Thursday 18 May 2006

Pic of the day: If you (like Tomo-chan from Azumanga Daioh) tend to collect random information that may some day be useful, this is for you:

Google Notebook

This is not a game, but a productivity tool. Well, that's the intention at least. Even though I already have Gmail, I did not know about it until I read about it in a Norwegian online newspaper.

Having Gmail is a good start, since Google Notes uses the same authentication system. If I am already logged into my Gmail account, I am already identified with Google Notebook too. You can get Notebook without Gmail though, if you love another email account.

Also like Gmail, Notebook does not fully support Opera, and thus presumably not W3C standards. Instead it somewhat sensibly supports the browsers most people actually have, Internet Explorer and Firefox. Opera is better and is now free, but it was not free during the time the others took 95% of the market. Oh well.

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So what is Google Notebook anyway? It is a place on the Internet where you can save the links you come across as you browse the Net. Like making a bookmark, except it is available from all your computers as long as you are online. (And if you are not online, what are you doing with your bookmarks? You can't play dress-up with them, after all.) Not only bookmarks, though. You can be more specific and highlight a block of text, or a picture, and copy to your Notebook. If it is in your browser, there will also be a link saved with the text/picture.

You can also use it to write your own notes. In this regard, it is like a very simple Writely. You may have heard about Writely? It is an online word processor. You can continue your writing on any word processors that's connected to the Internet. Very nice if you have a job and a private life that overlap, as they do for many Americans and some other people. Also eliminate worries about backup and disk space. Well, Notebook is very very basic, and anyway Writely is not taking new customers until it is moved in with Google, which bought it up. Sadly this seems to take some time. Hopefully it will be there before NaNoWriMo this year. Yeah, I know myself well enough to know that if I am alive and have the necessary limbs, I will be trying (and failing) the Novel Writing Month this year again.

Back to Google Notebook. If you are writing anything other than fantasy or boilerplate business letters, you probably research first. And you probably do so using the Internet (or corporate Intranet). And you probably use Google already. So it makes sense to download the small applet, log into your Google account and have this little note-taking tool as part of your browser. Want to remember something for later? Note it! Just right click and choose "Note this". Or highlight something and "Note this".

You can have many different notebooks, and switch between them painlessly. You can also have sections in your notebook, if you choose to have one notebook for different but related finds. For instance I have one notebook for Anime, one for Evolution, and one for Spirituality. No doubt there will be many more if I continue to use it. I could just as easily have one book for each of the anime I watch, for instance, and perhaps if I research them enough I will. But I find this unlikely. I don't show that kind of dedication to the topic. (You are probably all happy to hear that!) If you do this for a living, though, you just might want that much detail.

This may be obvious if you know Google, but you can choose to make any or all of your notebooks public. There is currently no support for sharing it only with a group, however. This probably sucks, because that seems just the thing for a workgroup to do. If it is work related, you probably don't want your competitors to read it either. Aww. On the other hand, the Myspace generation probably will make most of theirs public, at least those that don't deal with porn. OK, probably those too.

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So what's my opinion? I normally use Opera, so that's a drawback. But despite the limited support for my favorite browser, I am favorably impressed. I will most likely continue to use it occasionally for the foreseeable future. Then again I like Google. I even agree with their corporate slogan: "Don't be evil." So far this program seems to live up to it, as well... it is quite good.

Oh, and the link? You mean you did not google for it?? OK, then.
http://www.google.com/notebook/