Annotea

Annotea was a W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) project aimed at providing a shared annotation system for the World Wide Web. It allowed users to collaboratively add, edit, and share annotations on web documents, independent of the server hosting the original document. The system was designed to be decentralized, allowing for multiple annotation servers to exist, promoting extensibility and interoperability.

The core idea behind Annotea was to separate annotations from the documents themselves, enabling anyone to add comments, notes, or discussions to any web resource without requiring modification of the source document. Annotations could be used for various purposes, including peer review, education, bookmarking, and collaborative knowledge building.

Annotea used RDF (Resource Description Framework) to represent annotations and HTTP for communication. This standardized approach facilitated interoperability between different Annotea clients and servers. Annotations were stored and managed on annotation servers, allowing users to access and share them with others.

The Annotea project included a client-side application that allowed users to create, view, and manage annotations within their web browser. The client communicated with Annotea servers to retrieve and submit annotations.

While the Annotea project itself is no longer actively maintained, it served as an important precursor to other annotation technologies and highlighted the potential of collaborative web annotation. The concepts and technologies developed within Annotea have influenced subsequent work in areas such as semantic web, social web, and digital humanities.