Google had recently announced a Google Notebook at their press release. This is supposed to be made available next week for testing and it will allow users to keep notes on the pages they visit. This is how it will work:
Notebook is a little notes window that follows you from the Google search results to other sites, allowing you to collect bits and pieces of information. You can also make public parts of Google Notebook to share it with others.
It does sound like it will be very useful and will help you remember important parts from some sites. Until now there have been no screenshots available to give users some insight on what to expect.
By looking at the screenshots it appears that this will be even more powerful than I thought. The notes window isn’t nearly as obtrusive as I expected it to be and will be very easy to hide or close.
I can’t wait to get my hands on this one.
View The Full Screenshot Gallery
News Source: Google Blogoscoped
Good stuff. Do you know if the notes are private, or will website owners be able to see what kind of notes people are making about their sites?
Other than the Google name behind it, what is the difference between this and Furl? Of course, the name could be everything…
They would have to keep the notes private because of privacy issues. However, the user will have the option to share their notes with others.
-Ryan
From the screenshots I take you will be able to create any number of collections of notes (notebooks) and set any notebook (collection) either public or private. Within each notebook you will be able to add any number of notes, including webtext, webpictures, weblinks and your typed text. Nothing to do with conventional bookmarking (del.icio.us, etc). A bunch of web integrated notepads under one roof. I can’t wait!