Wednesday, January 14, 2009

How will I live without Google Notebook.

What am I going to do now? I just organized my genealogy to-do list for the year and Google Notebook was a part of it. I am in shock and distraught over the demise of Google Notebook. I can't tell you how I feel after reading the following blog article:
Stopping development on Google Notebook
Wednesday, January 14, 2009 6:30 PM
Posted by Raj Krishnan, Product Manager, Google Notebook

At Google, we're constantly working to innovate and improve our products so people can easily find and manage information. At times though, we have to decide where to focus our efforts and which technologies we expect will yield the most benefit to users in the long run.

Starting next week, we plan to stop active development on Google Notebook. This means we'll no longer be adding features or offer Notebook for new users. But don't fret, we'll continue to maintain service for those of you who've already signed up. As part of this plan, however, we will no longer support the Notebook Extension, but as always users who have already signed up will continue to have access to their data via the web interface at http://www.google.com/notebook.

If you haven't used Notebook in the past, we invite you to explore the other Google products that offer Notebook-like functionality. Here are a few examples, all of which are being actively improved and should meet your needs:
  • SearchWiki - We recently launched a feature on Search that will let you re-rank, comment, and personalize your search results. This is useful when you've found some results on Google Search that were really perfect for your query. You can read about how to use SearchWiki in this blog post.
  • Google Docs - If you're trying to jot down some quick notes, or create a document that you can share with others, check out Google Docs.
  • Tasks in Gmail - For a lightweight way to generate a todo list or keep track of things, we recently launched Tasks in Gmail Labs.
  • Google Bookmarks - For a tool that can help you remember web pages that you liked and access them easily, take a look at Google Bookmarks. You can even add labels to your bookmarks to better organize and revisit them.
While it's hard for us to make this announcement we believe it's the right decision for our users in the long run. And we're excited about all the new ideas we have for Docs, SearchWiki, Bookmarks and other products.
I don't feel Google's options to replace it will totally work for me. Since I already have a Google Notebook I can always still use it, but I feel it is just a matter of time before they don't support it any more. I need some options.

I don't want Evernote because I want a hierarchical list and not tags. Google Notebook gave me the option to have many different notebooks and then break them down into sections. It was so easy and quick to move around in. There are definite places to use tags and lists and I want both options. Besides, I think I would outgrow the free version really quick. I don't want to be at the mercy of a subscription and run the risk of loosing all my notes.

I guess I could always stay with TreePad, it's just that the information is not available online. At least you can make ebooks of my TreePad files to read on the flash drive, but you can't edit them once they are created. To bad TreePad doesn't run off a flash drive.

It appears I need some time to mourn the loss of Google Notebook. There has to be another options I just don't know what yet. If you know of an option for me pass it along, I would love to consider it.

See ya tomorrow, for tomorrow is always another genealogy day!

11 comments:

Miriam Robbins said...

Ack! Bad news for me, too! (sigh)

Kaisa Kyläkoski said...

Thanks for the notification! I have 400+ ideas for blog posts in Google Notebook. Without tags they will not make any sense.

Anonymous said...

Well I have a solution for you that you may workout much better for you in the long run. You can download a relatively simple to use program called Mojopack (http://www.mojopac.com/download.html) that will allow you to basically bring your whole PC with you on a flash drive, and it can be run on any computer from the drive. It acts like a virtual PC and any information you add while in Mojo will save back to the flash drive. Hope this helps.

Anonymous said...

I have both Treepad Lite and Jreepad (http://jreepad.sourceforge.net/jar/) on my thumbdrive. If I'm at a computer that won't let me run the Treepad program, Jreepad usually works (plus, it's platform-independent).

To "install" Treepad Lite, just copy the folder from your Program Files directory to your thumbdrive.
Jreepad is a zip file, so it just needs to be unzipped into a new folder and you're ready to go.

Julie said...

Read Denise's post: http://moultriecreek.us/family/?p=1747 for SpringNote.

Although her article is slanted to collaboration, SpringNote is basically the same as Notebook. I had explored both of them briefly, and decided to stick with MS OneNote.

Thomas MacEntee said...

here is a suggestion from Gawker

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/_JYzg-sd5Pg/where-to-go-when-google-notebook-goes-down

Anonymous said...

Here is a possible solution, http://www.mindola.com/snc/index.html
The cool part about this program is that owners can acess and creat these notecard ont he web and then import them to the program on their pc for offline use.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Julie! Springnote also offers a private notebook along with its group notebook feature. I use the private notebook for many different uses - not the least of which is to write some of my posts since they offer an export to your blog option. It's free, it's easy and it's fabulous.

A Curious life said...

Having tried Treepad, and other things I am happy with Portable MS onenote. Your blog got me thinking though.. I have lost USB drives (yikes)

I discovered a nice online replacement. http://www.ubernote.com/

It's free (of course) and will import from Google too!

Brian said...

I just ran across this posting over at Lifehacker about two other notebook sites that will now help you move over your Google Notebook stuff. I have no experience with either, but I thought it may come in handy for people

http://lifehacker.com/5137839/zoho-evernote-open-up-google-notebook-importers

Anonymous said...

I must be less mobile than most as the thought of keeping notes online gives me the creeps.

Anyway, I came across an interesting version of TiddlyWiki the other day called TiddlyDu2. It's an organizer in a single html file that you could carry around on a flash-drive. Small too.