Description

In this session, we’re going to explore web clippers—those handy browser extensions that help you gather bookmarks, highlights, and notes from websites to organize in your personal knowledge management (PKM) system.

Here's what we'll cover:

— Daniel's story of creating the Roam Highlighter extension

— An overview of the different Web Clippers everyone is using

— A discussion on workflows and different use cases

— A demo of an early prototype of a PKM-specific web clipper

It’ll be a relaxed and interactive session, where there is also room to share your own methods for managing bookmarks, highlights, and notes in your PKM system.

Notes

Daniel described how he started off using Dynalist, an app created by the Obsidian team, but he missed having a highlighter option. He created his own highlighter for Dynalist, which was a perfect notetaking setup.

Next, he used Roam Research, but it didn’t have a highlighting web clipper, so he created an extension that received a lot of attention and positive feedback. Now, he is working on a web clipper of his own.

Daniel asked the attendees to use a QR code to input their current web clipper. He shared the responses on screen, which ranged from Notion and Evernote to copy/paste and bookmarks, and asked a few people to expand further on why they use a certain web clipper or method.

He discussed workflows and the pros and cons of some of the various web clipper options, and mentioned that some apps share what others have highlighted previously, which is nice for crowdsourcing or seeing what others found interesting on a web page.

Next, he asked the group to imagine what their perfect PKM web clipper would look like and what it would do for them. Then, he demonstrated an early prototype of the PKM-specific web clipper he’s developing, called Markway, which incorporates the following ideas:

1. The app opens in a companion window to the browser for easier note-taking.
2. It has a modular, powerful editor, allowing the user to add headings, format text, etc. for better note-taking.
3. There is a fast, easy-to-use highlighter:
   1. Select text and it is copied into the window automatically.
   2. Drag and drop images from the web page to the window.
4. It’s possible to easily capture the title, date, etc. by clicking the option in the contextual menu.
5. There will be AI-powered feature enhancements, such as:
   1. AI variables: an example of a use case for this would be allowing the user to capture just the recipe from a long blog post with extraneous information.
   2. Auto-highlight
   3. Notes and annotations
   4. Database properties