Save and share stories from the web

Once the web page loads, click the ‘Join Deepmemo’ button to the right of the page. After choosing a username, a display name (this is the name that other users will see, rather than the username, which you will use to sign in) and a password, enter the words that appear in the Humanness box and click ‘I accept. Create my account’. Wait for the confirmation email to arrive and click the verification link it contains. Once an account has been verified, there are two options available: install the Deepmemo browser toolbar, or work with a ‘bookmarklet’. We’ll look at the toolbar option first, and explain bookmarklets later.

If your preferred web browser is Internet Explorer (IE) or Firefox then opting to use the toolbar is recommended because it provides access to all Deepmemo’s features. The website will automatically detect which browser is being used and will display the appropriate download link. Click the ‘Download and install IE toolbar’ or ‘Add toolbar to Firefox’ link and run through the installation process. If you are using an alternative browser such as Safari or Opera skip to Step 9 of this Workshop.

In the case of Firefox, after restarting the browser a new toolbar will be visible in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Start by clicking the key icon at the far-right of the toolbar to log into the account you created. Now it will be possible to start selecting portions of text on web pages to save. Left-click and drag with the mouse to highlight some text, or text and images, on a site you have visited and click the ‘Save quotation’ toolbar button – the one featuring paper and scissors.

The Deepmemo (‘dm’) button in the toolbar will animate while the current selection is saved, and once this returns to the standard ‘dm’ icon more quotations can be saved. As well as simply snipping sections of a website, Deepmemo can also be used to save comments about sections that have been highlighted. This works in much the same way as standard quotation saving, but this time the ‘Save and mark quotation’ button needs to be clicked ­ the paper, scissors and pencil icon.

This time, when you save a question a dialogue box will appear allowing the current quotation to be assigned a personalised title. You can also add keywords for ease of searching at a later date. Additional information can be added in the Comment box,­ either as a personal reminder or to share with others,­ and you will then need to decide whether the information should be made public or private. Private quotations cannot be seen by anyone else, but the other options available in the Access menu make it possible to share quotations with anyone online, or only those logged into Deepmemo.

The final option when making use of the ‘Save and mark quotation’ feature is to automatically post the snippet to a blog. Currently, only blogs hosted by Blogger are supported, but other services may be added over time. The first time this option is selected, Deepmemo must be granted access to your blog, but this needs to be done only once. Having entered any necessary information and selected the options to use, click the Save button.

While Deepmemo makes it incredibly easy to store information about websites that have been visited, the tool can also be used to store any type of note. Rather than associating such a note with a website or text snippet, click the ‘Create note’ toolbar button, featuring a pencil and paper, and fill in the dialogue box. The options available are the same as when making use of the ‘Save and mark quotation’ feature.

The Internet Explorer version of Deepmemo works in much the same way, but rather than a toolbar that integrates into the program interface, the various options are accessed via a floating panel. This works in the same way as the toolbar that appears in Firefox, but has an extra section that displays the number of quotes that have been saved from the currently displayed website. It also shows the total number of quotes that have been saved.

The Deepmemo bookmarklet is designed to be used with browsers that do not support the toolbar, though it can be used with any browser if desired. To use it, visit the Deepmemo download area at www.deepmemo.com/account/gettoolbar.php and drag the ‘Save to Deepmemo’ bookmarklet to the Bookmarks or Favorites menu of the browser. To save some text, highlight it on a web page and then click the bookmarklet -­ the toolbar’s more advanced features are not available.

Whichever method has been used to store images and snippets of text from web pages, they can then be accessed through your Deepmemo account. To visit your Deepmemo account, either click the ‘dm’ button in the Deepmemo toolbar, or visit www.deepmemo.com/pg/blog/username, replacing ‘username’ with the one you chose earlier. Any quotes that have been saved from websites will be displayed in descending chronological order and long quotes will be truncated to save space ­ to view a full quote, click the ‘read more’ link.

Whenever a quote is saved from a website, a screenshot of the site is automatically taken. This can be displayed by clicking the ‘View screenshot’ icon beneath the quote. Other icons beneath the quote can be used to toggle between public and private modes (the padlock), editing the quote (the pencil) or deleting it (the recycle bin). To the bottom-right of each quote is a Comments link. This can be used to view any comments that have been added to public quotes, or to add comments of your own.

Deepmemo will automatically suggest keywords, known as tags, for each quote you save. These are displayed at the bottom of the quote itself. Hover the mouse pointer over one of the words that is displayed and the tick and cross icons will appear. Click the tick to accept a tag and add it to the quote or the cross to delete it. Tags will then appear in a list to the left-hand side of the page and by clicking individual words it is possible to jump to any quote which has that tag attached to it.

Over time it is very easy to build up a large collection of stored quotes and, while the tagging system makes it quite easy to home in on quotes that relate to a particular subject, there are two other tools available. The calendar, for instance, can be used to find quotes that were created on a particular date. The search bar, meanwhile, appears to the left of the page and can be used to search for keywords that appear in quotes. This is probably the easiest way to sort through a very large collection of quotes.

One of the most appealing aspects of Deepmemo is the option to share quotes with others. This could be used to simply share interesting stories with friends or to share information from several sites about the same subject. Click the icon featuring four green arrows that appears beneath a stored clip and use the ‘Add contact’ box to the left to add the email address. Click ‘people with whom the information should be shared’ in the ‘E-mail contacts’ section and then click Send to send out a sharing email.