A couple of days ago, Google launched yet another beta application, Google Notebook. It’s a browser plugin that lets you save snippets of web pages in categorized folders. These “notebooks” can be either private (the default) or public. I gave it a brief whirl while doing some research on a client project. I was scanning a large number of specialized software sites looking for a product that fit the client’s needs. When I found a product that looked promising, rather than researching it fully I highlighted a section of the page that described the product’s key features and saved it to Google Notebook.
For that purpose, it seemed to work fairly well. There were a few hiccups - I got an error while saving, for example, though by changing the highlighted area and trying again I avoided the error. I found that highlighting text in a PDF document didn’t seem to create a notebook entry, although I was able to easily copy and paste the text into the blank entry created by the app. I ended up with a handful of entries in the folder, identified with short snippets and URLs. It seemed like a quick way to save relevant information compared to other strategies I might have employed. Without Notebook, for this kind of quick research project I probably would have created a new Favorites folder and added promising links to it; or, I might have opened a Word document and pasted (no doubt with messy results) text snippets into it, along with a link to the source page. Notebook provided a bit of the best of both worlds - more information than a mere bookmark, but still providing a clean link to the source page.
What I was hoping for, though, was a more comprehensive information management solution. I’ve been wrestling with this for a while. I’ve been using an inexpensive commercial product, Personal Knowbase, for storing information on tech topics that I think I might need in the future. So, if I see an interesting forum post on the best way to code something, I’ll copy and paste it into an entry in PK. I can easily paste in Word content, and have even scanned and OCRed (outside the app) paper documents with useful information. Each entry can be tagged with multiple keywords - previously created keywords are shown, or you can create new ones as needed. This isn’t a bad solution, although the formatting and links are often lost during the copy and paste process. The search algorithm is fairly basic as well - searching for a word found in many entries produces a long, undifferentiated list of titles. Perhaps the biggest barrier to my satisfaction with PK is that I don’t live in it - if I find something I want to save, I have to hunt down the program icon, launch it, create the article, etc. Perhaps if I made it part of my startup group and made a concerted effort to use it for everything I’d find it less of a chore; then again, how well it would scale to thousands of entries isn’t clear. Locating specific information might be a real chore as the number of entries gets huge.
Unfortunately, it isn’t clear that Google Notebook can fulfill my personal knowledgebase need. Having an app like this living in my browser, and saving formatting and links in a way that resembles the original document, seemed like a good idea. Multiple tags for an item, though, seem essential, and a browsable hiearchy of topics would be handy. A formal title creation ability might be useful, too. Lastly, having the information available offline is still an issue, even in our world of ubiquitous connectivity. There are still times when Internet access isn’t available, and not having one’s library of stored information could be frustrating; we’re approaching a time, though, when that will be a declining issue. As people put more and more of their important information on the Web through web-based email and productivity apps like word processing and accounting, the gaps in Internet access will be forced out of existence. This weakness, of course, may be a strength, too - one of my frustrations with my current knowledgebase is that it resides on a single computer - I can’t access it from other PCs while I’m out of the office.
It seems like others are underwhelmed by the product, too. ZDNet’s Mark Orchant thinks the product is currently no threat to its competitors. TechCrunch’s title, Google Notebook Launches: Ho-Hum, succinctly states its position.
A big part of people’s satisfaction with Google Notebook (or lack thereof) seems to be how one perceives its purpose. Is it a way to organize diverse information for future reference, as I viewed it? Is it a Web 2.0 tagging tool, like Del.icio.us? Or is it a web publishing tool? Although I hadn’t viewed it as such, the Informal Learning blog proposes that Google Notebook will democratize computing:
Nonetheless, I sense it’s a major step toward the democratization of computing. With Google Notebook, you can create a web page at the touch of a button. You can easily cut and paste anything you find on the web into your Notebook. You can write in whatever you want. You can have as many Notebooks as you like; they can be public or private. They have a unique address. Google will host them for you. All this is free.
Perhaps Google itself doesn’t know how people will use it - their style seems to be to release products early, and see how usage evolves. Personally, I’ll use it as a handy research tool on a project-by-project basis.
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