Enhanced links in curation and collaboration applications

A method of enhancing a link in curation and collaboration applications, comprising:

• determining, from content inserted into a note of an application, a string of characters indicating a uniform resource locator (URL);
• upon determining the string of characters indicating the URL from the content inserted into the note, automatically calling a first web service to obtain a representation of content referenced by the URL by sending a request from the application to the first web service, wherein the request at least comprises the URL;
• and
• receiving the representation of the content referenced by the URL from the first web service in a format customized for the application, a computing device on which the application is implemented, or both;
• wherein the format customized for the application, the computing device on which the application is implemented, or both includes at least one of:
• removing advertisements from the representation of the content;
• separating readable text from the representation of the content to generate an image from the readable text;
• providing hyperlink recognition so that internal links shown in the representation of the content can be made live and selectable;
• and
• removing repetitive background content from the representation of the content.