Google Starts Exporting Notebooks to Google Docs

Google Notebook is one of the many Google Labs services that will be shutdown. The team stopped developing the service three years ago and it's surprising that you can still use most of the features in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and other browsers.

A message now informs users that Google "will automatically export your Notebooks to Google Docs starting November 11, 2011". The FAQ explains that "once we start the transition, each notebook you have will automatically be exported to Google Docs. We will do this for every single notebook, and you won't have to do anything. This export will work the same as the existing 'Export to Docs' feature in Notebook. The format of the new documents will be as if you manually exported each of your notebooks to Docs."


Google hasn't released a new app for notes probably because the Google Docs word processing app is good enough to handle notes. There's even a cool Chrome extension developed by Google that lets you take notes and synchronizes them with Google Docs.

{ Thanks, Shahed and Taylor. }

Google Notebook's Extension URL

Now that Google Notebook is no longer actively developed, Google decided to hide the link to the Firefox extension and to remove the Notebook support from Google Toolbar. It's probably a wise decision, since new users can't sign up for Google Notebook and Google won't be able to make sure that the add-ons will be compatible with the future versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The only alternative to the Notebook add-ons is a bookmarklet, but it's too basic and the confirmation message is annoying. Google Notebook's integration with the browser is what made the service very powerful: you could copy the text from a web page in a notebook with one click.

I don't know for how long you'll still be able to download the Firefox extension from Google, but here's the download link:

http://dl.google.com/firefox/google-notebook.xpi


If you use a beta version of Firefox 3.5, here's a way to install the extension:

* save the extension to your computer: right-click and select "save link as".
* download 7-zip, an excellent open-source software for archiving files, and install it.
* right-click on the extension (google-notebook.xpi), click on "7-zip" and then on "open archive". Right-click on "install.rdf", select "Edit" and replace "3.0.*" with "4.0.*". Save the file, close Notepad and update the archive.
* now you can drag the .xpi file to your browser and install the extension.

Internet Explorer users that want to download the Google Notebook add-on can try this link:

http://dl.google.com/notebook/GoogleNotebookSetup.exe

Export Google Notebooks

Google Notebook provides options to export each notebook as HTML or in the Atom format, but it's not very easy to export all your data. A Greasemonkey script automates the tedious work by reformatting the mobile page and adding links to the HTML or Atom version of each notebook.

The default format is Atom and you should use it if you want to edit the notebooks on your computer and then import the files to Google Notebook. It's a good idea to use the HTML format for archiving your notebooks.

This script requires Firefox, Greasemonkey extension and a download manager like DownThemAll that saves all the files linked from a page or some of them.


After clicking on "Export notebooks", right-click and select "DownThemAll!". Choose a folder where to save the files, type nbid in the "Fast filtering" box and click on "Start".


Peter Shafer wrote a similar script for exporting Google Docs documents.

Google Notebook Bookmarklet

There are many ways to add notes to Google Notebook: you can visit google.com/notebook or click on "My notebooks" from any Google search results page. To add excerpts from web pages, you need an extension: Google Toolbar 5 for IE or Google Notebook for Firefox. But what happens if you use a browser like Safari or if you aren't allowed to install add-ons?

Google Notebook bookmarklet is a lightweight alternative that doesn't require installation. You just drag and drop a link to your browser's links bar or bookmark the link. To copy some content from a web page to a notebook, just select the text and click on "Note this".


For some reason, Opera can only view notebooks, so this bookmarklet can't be used to add notes.

Related:
Useful Google bookmarklets

{ via Google Notebook Blog }

Google Notebook Exposes More Exporting Options

Google Notebook updated the editing toolbar and to make it look more consistent with Google Docs. There are also new exporting options:

* you can export to HTML any notebook, not just public notebooks

* notebooks that include addresses can be visualized on a map and converted into a personalized map

* public notebooks already had feeds, but it's much easier to subscribe to the feeds by clicking on "export as RSS" in the Tools menu (ironically, Google uses the Atom format). This should be useful to track the changes in collaborative notebooks.


Google Notebook integrates with a lot of Google services: you can find a "Note this" option next to Google's search results, there's an option to import some text from public domain books in Google Book Search, Google Bookmarks are added to a special notebook, you can export a notebook into Google Docs to create a document or to save it as PDF, the latest version of Google Toolbar for IE integrates with Notebook, there's an iGoogle gadget and a cool integration with Blogger thanks to the hAtom microformat. Google Notebook is actually a web clipboard, a bridge between web applications and I expect to see options to identify structured content, bookmark videos, events, contact details, code snippets and more.

