Frequently Asked Questions

Here's a list of questions that we've commonly encountered. If you have a questions that's not in this list, please Contact Us.

• How can I see and navigate through all my notes ?
  Try our Collage Interface
• Can NB annotate anything besides PDFs ?
  No. NB is meant at annotating PDFs. Fortunately, many files can be converted to PDFs nowadays, using commands like Export to PDF or simply Print... If you're interested in annotating arbitrary websites, you can try The Tutor
• I have a question about nb. Who can I ask ?
  You can email Sacha: sacha (at) csail (dot) mit (dot) edu
  or use this form
• I like/dislike such and such feature - I'd like a new feature to be implemented. Does anyone care ?
  We DO care a lot about your impressions and your feedback will tremendously help. Please use this form to send your comments.
• Is my information secure ? What gets stored where ? What about privacy ?
  • NB stores your annotations on a SQL database located on campus.
  • NB doesn't know your real name, it only knows your username which is the email address where you received your NB invitation, and that you use to login on NB
  • The following summarizes the privacy settings for your notes:
    • Notes that you've marked as Class can be seen by both students and staff. However, other students can't see your username unless you've checked the sign checkbox.
    • Notes that you've marked as Staff can be seen by the staff, but not by other students. We encourage you to use the Class option instead, since your note might very well someone wlse in the class, and you're likely to get a much faster response if the whole class can see your questions.
    • Notes that you've marked as Myself are private: Staff and other students can't see them. You can also choose this option to write draft comments, and edit the privacy setting Class or Staff once you're done.
• Do you plan on using all those annotations for anything ?
  Yes, After the term is over, we would like to be able to extracting statistics from the annotations that have been entered during the term, as part of our ongoing research, to improve NB and understand better the features users need, like and dislike. Of course, all the data we may end up publishing will preserve the author's anonymity, in be in accordance with the COUHES rules.