Another Good Product From Google

I’ve recently seen various write-ups about Google Notebook, so I decided to take a look at it. I must say I was pretty happy with what I found. I’ll give the caveat that this is in no way a perfect product, nor fully featured…yet. There were, however, a few features of it that make it a good solution for me right now with keeping track of ideas.

There is a Firefox plugin that places a nice Notebook window in your status bar (image below). With this plugin you don’t have to visit the Notebook website to actually use it — very slick. You can show and hide the plugin window as you choose.

(click for a full screen image)

If you look at the photo you will see two little yellow/orange people next to “Work Screencast Ideas.” That signifies that I’ve shared that Notebook with other people. In this case, I’ve shared it with Bren so we can collaborate on ideas for screencasts to do for our staff. I’m all about collaboration stuff, and this is a great feature to have.

Another thing that makes this a good product for me is that it is — as all Google products — web based. I have a computer at home, and a different computer at work. I needed a solution that didn’t have me tied to one computer. And even if I’m working on some random computer without the plugin, I can still get to my stuff.

Lastly, with the Firefox plugin, if you highlight a section of text on a web page you are presented with a button right below the highlight to add a note using that highlighted text. When you use this it adds the note to your last open Notebook.