{ Thanks, AniMatrix. }

Google's Broken Bookmarking Systems

Google hasn't yet launched a proper bookmarking system. Google Bookmarks was just a small extension of Search History and became more useful after the integration with Google Toolbar. Notebook lets you clip content from the web, but it's more useful for research and not for bookmarking web pages. Google Reader's shared items are limited to your subscriptions or to web sites that have feeds and they're not structured. The not-yet-officially-released Shared Stuff widget wants to unify the ways people share web pages and it's more like a meta social bookmarking service.

In this guest post, Michael Searcy expresses his frustration with Google's failed attempts to develop a service for bookmarking and sharing web pages.


Like most people I want Google to add a social aspect to "Google Bookmarks". The crazy part is they already have a disassembled version of a social bookmarks network. The parts are: Bookmarks, Reader, Notebook & Shared Stuff.

	Share	Web Pages	Feeds	Tags	Contacts	Bookmark	Profile
Bookmarks	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
Reader	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes
SharedStuff	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
Notebook	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	no

Bookmarks: it's great for across computer access but has no sharing, or interaction with other Google services.

Reader: It is awesome. It has changed my life! I find and share more stuff with it, than with normal browsing. You can "star" items that you want to lookup later for reference, but if you want to bookmark something you have to invoke some hackery (you can open the item outside of reader and bookmark it with a toolbar shortcut, or use a Greasemonkey script which doesn't work). Another limitation not shown in the chart is that you can't share anything you are not already subscribed to. Also on a shared reader page you don't get a summary view (for people with lots of posts), you can't search and you definitely cant slice it up by tags/labels.

Shared stuff: It's interesting because if you find something cool in Reader you can star it, then later when you get around to reading it again you can open it separate and bookmark it. Then if you open it from your bookmarks you can use the Email/Share toolbar item to Share it and it will Show a "star" saying its bookmarked. Other cool aspects are that you can Share through Google, share through other social networking services, email it to your low-tech friends, and you can even tag your items! You can do all that, but you can't bookmark with Google Bookmarks? You can use every bookmark service except Google. You're kidding me right? So now we can share bookmarked Items in a round about way, but we can't bookmark shared items!!!

Notebook: Its nice for a web notebook/clipboard with multiple headings or "notebooks" (which is repetitive but that's what they are called) and the sharing function is nice, if your into sharing notebook type content. Then they tried to incorporate bookmarks, but they imported them and called them "Unfiled Bookmarks", which means it's a bookmark and it's not associated with a "notebook". Which is extra weird if you "move" a bookmark to a notebook. Then you get your Markbooks confused with your Booknotes and ..... Wait. This is just madness. Its just 2 different classes of labels. But you can share "notebook" class labels but not "labels". So close.

Bookmark Google Search Results

An interesting side effect of Google Notebook's integration with Google Bookmarks is that you can now bookmark search results without having to install plug-ins or use bookmarklets. When you log in to a Google Account, a new option appears next to each search result: "note this". If you click on "note this", Google will open a small version of Google Notebook and add a link to the search result, the title and its snippet as a note. Google's service has a predefined notebook that stores bookmarks (Unfiled bookmarks), so Google also creates a bookmark from your link.

The only thing you need to do before clicking on "note this" is to make sure that the active notebook is "Unfiled bookmarks". You can click on the "My Notebooks" link from the top of Google's search results page to activate that notebook.

After bookmarking a page, you can add labels and comments. The bookmarks can be accessed from Google Notebook's mini-window, Google Bookmarks or from an iGoogle gadget, but also from plug-ins like Google Toolbar.

Blacklisted from Google Notebook

Many web applications have limitations that are not disclosed to users. If you happen to use an application too frequently or upload too much data, your access will be disabled. In most cases, you'll see a message that informs you about the penalty, but Google Notebook chose a different strategy: showing a 404 error message.

"Back on December 20, I wrote about my frustration with Google Notebook, which I use every day as a way to archive much of what I read online (...). For some off reason, it seemed like Google Notebook was down, and yet I could find no other description of the issue online, which made me think I must be mad," writes Ran Barton.

He received a message from Google that explained the problem. "Your account was accidentally blacklisted by a blacklisting heuristic that looked at total size of notebook information. We've revised the heuristic, so you shouldn't be accidentally blacklisted again in the future."

