First Look: Google Notebook

It was announced last week, and now it's available. The Google blog notes that Google Notebook is now live and kickin' at http://www.google.com/notebook. You'll need a Google account to use it, however.

Once you're logged in, Google will take you to a software download page (Google Notebook is available for both Firefox and IE.) You'll have to agree to terms before you're allowed to download and install. For Firefox, the download is an extension.

Once you've got it installed, you'll discover you have a new option to your right-click menu. Go to a page you like and choose "Note This (Google Notebook)". You'll get a little popup window that will allow you to choose text from the page or enter your own text. Google Notebook does not keep copies of a page, just notes and markers. Google Notebook lives as a little window in the lower-right corner of your screen, or as part of Firefox' status bar if you don't care to look at the little window.

You also have the option to look at Google Notebook in a full window at the URL http://www.google.com/notebook/. Yes, it's the same URL you started from, only if you've generated a notebook you'll be able to see it here. I actually liked this view better because it gave me a better sense of all that can be done with a notebook.

Like what? Well, look for the "Actions" drop-down menu. You can create new notebooks, add new sections in your notebooks, add notes directly, rename the notebook, delete the notebook, or even print the notebook. (The printing opens up a new page and prompts you to print, ala Gmail.) Bonus: items in the notebook are click-and-draggable, so you can arrange everything the way you like.

This is a nifty little scratchpad. And here's something else: while your notebooks are private by default, you can make them public. And not only can you make them public, you can search across all publicly-available notebooks. A search for "the" found over 1,500 matching documents. Browsing a couple showed that many of them were just text, though a few linked to images which seemed to be SRC'd from the original page. If you're looking for an example to browse, this gentleman created a Google Notebook devoted to Google Notebook.

The Google Notebook is extremely easy to use and I can see it coming in real handy when I want to surf around and create a quick little page. Some things I'd want, though: tagging. Sure I can add notes to items, but how about a place to add tags instead of adding keywords? Tags are awesome when you want to do more general searching. If something is tagged Google I know it's truly Google-relevant, doesn't just mention Google in the notes. More things: RSS feeds. Every note a feed item. Would this be extremely tough? If people are going to keep notebooks and keep them updated, I want to be able to monitor them easily. One more thing: templates (if that's the right word.) I want to be able to specify how I want my notebook to look -- for example, I might want to create a classic outline format, and I don't see an easy way to do this with the current incarnation of Google Notebook.

Posted to Search Engines-Google