WebNotes Pro: Rethink Research, Sticky The Web

WebNotes, a Web-based highlighting and sticky note research tool, just announced the public availability of WebNotes Pro. Ryan Damico, CEO and co-founder, describes it as a "streamlined professional research offering that can revolutionize the way people collect, organize and share valuable information on the Internet."

The service, accessed through a browser plugin, is designed to make compiling research on the Web incredibly easy for professionals, corporations and educational institutions. The plugin enables users to apply virtual sticky notes on Web pages and PDFs, highlight text, and compile those annotations in a logical folder system.

They've come along way since we covered WebNotes back in January. Since then, they've managed to rack up a handful of case studies that prove the application's ability to save time and money.

"Since using the tool, we have saved 60% to 75% of our time depending on the task, and the quality of our research has vastly improved," explained Dan Morrill, CS/IS program director at City University of Seattle. And Morill's not the only one who has shared the same experience. In another case study, Roundpeg, a marketing firm that specializes in small business marketing and is required to keep clientele abreast with relevant information, noted that WebNotes saves them 70% of their research time per week. For a nominal price of $9.99 per month, it's a no brainer. By switching to WebNotes, Roundpeg is now saving $1,000 a week. (Students save 50%.)

The application targets a very specific, seemingly simple, but difficult problem -- making sense of collected data from around the Web that can be difficult to organize, share, and make meaning of. WebNotes helps by allowing users to use multi-color highlighting and drop sticky notes on web pages and PDF documents.

These notes and annotations are then stored and organized in a directory of folders that can easily be accessed from a sidebar in the browser.

The simple highlighting feature reduces any need for tedious copy and pasting. Incrementally, the automated process that stores notes and annotations, can clearly save a lot of time. If you're able to save professionals time and reduce tedious tasks, then you know you have a product that people are willing to pay for. It has a ton of applications as well. Think of law firms (they already have Morse Barnes-Brown Pendleton as a subscriber), libraries, research institutions, group projects, pr agencies that aggregate reports, students, and many others.

WebNotes is one of the many start-ups that College Mogul has covered from MIT. What makes this start-up impressive is that they've managed to build a business on a Web browser plugin. Damico didn't know how to program in browser language either, he taught himself shortly after he graduated in 2006.

The lesson: Entrepreneurs don't let a lack of skill sets stop them. Instead, they learn what they need to, and plow through.

WebNotes is an application that I'll likely use to write my next business plan with. I can't fathom any easier way of aggregating and sorting research from around the Web. The highlighting reduces aggrevating copy and pasting, the sticky notes provide context for notes and ideas, and the hierarchical folder system provides the framework for organizing those research snippets for various sections of the business plan.