Another internet essential


I'm an enthusiastic advocate of most of the Google suite of applications. Gmail saves my life on a daily basis. When I first started using it, its near-unlimited storage and instant searchability meant that I mailed myself nearly everything I wanted easy access to -- references, documents, reminders. As Google has added applications, I've taken a lot of the things I used to use Gmail for and moved them to the apps that are dedicated for that purpose -- Google Calendar for the reminders, Google Docs for the documents. Same instant searchability (the killer feature for all Google apps), and complete integration with the Gmail I already love. I was already a Writely fanatic before Google bought it up and combined its online word processor with the online spreadsheet it had already developed. With Google Docs, for example, if someone sends me a document or spreadsheet I can open it in Google Docs with a single click, instead of downloading it and opening it in Microsoft Office. And it's added to my collection of Google Docs automatically, where I can invite anyone I please to collaborate or to read. I've started using Google Docs to publish material online, too; when I wanted to link to my recent sermon from my blog, I just clicked the "Publish" button in the Google Doc and got a unique URL for the sermon that anyone can access.



Given my love for all things Google, I feel a bit behind the curve because I only just now learned about Google Notebook. This is the missing link in my online workflow.

As I discussed in this entry, I frequently do wide-ranging online research to answer A.V. Club questions, assemble syllabi, assist students, and do scholarship. My ad-hoc method for keeping track of all the little pieces was (a) open a browser window with a zillion tabs, don't shut down the computer or the browser, and hope nothing crashes, or (b) when (a) becomes unwieldy or the research project extends over too much time, Gmailing links or summaries to myself.

Now Notebook replaces the Gmail storage strategy. Start a notebook, name it anything. Select any text or images on any webpage and copy into a note. Add as many notes to a notebook as you want. Add comments to any note. Expand and collapse the notes to see at a glance what you've got. Keep as many notebooks going as you want. Search 'em all with one click.

For even easier research compilation, download the Firefox browser extension. Now select your text/images on any page, ctrl-click/right-click, and choose "Note this." A pop-out window rises from the bottom right of the browser window (just like Gmail chat), and you choose the notebook in which you want to store the material (the most recent one you've been using is the default).

Just like Google Docs and Google Calendar, the app is built for collaboration. Export the notebook to Google Docs to make it the basis of a paper (imagine keeping your references and quotations for a short research paper in a notebook, then exporting it to a Google Doc where you build the rest of your text around the notes). Invite anyone to become a co-author of the notebook. Publish the notebook as a webpage with one click.

I'm keeping collections of research for A.V. Club questions, knitting projects that have caught my eye, and topics that might become the bases for scholarly work somewhere down the line. Soon I'll start work in earnest on the summer's encyclopedia entries, and I'll have notebooks full of examples of films about the Afterlife and the Apocalypse.

If you do research online, or even if you've ever kept a list of projects you wanted to do or books you wanted to read, I've got two words for you: Google and Notebook. Give it a whirl!

Posted: Tue - May 22, 2007 at 07:24 PM         |

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