Annotating the Web with Google Toolbar

The latest version of Google Toolbar integrated Google Notebook, the service that allows you to save interesting parts from a web page for later. Google also started to highlight the fragments from a web page that were previously saved and show your comments in a tooltip.

As you probably know, notebooks are by default private, but you can invite some of your contacts to collaborate. This way you can create a shared list of bookmarks with annotations that allow you find the most important parts of a web page and read your collaborators' opinions. Your annotations are highlighted with a different nuance of yellow so you can distinguish them from those added by your contacts.

For now, you can't export the annotations or subscribe to someone's public annotations, but it's not hard to see these features added in the next iterations of Google Toolbar. Trailfire already lets you find trails, "collections of web pages, assembled and annotated by any Trailfire member". The collections of notes could be used to guide people to the most important parts of a Google search result or they could become a part of a dynamically-built encyclopedia page.

The current implementation from Google Toolbar provides you with a simple way to share clips from web pages with your friends and also add comments.

Google Toolbar 5 for IE

There's a new version of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer that brings a lot of updates and new features.

Google Toolbar's buttons can display gadgets when you click on the little arrow. Here's the YouTube gadget in a custom button:


You'll find a lot of built-in buttons in the Settings: almost every Google service has a custom button. In addition to gadget support, buttons can now display alerts, show status text next to the icon and create actions based on text selection.

Bookmarks and notebooks are now completely integrated: each note is a bookmark with some clipped content and notebooks are a way to organize and share your bookmarks. You no longer need to install a separate plug-in for Google Notebook.



When you add a note, the text will be highlighted every time you open the page. If you also add some comments, they're displayed in a tooltip when you hover over the text (you're annotating the web):


You can now create profiles for AutoFill, there's an inline find bar similar to the one from Firefox and Google can replace the "Page not found" errors with useful suggestions.


Probably the most interesting new feature is that you can choose to save your settings on Google's servers so you can access your buttons, settings and AutoFill data even if you don't use the same computer.

This beta version of Google Toolbar 5 doesn't integrate with Google Docs and doesn't synchronize your local documents with the documents stored on Google's servers.


{ via Google Blogoscoped }

Mobile Google Notebook

Google Notebook was one of the few Google apps that we're not available from a mobile phone. Now you can go to http://google.com/notebook/m and find a HTML version of Google Notebook optimized for mobile phones. There's also a new notebook "Mobile notes" where you can add notes directly from the homepage.

The "Unfiled" notebook is a great way to access your bookmarks, but you can't add a new one from the mobile interface. Other limitations: there's no search option, you can't edit notes, add labels or change the settings.


{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

Google Notebook Adds Labels and Bookmarks

Google Notebook added the most requested feature: labels. Now you can label each note and see all the notes that have a certain label.

The application imports all the labels and web pages from Google Bookmarks and places them in a new notebook titled "Unfiled". Adding a new note in this special notebook actually creates a new bookmark.


The organization of a notebook is more flexible: the notes can be sorted by date, by label and filtered by label.


Google Notebook's extension was also updated and has a new option: select the text from a web page and click on the small star to add it as a note. Now you can use the extension to add bookmarks by clicking on the star when the "Unfiled" notebook is selected.


All in all, the integration between Google Bookmarks and Google Notebook is interesting, but it's not very transparent in the interface. Every bookmark becomes a note in a special notebook, but "Unfiled" should be replaced with "Bookmarks".

Google Notebook will also add offline support using Google Gears in the near future, so you can access your notes and bookmarks even when you don't have an Internet connection.

{ Thanks, David Hartunian. }

Saving Search Results in Google Maps

Google Maps does a pretty good job at ranking search results, but sometimes you want to save some of the results and review them later. You may want to compare them or to share a list of the most interesting places with someone else.

An easy way to save only some of the search results is to use Google My Maps. When you click on a result, a tooltip shows more information about the place and lets you save it to My Maps. You'll have to create a new map and add the results you like. Each result will become a blue placemark on the map. When you save a search result, the title and the description are pre-filled, but you can change them and add notes. You can switch between "Search Results" and "My Maps", enter a new query or go to the next page of search results.

When you're finished, click on "Clear search results" and make sure all the placemarks are visible. The personalized map can be printed, sent by email or embedded into a web page. It's also accessible in the My Maps tab and you can always add new places later.


If you want to collaborate on a map with other people, use Google Notebook (don't forget to install the plug-in). Create a new notebook, go to "Sharing options", make it public and invite other collaborators. To obtain a map-enabled notebook, switch to the text view in Google Maps. For each search result you want to add to the notebook, select the title and the address, right-click and choose "Note this".


