Hi Fred. In some ways that what we do with the current incarnation of our blog based notebook and Jean-Claude is doing on Wikispaces. It allows an essentially free text entry. I did have a brief look at a.nnotate.com but haven't gone into it in any depth.

I think with all these things in a question of balance. Some things clearly can and should be structured. I think lab blog 3.0 (we're currently on 2.0 in effect) will move more towards a providing some sort of data structure where it is appropriate but leave the option for completely free text where it is not. What would be sensible would be to partake of structured data models where they exist and are appropriate.

And yes the user interface has to eventually look like a word processor. I think the work being done on the Integrated Content Environment at University of Southern Queensland is particularly interesting here.