January 20th, 2009 in Featured, Technology

8 Replacements for Google Notebook

my-notebook-google-notebook Last week, Google announced that it will be ending “active development” for Google Notebook. More than a few people are upset about the decision: Google Notebook’s Firefox extension made it a favorite for keeping track of all sorts of notes. With the end of active development, Google Notebook won’t be immediately closed down (at least for active users) but its extension will probably quit working with the next major upgrade to Firefox. With that in mind, it may be time to start exploring alternatives to Google Notebook even though it’s still available. There are more than a few ‘notebooks’ available online these days, although choosing the right one will likely depend on just what you use Google Notebook for.

  1. Zoho Notebook
    If you want to stick with something as close to Google Notebook as possible, Zoho Notebook may just be your best bet. The user interface has some significant changes, but in general, Zoho Notebook has pretty similar features. There is even a Firefox plugin that allows you to highlight content and drop it into your Notebook. You can go a bit further, though, dropping in any spreadsheets or documents you have in Zoho, as well as some applications and all websites — to the point that you can control a desktop remotely if you pare it with something like Zoho Meeting.
  2. Evernote
    The features that Evernote brings to the table are pretty great. In addition to allowing you to capture parts of a website, Evernote has a desktop search tool mobil versions (iPhone and Windows Mobile). It even has an API, if you’ve got any features in mind not currently available. Evernote offers 40 MB for free accounts — if you’ll need more, the premium version is priced at $5 per month or $45 per year. Encryption, size and whether you’ll see ads seem to be the main differences between the free and premium versions.
  3. Net Notes
    If the major allure for Google Notebooks lays in the Firefox extension, Net Notes might be a good alternative. It’s a Firefox extension that allows you to save notes on websites in your bookmarks. You can toggle the Net Notes sidebar and access your notes as you browse. You can also tag websites. Net Notes works with Mozilla Weave if you need to access your notes from multiple computers.
  4. i-Lighter
    You can highlight and save information from any website while you’re browsing with i-Lighter. You can also add notes to your i-Lighted information, as well as email it or send the information to be posted to your blog or Twitter account. Your notes are saved in a notebook on your computer — but they’re also synchronized to the iLighter website. You can log in to the site from any computer.
  5. Clipmarks
    For those browsers interested in sharing what they find with others, Clipmarks provides a tool to select clips of text, images and video and share them with friends. You can easily syndicate your finds to a whole list of sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Digg. You can also easily review your past clips and use them as references through Clipmarks’ website.
  6. UberNote
    If you can think of a way to send notes to UberNote, it can handle it. You can clip material while browsing, email, IM, text message or even visit the UberNote sites to add notes to the information you have saved. You can organize your notes, tag them and even add checkboxes if you want to turn a note into some sort of task list. You can drag and drop information between notes in order to manage them.
  7. iLeonardo
    iLeonardo treats research as a social concern. You can create a notebook on iLeonardo on a particular topic, collecting information online. You can also access other people’s notebooks. It may not necessarily take the place of Google Notebook — I’m pretty sure my notes on some subjects are cryptic — but it’s a pretty cool tool. You can keep notebooks private if you like the interface but don’t want to share a particular project. iLeonardo does allow you to follow fellow notetakers and receive the information they find on a particular topic.
  8. Zotero
    Another Firefox extension, Zotero started life as a citation management tool targeted towards academic researchers. However, it offers notetaking tools, as well as a way to save files to your notebook. If you do a lot of writing in Microsoft Word or Open Office, Zotero might be the tool for you — it’s integrated with both word processing software to allow you to easily move your notes over, as well as several blogging options. Zotero’s interface is also available in more than 30 languages.

I’ve been relying on Google Notebook as a catch-all for blog post ideas — being able to just highlight information and save it is a great tool for a blogger. In replacing it, though, I’m starting to lean towards Evernote. I’ve found it handles pretty much everything I want, especially with the voice recording feature. I’m planning to keep trying things out for a while yet — I’m sticking with Google Notebook until the Firefox extension quits working — and if you have any recommendations that I missed when I put together this list, I’d love to hear them — just leave a comment!

WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY

Thursday Bram

Thursday Bram blogs about a variety of topics, from personal finance to small business. She is the author of an upcoming book on the tools and tricks you need to build a career you can take with you during long-term travel. More information about Thursday and her book, Working Your Way Around the World, is available on her personal site, ThursdayBram.com.

ARTICLES BY THIS WRITER »
Don't want to miss any related posts like there? Subscribe to our feed!

32 Responses

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

Comments

  • roberto says on January 20th, 2009 at 9:50 am

    i´ve been using diigo, its not quite the same thing but i can bookmark, highlight and save clips from websites, comment on them and it has a great firefox extensión.

  • jdp says on January 20th, 2009 at 9:51 am

    OMG NO!!!!!!!!!!!! <—First reaction.

    Upon another minutes reflection – it might just be time to dump all my freebie Google stuff. I rely on it too heavily to be messed around by their whims. I seriously dislike Microsoft Office stuff and every time I try to use Open Office stuff my computer blows up.

    I like everything to be in one place – email, calendar, new google to do yay, contact lists, notebook, bookmarks, photos, reader – all of its in something google and connected.

    What could replace that? :(

  • Doug Langille says on January 20th, 2009 at 10:12 am

    Microsoft OneNote… everyone forgets about this one. It has been included with MS Office since v2003, supports saving to UNC paths including webdav with off-line and client-to-client sync. If you have to use Outlook and Office in the workplace, this is an obvious choice.

  • David at Animal-Kingdom-Workouts.com says on January 20th, 2009 at 11:32 am

    I’m surprised google is dropping this. I wonder what the reason is? Still, it’s there choice. That’s why so many of their free products are always ‘beta’. They can drop it whenever they want. Thanks for the ideas!

    - Dave

  • Torley says on January 20th, 2009 at 11:39 am

    I’ve used Google notebook but found it wasn’t as responsive as a desktop client. Then, enter EverNote: as you pointed out, not only is it cross-platform (altho the Mac version is somewhat cut-down) and handles embedded PDFs and multimedia notes, it also syncs to web and I’ve found support to be very helpful!

    I haven’t had any significant hassles and I think version 3 has been a big upgrade in terms of approaching how we handle our scraps o’ info, so Evernote is my choice.

  • Kevin says on January 20th, 2009 at 11:51 am

    I’ve been using Evernote for a couple of months now… it’s fantastic and vastly superior to Google Notebook (IMHO).

  • Maggie says on January 20th, 2009 at 2:29 pm

    Like to invite you and your readers to take a serious look of Diigo http://www.diigo.com and Diigo List.

    With in-situ highlights and sticky notes, group collaboration and richer social sharing options, Diigo is being appreciated as the premium web annotation / social bookmarking service. Knowledge workers, work groups and schools around the world are embracing Diigo for better productivity.

    Here is a brief side-by-side comparison of Google Notebook and Diigo: http://blog.diigo.com/2009/01/.....-importer/

    An alpha Google Notebook importer is now available:

    Here is an example of a Google Notebook vs. a converted Diigo list

    *** GN: http://www.google.com/notebook.....oQquKe8MMj
    *** Diigo List: http://www.diigo.com/list/magg.....orials?v=p

  • Chris says on January 20th, 2009 at 3:00 pm

    Off line I’m a fan of OneNote but online I have yet to find something better than Backpack (http://www.backpackit.com). It might be missing some of the formal notebook features that other programs have but it allows me to keep all my information organized and easily accessible.

  • Cynthia says on January 20th, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    Evernote is my favorite copy/capture bits of the web. But I’ve also been using Google Docs to capture blog ideas as well.

  • dvan says on January 20th, 2009 at 4:32 pm

    I have a ton of information in Google Notebook.

    Is there any way of doing a mass export to another notebook app?