A notebook can have multiple sections and you can write comments next to each note. When you go to the published notebook, you'll see a link that says: "View this notebook on a map". All the notes become placemarks on a map.

Your Notebooks Are Available from Google Search

If you use Google Notebook, you'll find a new link at the top of search results pages: "My notebooks". There are two possible situations:

* you have the extension/plug-in. In this case, it's the same as if you clicked on "Open Notebook".

* you don't have the extension/plug-in and Google emulates the interface. You can copy search results in the notebook by clicking "Note this" next to the snippet, manage your notebooks or type some text in a new note.

Stylish New Design in Google Notebook

Google Notebook has a new UI that uses AJAX a lot (here's the old one, for reference). "After a long slog, our sexy new version of Google Notebook is out. There are still bugs and things missing, but I think this version is a lot more fun than the old one," says Kushal Dave on his blog.

You can see all your notebooks in the sidebar, ordered alphabetically or by modified date. It's easier to add notes: just click in the space between any existing notes. Google Notebook borrowed the layout of messages from Gmail and placed the editing buttons at the top of the page so you don't feel any disruptive interface change when you edit a note. You can now add comments to notebooks and remove the title and the URL of a clipped note. Google auto-saves each note, so you don't have to press a "Save" button.

If you add notes from Google Maps and publish the notebook, you'll have an option to see the places on a map.


The mini-notebook, available as an add-on/extension, has a similar look:


The option to search public notebooks has been removed (but you can use Google search to do that), Google Notebook looks faster because of the heavy AJAX usage, and the product graduated from Google Labs. Overall, a nice face-lifting, even though users were expecting to see other features like tags or file attachments.

{ Thanks, C. I. R. E. }

Export a Notebook to Google Docs

Sometimes a good notebook is just the start of a good document. You grab pieces from interesting places, do your research, and then you try to merge them and use these pieces to create something original.

Google Notebook has a new option: export to Google Docs. While the new document keeps the same formatting as the notebook, it's interesting to note that the images aren't saved in your document, so they still reference the original source. The transition is facilitated by the fact that Google Notebook and Google Docs use the same internal format


One might argue that Google Notebook should be a part of Google Docs, as they're both collaborative productivity tools. And maybe it will be, but I like to see Google Notebook as a web clipboard that stores crumbles from a goal-oriented web browsing.

{ Found by TonyB. }

How to Share Your Favorite Search Results

If you need to help someone by sending a list of interesting web pages that could solve his/her problems, you can do that using Google Notebook. You can do this even without installing the extension.

First, create a new notebook. Then use Google to find relevant sites. Every time you find something interesting, go back to the search results and click on "Note this", next to the corresponding search result.


You'll get a notebook that contains a list of links and short snippets. Go to "Sharing options" and make that notebook public (or just invite that person to view it).

Google Notebook Update

Google Notebook has been updated. First, there's a new version of the extension (1.0.0.14) that lets you make the mini notebook pop out into a new window. Now you don't have to go to the site to see the full notebook.


Google also updated the rich-text editor and included the same big buttons that are now available in Google Page Creator.


Public notebooks have feeds, so if you find an interesting notebook, subscribe to the feed read the updates.

{ Thank you, Chad. }

Google Notebook Adds Collaboration

Google Notebook lets you share a notebook with a group of people, in a similar way you do this in Google Spreadsheets. These people can add notes or edit notes written by other people, but you can't know who wrote something or when they added a note. You can add collaborators even if the notebook is public.

There's also a gadget for the personalized homepage that looks similar to the Firefox extension (or IE plugin).

The new feature may be useful for a team project, or if you want to explore the web with someone.

Other new features include an improved recycle bin for notes and an easier way to organize your notes, by moving them using drag and drop.

I think we'll see more collaboration features in Google tools, as they're not difficult to implement and are a great advantage for a web tool.

Better Search in Google Notebook

I don't use Google Notebook too much (I prefer text files), but I've noticed that this small tool has improved the search feature. If you had searched your notebooks until now, you would've found only the notebooks that contain your search terms. Now you can find all the notes that match your keywords.

It would be more useful if you could see the highlighted keywords in the notebook too and if the search allowed advanced operators. When it was launched, Google Notebook didn't have a search feature for public notebooks.

Related:
10 feature requests for Google Notebook
Remove 'Note this' from Google search results