Like you I'm constantly finding interesting and useful stuff on the Web. Sometimes it is just a single sentence, sometimes a paragraph, sometimes a whole page. The problem is how to save and share these clips. Today's focus, Roohit Instant Web Highlighter is potentially one of the more interesting clipping and sharing solutions I've come across.

What’s so promising is that it is simple and requires no installation and has some interesting aspects of social networking built into its functioning. Currently the service only works with Internet Explorer but Firefox support is promised soon.

The simplest way to use Roohit is when you are on a page that has text you want to highlight; you just place your mouse cursor before the “http” of your current URL, type http://www.roohit.com/, and then press enter. The Roohit site is loaded transparently with the site you were on displayed as normal but with a control panel.

An alternative is to add the Roohit bookmarklet (a fragment of JavaScript that is saved as a bookmark) which invokes the URL modification and reloading automatically.

Roohit also offers a Web site button to enable your users to highlight your content and a Web widget that will display your clips on your Web site.

This control panel offers a choice of highlighting colors and various other options for highlighted content and your cursor is turned into a highlighting marker icon. You can then click and drag across any text and it will be saved to the Roohit site along with the rest of the page.

Roohit knows which clips are yours through a cookie that identifies your PC but, of course, should that cookie get deleted you’ll lose access to your clips. The solution is to use the feature displayed when you aren’t known to Roohit – you establish your identity by logging into one of the major Web mail services through Roohit (Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL are currently supported).

Note that Roohit doesn’t keep your password but merely tags your saved clips with your e-mail identity (this is actually a very clever technique for authenticating users without having to build your own account management system).

The fact that Roohit saves the whole page along with the clip is important because even if the Web site changes the context of the clip is maintained. Whether Roohit is going to run into copyright issues over this remains to be seen.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.