Amsterdam-based Fleck, which is scheduled to launch today, is another new web annotation tool. The privately funded startup was founded by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Patrick de Laive and Arjen Schat - and while web annotation and bookmarking is a crowded space, this one is a little cooler than rival services.
Another nice feature of Fleck is the ability for webmasters to add buttons to their pages. There are three basic buttons that can be embedded with a piece of javascript. Since these are really just links to a version of the page hosted on Fleck, anyone can click them and start annotating, with no need to have an existing account or the extension installed. This low barrier to entry is very smart, and could attract a few new users. If you don't like the buttons supplied by Fleck, you can create your own link to any page using the "Expert Web Widgets" option. Another neat feature that's currently in development: a Wordpress plugin that lets you add Fleck buttons to every post on your blog. This is similar to the idea of adding Digg buttons and Facebook's Share icon to articles.
Is it any good? It's certainly easier to start using than some existing annotation services - sites like Trailfire are great once you get the hang of them, but they generally insist that you download an extension and get an account. On the other hand, this is really just an extension of social bookmarking, an idea that was hot last year when del.icio.us was the poster boy startup - it's now being superseded by online video and social networking as the market that everyone is piling into. Personally, I find Fleck useful, but I'm undecided whether it can take off.
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