I’ve stopped using Google Notebook twice now. The first time, I took all of my notes offline for privacy reasons and stuffed them into a desktop application. That worked great and I still do that for a lot of my notes but I’ve found there is a class of note taking that is better suited to an online notebook. Ideas for blog posts mostly but also online references and tidbits that ideas marinate in. Stuff clipped from web pages. A temporary jumble. Ingredients I can sift through and combine into something useful. That’s the theory, anyway.

The second time I quit using Google Notebook was because the interface on the Firefox plugin was geting on my nerves. It tries to be a miniature version of their full web interface. Their full web interface is just fine so you’d think a miniature version would be ok—but it is not ok. When I clip something, I’d like to highlight it, select the action to clip it, optionally choose a category or add tags in a dialog, click OK, and have the dialog go away. Adding clips in Google Notebook almost works that way. It appears, you can add tags. But moving the clip to another notebook is tedious and requires multiple clicks, especially if you need to create a new notebook. And for some reason you can’t edit the title of a clip unless you use their full web interface. Also the popout window version changes size every time I open it. So I quit using Google Notebook.

I tried Evernote. I like Evernote. It basically addresses the problems I had with Notebook on the input side of things. Except, I dislike the way it creates clips if you don’t highlight something. Rather than create a summary it is likely to show you the menu or something equally useless in the thumbnail. And it can take a long time for it to build the thumbnail before it shows you the interface. And Evernote is free but they put a limit on how much bandwidth you can consume in a month which is, despite the fact that 40MB is probably far more than I would likely use in a month, stress-inducing. Yes, Evernote’s monthly usage quota stresses me out. And I’m not convinced enough of its utility to shell out any money yet. But even if I did… stressful usage quota. (I have a 7GB Gmail quota too. But that one is large enough to be effectively infinite to me so it doesn’t stress me out. 40MB, not so much. I know it’s irrational.)

So I’m using Google Notebook again and working around the shortcomings of its Firefox plugin. Namely, I’ve given up on the idea of having multiple notebooks because they are such a chore to use and I’m simply tagging my clips. And I’m pretending the X (close button) is the OK button. So now I highlight, clip, tag, close. It’s just as many clicks as Evernote without the usage quota stress.

Best thing ever (well, within this context)? Google Notebook with Evernote’s input dialog. Google Reader’s “Note This” interface, Delicious’ tagging interface, Share on Facebook, and scores of other “clipping” interfaces all work the way Evernote’s does (or Evernote’s works the way all the others do). Fast, efficient, focused on a single task. I see where the Notebook guys were going but consider this a vote to call the current Notebook plugin a failed experiment and move on to a more streamlined workflow.

Filed under Software and tagged evernote, google, notebook, notes, notetaking.