Have you heard about the “Awesome Highlighter”? As Web 2.0 gets bigger and better, it seems as though people are always trying to find ways to do online things that they have previously manually done on paper. I know that seems obvious, but you would think it was impossible to replicate the act of marking something with a highlighter for future use.

Apparently not. Check out awesomehighlighter.com (link retired).

Like I said, it does have the word awesome in the title, which is a point against it. But the problem is, it is kinda awesome.

All you have to do is enter in the URL of a page where you want to highlight only a specific piece of text, either for yourself or to send to someone else. The page appears inside of Awesome Highlighter, you mark the bit you want and save your work. It presents you with a specific URL, much in the way TinyURL does. And that’s it. If you click on that link, or forward it to a friend, it opens up the page you want with your selected text highlighted.

It’s a great idea. Quite often, I get instant messages of links I should look at, and a moment later a quote from the page. With this, it could all be done at the same time. It’s probably a few more steps to do, but how much cooler?

I only have two negatives. When you click the link, it takes you to the saved page of your work and not the actual site. That’s not too much of a problem, but something to be aware of. My only other complaint is that it only highlights in yellow. The green was always my favourite.