Whatever you want to do...Droid Does
Entered CNET Catalog: 05/13/2006
SKU: SERVGOOGLENOTEBOOK
Manufacturer: Google
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 09/18/2006
It's good to have a tool to organize bookmarks, and Google Notebook's basic capabilities are useful. You can save a site easily, either from a right-click menu in your browser or directly from a Google Search page. You can organize your saved sites into categories, and also make your notebooks public.
But it's at this point that we run out of nice things to say, because that's about all there is to it. Google Notebook doesn't even offer tagging, which is a bizarre omission in a modern organizational product. Instead, it lets you set categories for your bookmarks, but bookmarks can appear in only one category. So if you have categories for "funny" and "news," and you wanted The Onion to be in both, you couldn't do it (unless you created two separate bookmarks when you were on The Onion's site--very awkward).
Google Notebook is the spoiled rich kid of bookmark utilities. It'll do well because its parent will make it famous, but it's not talented enough to hang out with Del.icio.us. Is there hope for this child? Absolutely. Better social features (such as those found in StumbleUpon), group voting (such as in Digg.com), and interface features (a toolbar bookmarklet would be nice) would bring this product up to grade level. And there are lots of opportunities beyond that, too, but we'll leave it to the child to figure out his extra-credit curriculum.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11out of 11 user reviews
Incredible for taking notes!
Pros: It does exactly what it is meant to: stores quick thoughts for later, and all in the very convenient location of your browser.
Cons: It lacks certain organizational functionality, but this is constantly improved.
out of 11 user reviews
I use it daily for notes and keeping a journal.
Pros: Simple and efficient tool for keeping notes. It dates every entry and is easy to organize. I also use it for keeping a journal or diary.
Cons: It could be a more powerful tool.
out of 11 user reviews
Snuck on my computer without permission
Pros: None that I can think of
Cons: Everything. I'm outraged they forced this on me without permission. I have removed all google products because of the intrusion and lack of respect for my privacy
I am really POd. I just discovered that google notebook is lurking on
my computer, apparently saving some information without my permission.
I wasn't asked about it. I didn't give permission. Perhaps I would
have been interested if I had been asked about it (as I have been open
to exploring other google products).
As I was intruded upon -- just like a worm or a virus in my view -- I
feel far too vulnerable to whatever Google wants to foist upon me,
good or bad.
Because Google failed to respect my boundaries or choices, I have
removed all google products from my computer, I have removed the
toolbar and google earth.
I will use other search programs from now on.
out of 11 user reviews
More than just saving links and annotating
Pros: Effective and simple
Cons: Large notebooks get unwieldy
With the mini-notebook browser extension, you can choose a section or a note, and your new note is inserted after that selection.
With the notebook open in a web browser, you can drag and drop notes or sections to move them between notebooks.
Notebooks can be private, or collaborative, or public. Handy when two or more people are researching a project.
Google notebooks are a new kind of tool, think of them like web scrapbooks... but there is still a place for social bookmarking sites like FURL.NET or digg.
out of 11 user reviews
bookmark utility? come on, now....
Pros: Quick and easy to use, especially with the extension installed. Automatically adds references.
Cons: Note organization is lacking.
out of 11 user reviews
This feature was made in China???
Pros: easy to use
Cons: a very poor copy
out of 11 user reviews
Very Simple, Very Efficient
Pros: Simple, Quick, Efficient
Cons: May be too simple
out of 11 user reviews
Combined with Firefox & Notebook extension - Nothing like it!!
Pros: Great help in research
Cons: Still has a few bugs when copying material from web site
Comparing Notebook to Del.icio.us and other such sites is just plain wrong. They are complete apples and oranges. This is not really a social networking site although you can share your notes.
out of 11 user reviews
Same as Yahoo Notepad
Pros: It uses AJAX coding so its faster
Cons: Copy of Yahoo Notepad
out of 11 user reviews
its good but needs some tuning
Pros: great idea. amazing
Cons: orginization. needs drag and drop and a feature that lets u choose which notebook ur note goes into.
out of 11 user reviews
Novel but nothing amazing
Pros: Clean look, simple to use, extrension works across the major broswers
Cons: Awkward sharing options, UI needs a bit more thought, not really essential to most users
The benefit is more of people who work across several computers such as officeworkers who may wish to store information they encounter throughout the day in a convenient place that can be accessed from multiple PCs.
The downloadable extension worked fine for me on both IE and Firefox and there is no major difference in their appearance. Editing options are limited but complexity has been sacrificed in order to accomodate speed options.
While it has the same clean look most other Google products maintain, Notebook doesn't bring anything significantly new to the Web 2.0 community. You would probably get the same functions by emailing the same information to yourself rather than using Notebook.
If you can find a need for it like me, it's a fun download. If you're not the type to open MS Notepad from time to quickly store information, then you're not missing anything if you don't use this service.
