Overlay Web
From P2P Foundation
Refers to the ability to annotate the web, independent from the original author's intentions.
Definition
From http://www.communitywiki.org/en/WebAnnotation#OverlayWeb
The OverlayWeb makes the entire world wide web editable.
The OverlayWeb is a second web that twins the world wide web. When surfing the OverlayWeb, you aren’t limited to the original author’s version of any webpage. The owner’s version of the webpage is just one branch in the revision history tree for the page. You, the person browsing the page, decide which branch or branches to focus your attention on.
Context
Web Annotation, from http://www.communitywiki.org/en/WebAnnotation
WebAnnotation is the idea that the whole web should be open to edit by those reading the web sites. People could then leave notes for themselves and each other, about the site specifically or about the content of the site (and those notes would then show up other places where the content shows up.)
There are several ways to do WebAnnotation:
- The most basic kind of annotation is bookmarking (Social Bookmarking). One person tells other people that a site is interesting enough to link to.
- Another simple kind of annotation involves having users rate web sites. One person tells other people a little more information on how interesting it is.
- A more complicated kind is to have a parallel web, an Overlay Web, as it were. When several people write comments about a particular web page, one who views (through the lens of a OverlayWeb) that web page, sees all those comments.
- Another is to annotate names and phrases, which we call Phrase Annotation. When several people write comments about a particular phrase, one who views (through the lens of a —-) any web page that contains that phrase, sees all those comments."
(http://www.communitywiki.org/en/WebAnnotation)
Examples
There are many OverlayWebs in existance right now, and likely to be many more in the future.
- WikalongExtension – a wiki-based OverlayWeb
URL = http://wikalong.phunnel.org/wiki/
- AnnoteaProject – a W3C led annotation system
