Trying out Hypothes

 I started my week with EME6414 by exploring one of the tools for the week, namely Hypothes. I had never heard of this tool before this week and oh how I wish I had discovered this tool sooner in my life. To give a quick introductio, Hypothes allows you to tag and highlight directly on to web pages and othtr articles and resources you are exploring on the web. Thus it functions as both a way to tag content on the web and add annotations as the means that you use to search. While I have not used this tool yet for any official research project or anything it seems like it would be tremendously helpful.

Here is a quick screenshot of what the interface looks like

Currently when trying to keep track of my thoughts in relation to some topic that I am researching, and the articles connected to them I am forced to use multiple apps. For instance, I often use Zotero to keep track of citations for articles/books that I am reading or want to read, but then use Evernote to keep track of my thoughts regarding those resources. 

So under my current method, when I think of a thought that I want to return to I first have to search evernote for the thought that I had and then see if there was a particular article or reference that I was referring to when I had that thought or found that fact. Then I use Zotero to figure out how to get back to that source. Hypothes would allow me to do both at once. In other words by adding my thoughts as annotations directly to a page containing the source I could then search those annotations for the thought I have an have direct access, not only to the source but to the location in the source that matches. How cool!

Another great thing to keep in mind with Hypothes is the options this opens up for collaboration. Not only can you search the public annotations of those using the platform but you can also utilize private groups to only share annotations with those you are collaborating with on a project.

Assuming it performs as advertised I think this will be a great tool I will use in the future.