of stickies on web pages and bidirectional links between the stickies. The stickies allow for important parts of a web page which contains large amounts of data to be highlighted. We have implemented a positioning method based on the Document Object Model (DOM), as well as a new method for placing stickies which depends on web contents related to the information referenced by the stickies. By using web agents, the system automatically generates bidirectional links between stickies referencing similar information and subsequently categorizes them. Such stickies and links can be used as user preferences, and have the potential to become a much better alternative to bookmarks and tags. The preferences proposed here can be applied to develop a new search engine and a recommendation system.