Saving, Noting and Scrapbooking Webpages and/or Any Objects Embedded in Them

[AdamSobieski]

Introduction

Users could save, note or scrapbook webpages and/or any objects embedded in them, storing these contents for later use. Objects can be embedded in webpages in a number of ways: via semantic annotation, Web Schema annotation, or Web Components custom elements.

Resembling the buttons for backward navigation, forward navigation and reloading, a button could be added to Web browser user interfaces for saving, noting or scrapbooking webpages and/or any objects embedded in them. Similarly, a context menu item could be added for users to easily access such Web browser functionality. Similarly, a keyboard shortcut could be made available for these functionalities.

Local Storage

Users could choose to store webpages and/or any objects embedded in them locally. Object-based storage could be organized into folders. For instance, objects annotated by a Recipe schema could go into a “Recipes” folder while objects annotated by NewsArticle schema could go into a “News Articles” folder.

Features available from the extensibility of operating systems’ shells or explorer folders could be utilized to provide user experiences for object-based storage.

Cloud-based Storage

Users could choose to store webpages and/or any objects embedded in them on cloud-based storage such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, or Apple iCloud.

There are a set of interesting and worthwhile services that software developers, including third-party developers, could provide for users should they choose to save, note or scrapbook webpages and/or any objects embedded in them to their cloud-based storage. Apps, plugins and services could be developed to analyze the contents of collections of stored webpages and/or objects to provide features for users.

Services for News Articles Stored on the Cloud

Should users choose to save, note or scrapbook news articles that they encounter to their cloud-based storage, a number of advanced services could be provided. Examples of such services include, but are not limited to: (1) notifying end-users of the distribution of the sources of their collected articles, (2) notifying end-users whether their collected articles contain any misinformation or disinformation, (3) notifying end-users whether any new articles supersede any collected articles, (4) indicating to end-users the distribution of topics or keywords in their collected articles, (5) indicating to end-users the results of processing sentiment analysis tools upon their collected articles, (6) indicating to end-users any spin or persuasion in their collected articles, (7) indicating to end-users the comprehensiveness of their news search and gathering processes for given topics, (8) providing end-users with multi-document summarization, (9) providing end-users with multi-document Q&A systems, (10) providing end-users with news recommendation systems which, in a configurable manner, could recommend news articles and editorials to end-users to mitigate potential cognitive biases, e.g. confirmation biases, evident in end-users’ collections, and (11) providing end-users with other features and services.

Conclusion

Users could save, note or scrapbook webpages and/or any objects embedded in them, storing these contents for later use. Objects can be embedded in webpages in a number of ways: via semantic annotation, Web Schema annotation, or Web Components custom elements.

Resembling the buttons for backward navigation, forward navigation and reloading, a button could be added to Web browser user interfaces for saving, noting or scrapbooking webpages and/or any objects embedded in them. Similarly, a context menu item could be added for users to easily access such Web browser functionality. Similarly, a keyboard shortcut could be made available for these functionalities.

[craigfrancis]

This would work well with WebPackage's.

I'm looking at a similar problem, which is the replacement of PDF's (invoices, reports, terms and conditions, etc).

But I would stress, these packages must be self contained, i.e. no network access.

[travisleithead]

This reminds me of Microsoft Edge's Collections feature. It currently uses a combination of search result smarts, entity extraction, and ML to understand the objects that can be extracted from a page. It can perform a lot of other interesting semantic extraction as well: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4558542/organize-your-ideas-with-collections-in-microsoft-edge

[AdamSobieski]

@craigfrancis, that is an excellent point about the self-containedness of saved, stored, or scrapbooked webpages and objects embedded in them.

@travisleithead, thank you. It appears that Microsoft Edge's Collections feature already supports syncing across devices. With the cloud-based storage of webpages and embedded objects, new services could be developed for and provided to end-users.

On the topic of services which process collections of news articles, in addition to the civics-related scenarios which I have been thus far considering, e.g. mitigating misinformation and disinformation for end-users as they conduct voting-preparation activities, there are also business-related scenarios to consider. Businesspeople, e.g. stock traders or investors, could create and maintain collections of business news articles and receive the benefits of a suite of real-time services.

[yoavweiss]

Hey! The chairs noticed that this hasn't seen any recent activity and it doesn't seem like this got any implementation traction. For this kind of a proposal to move forward, it'd be good to get broader community support and implmentation champions on board.

@AdamSobieski - how do you want to proceed? Should we keep this open or do you want to close this?

[AdamSobieski]

@yoavweiss, I remain interested in these possibilities pertaining to viewing, selecting, and extracting those objects embedded in webpages, e.g., schema.org-based ones, and in how collections of these objects could be integrated into online and/or offline desktop, shell-based, folder-based browsing, viewing, and searching experiences. I am okay with this issue either remaining open or being closed.