This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.
Name: iCyte
Quick Pitch: iCyte saves webpages with highlights, tags and notes. Search and retrieve your webpages (cytes). Never lose a webpage again.
Genius Idea: When you browse the web, you visit more websites than you can keep track of, and sometimes your web browser’s bookmarks can become unwieldy when you’re trying to save very specific information for later review.
iCyte tries to solve this problem by allowing you to highlight text on any website displayed by the Firefox or Internet Explorer web browsers, then bookmark the highlighted text in the cloud so you can either share it with someone else or review it yourself at a later time.
Setup is quick: You just install the browser plugin and create an account. After that, highlight the text you want and click the iCyte button in your browser to save the link with the highlight included. The saved bookmark is called a cyte. You can name your cyte, apply tags for easy searching later, and choose whether or not the cyte is public or private. There’s also a button to bring up a sidebar panel that lists all your iCyte bookmarks. Watch the YouTube video here for a quick demonstration.
iCyte is particularly useful for sharing stuff on social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. Sometimes the content of a link changes after you’ve shared it on social networks or there’s so much content that your contacts don’t know where to locate the stuff you found interesting, but iCyte addresses both of those issues.
Cytes are preserved as they appear when you first make them, and the text-highlighting feature means you can draw your audience’s eye to whatever it was that you found interesting. Take a look at the Climate Change featured public cyte for an example of what that looks like.
iCyte is free and is supported in Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8. iCyte.com (and thus any shared cyte) works on other browsers, though; you just need one of the previously mentioned ones to install the plugin to create a cyte.
Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark
BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”
Reviews: Facebook, Firefox, Internet Explorer, PHP, Twitter, YouTube
Tags: bizspark, Firefox, icyte, internet explorer, social bookmarking, software, spark-of-genius, startups
