Asynchronous co-navigation also known as recorded web tours (see also: Collaborative browsing) is an online collaboration approach used to line up a sequence of web pages to be viewed, studied or analyzed by others, at their leisure, in an easy and simple way.

In the past there were a pair of online collaboration tools, ezWebcar, and ezWebTours which offered an easy path to serve both real-time and asynchronous web tours in an easy-to-use simple, free web-based collaboration toolset.

Photo credit: (c) Trailfire.com

Today a new free service replicates and extends all of the above features in a new, slick and up-to-date tool: TrailFire is a simple but powerful free service for creating a smooth ride through any number of web sites with the ability to add multimedia annotations and comments to each one.

Whether you want to create web presentations that link a number of websites, with comments, images and video clips, or to guide a friend through today's breaking news, TrailFire makes the process of navigating and commenting on the same set of web pages incredibly simple.
Once you are signed up, and have your Firefox extension installed, you are ready to go about leaving 'trails' across the web. It's as simple as clicking your TrailFire icon and entering any text or links to online media, saving, and then telling your friends where to find it.

The resulting trail will allow your invited viewers to move from site to site, following your seamless, multimedia commentary as they go.

Our 60-second video mash-up of TrailFire's original introductory video, adds music and commentary to guide you through the simple process of making a trail between websites.

Using Trailfire is very intuitive, and offers an easy way to talk back to the web, as it moves from a read only to a read/write medium. In this video example, plans for a hiking trip are transformed into a sequenced tour of three sites, which can now be easily shared with your trekking partners or students.

Source: (c) Trailfire.com

Some of the uses that TrailFire is being put to as you read this are, as listed on the TrailFire website:

• Extend the narrative of a blog to other web pages - Tell your story across the web! Place the URL of a trail as a link in a blog entry. Extend your blog across the web, and bring your reader back.
• Enrich your personal profile - Select trails of your favorite music, movies, books and general interests. Post this list on your blog or MySpace page.
• Research and share important information - Collect information about a research topic for a paper at school. Organize disparate information about the state of your market to stay ahead at work. Track a health issue so you know how to protect your children.
• Compare prices and coordinate buying decisions - Shop for a new car. Compare how they rate for reliability, mileage, and safety. Collect all the data into a trail and share it with your spouse.
• And More

Read more about TrailFire elsewhere on the web:

• Emily Chang - Corante Hub
• Steve Lacey - Steve-Lacey.com
• Pete Cashmore - Mashable
• Michael Arrington - Tech Crunch