  • dvan says on January 20th, 2009 at 4:44 pm

    I just answered my own question about mass exporting out of Google Notebook. Zoho has a simple process that will suck in everything you have in Google Notebook into Zoho Notebook.

  • John says on January 20th, 2009 at 5:24 pm

    I used Google notebook as a speedy tool that tagged and saved bookmarks at Google.

    Which of these tools will import all those tags?
    How good are their export facilities?

  • William says on January 20th, 2009 at 5:29 pm

    Google notebook is great. Evernote is supposedly better and I *want* to use it however it is slow and sluggish in comparison to GoogleNotebook.
    You can INSTANTLY clip an article or webpage with Notebook, yet Evernote takes its time and then forgets your password.

    How is Evernote better? I simply don’t see it!
    I will keep using google notebook until it dies. At the moment, it is working perfectly.

  • angelvalerie says on January 21st, 2009 at 5:20 am

    I really love the app “scrapbook” that is a firefox ext. I have not used it to integrate with other programs like Word, but its great for keeping something I want to read later… anything on the web.

  • Mike Bite says on January 21st, 2009 at 10:11 am

    Evernote is good product and is integrated very well with lots of other great online services. However, the simplicity Google products and so Google Notebook have/had an advantage in usability. II’LL MISS GOOGLE NOTEBOOK!

  • mdjohnson1 says on January 21st, 2009 at 12:43 pm

    There are other alternatives to Notebook (here’s a list of 19- http://savenotebook.blogspot.c.....book.html) but few OR NONE offer the same utility of Notebook (IMHO).

    Thanks.

  • mdjohnson1 says on January 21st, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    I’d invite you to consider more alternatives. I have a longer list (19 items). Unfortunately, I don’t think any alternative offers the utility of Notebook, and therefore, I’d love to see Notebook “saved”.

    Here’s the link to the list: http://savenotebook.blogspot.c.....ebook.html

  • pr says on January 22nd, 2009 at 12:49 pm

    Firefox add-in: Scrapbook….I used it for along time, switched to Google Notebook (trying to embrace the whole online, web 2.0, social networking thing, and will now switch back to Scrapbook. Why let other people have your data when one missed round of VC funding means the lights will be turned off?

  • Matt Kreiling says on January 23rd, 2009 at 3:41 am

    Thanks for giving me the sad news. Notebook’s extension and interface were so intuitive for me. I guess I will need to adapt.

  • Jose says on January 23rd, 2009 at 8:34 pm

    My fav is notepub.com
    Way better than all others, snappier and more versatile.

  • Robin says on January 23rd, 2009 at 9:58 pm

    Evernote for me all the way. Plus, they have a Firefox extension for those who liked that capability.

    AND.
    http://blog.evernote.com/2009/.....-import-2/
    They do have an import feature. :)

  • Irene says on February 9th, 2009 at 9:27 am

    Another option that wasn’t mentioned yet could be http://www.scholarz.net. It’s focused on students, scientists, academics and researchers. It is quite comparable with Google Notebook: you can make and manage notes or tag them with keywords. But there are much more features and possibilities: you can upload files, manage sources, start up projects and assign your written notes to all the projects or sources, you want to. In addition to this, it is combined with a web 2.0-network! With this network it is possible to find users with related focus of research, to work with colleagues from all over the world on common projects or to share and access a huge knowledge-pool with other users. For all users, who want to import their notes from Google Notebook into the “scholarz.net”-system there is an easy way to do that.
    For more information have a look at http://blog-en.scholarz.net.

  • Dodik says on March 18th, 2009 at 9:16 am

    I’ve been using Evernote for a couple of months now…

  • gina says on May 4th, 2009 at 5:46 pm

    no wonder my mac is being all weird (slow).. i uninstalled my google notebook and my firefox browser is now back to its normal self :) thanks for this info!

Post your comment

Continue your discussions at Lifehack Community.

Get your own Avatars at Gravatars.
Three FREE Audiobooks RISK-FREE from Audible
Recent Writers SEE MORE
Latest Poll

Do you like the new design?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...