We were just informed of the closing of Google Notebook.
UberNote has often been compared to Google Notebook. Since UberNote began, we've had praise from users that have chosen us over our Google competitor. At the same time, I'm sure we have had users choose Google Notebook over UberNote.
We would love to find out how we can be a new home for Google Notebook fans.
What features would you like to see in UberNote that will make us a good replacement for Google Notebook? Please comment below!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Google Notebook No More?
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15 comments:
Looking to switch from Google Notebook.. just a couple of things which would make things better:
Subtags: Would give me more organizing options. In Google Notebook I used multiple notebooks and then Section Headers allowed me to subdivide within those notebooks.
Ability to drag and drop notes to change order. This allows me to place notes in my own order of importance and not be restrained to sorting by date.
While Google Notebook doesn't have checkboxes for tasks, I have been using Strikethrough for marking completed items off my list. It would be nice if tasks would do this as you check them off.
Easy way to change the tag of an item in one step. Right now it seems I have to delete the tag and then assign a new one. I use this to move notes to an Archive tag. Sometimes I like to hide notes I don't want to see anymore, but want to be able to refer to should the need arise.
Ubernote looks great, and now that Google Notes looks to be on the way out, I am looking for a new home for my data. :-)
just found you as google notebook is dying. it looks wonderful and i will use it. the only thing that is badly needed: right-click possibility. you have the firefox extension but it'd be nice to be able to add it to the right-click button to be even larger. thanks. looks great
You have a great product so far. My suggestions: keep it simple and quick, keep it web-based, and don't disappear on me. :) Renaming tags would be nice (unless I missed that), and maybe an option to categorize notes in ways other than using tags, since I often use several tags in one note. Thanks!
Thank KevB. I like your idea about the strikethrough.
We'll take a good look to address some of these issues. Thanks!
Re: FE
Right click with the firefox extension should work. (or at least it is working for me) What OS are you on and what version of FF?
RE:PixelFiend
Our intention is to keep it web-based. In the next round of changes we are looking to simplify our interface a bit more. We feel it's gotten a little too "busy".
You can rename tags by clicking on the tag where they are listed on the right hand side.
We are a small team and plan on keeping this running for a long time.
Looking for a Google Notebook replacement. Two things I need.
1. Subtags or the multiple notebooks and section headers.
2. Ability to export my notebook into text, doc or html file. Just couldn't find a mention of that on your site.
I love how open your layout is. I just wish I could put the notes into some type of preferred order that they will show up in when using the tags.
RE: Renee Zamora
Under settings and tools on the top, there is a "Backup" link that downloads it to html. We are working on some other formats.
I know it has been mentioned before but if you're planing prioritize the TODO list based on the commenters' input, I'd cast my vote for the multiple notebooks. It is an absolute must for me.
Ability to change order of the notes would be nice to have. But only after GNotebook importer and multiple notebooks are complete :)
The one thing I was looking for, an easy way to move my notes over. Google can export to html, ugly to work with, but maybe someone could create a perl script or something to translate into your backup html format. Is it possible to use your backup system to then import that?
It's simple : Copy the google notebook interface!!! Especially the shared option like the private default option
I teach English Language Arts and social studies in a Title I middle school (80% of our kids get a free lunch at school because of their socio-economic status. Put simply, they're poor). A little over 2/3s of our students do not have computer access at home, fewer have internet access. So school and sometimes the public library are their only points of access.
We do not have student computers in the classroom, so that means our 800 students share roughly 50 desktop computers. The computers are not mobile in any way. Much of this will be changing in the near future since voters approved a bond issue to upgrade technology in my district.
This is why we used Google Notebook to do online research with our students, and what I'm looking for in a replacement:
1.Drag-and-drop clips and notes within a notebook and across notebooks, regardless of date order. Click-and-enter ability to add sections and notes only (without clips). Expandable sections.
2. Goldilocks complexity: not too bare-bones, not too many bells and whistles. Google Notebook was just right on the number of buttons and menus. I could get a class clipping in about 20 minutes because it was a simple highlight and right-click. The in-browser preview pane was also helped students keep track of what they already clipped, and for teachers to monitor that they were staying on task. :)
3.SHARING= Maybe 3 clicks to share so I could see their work as a web page they could easily print and take home. Ease in inviting collaborators/viewers so students can form groups without a lot of trouble, and I can access their notebooks with ease. RSS feeds were also very helpful for me to see when students did work outside of class or added information on their own, outside of the assignment time period.
4. Nothing beyond the extension to download (FireFox or IE). Otherwise we have red tape issues. Also, as more and newer computers and iPod Touches come into the the school, we don't need any compatibility issues as those changes are made.(So at some point, mobile device access/compatibility with Safari will be necessary)
5. Web-based because students may not be on the same computer from one day to the next, or may need to access the service in other classes.
6. One username and password for several applications. If it were possible to use their email addresses as their login, it would be easier for our teachers and students to keep up with login information. Yes, middle schools tend to forget. :)
7. Information needed to register needs to be basic and private. Federal and state laws, and safety in general, dictate that we can't ask students to share things like birthday, address, etc without parental consent.
8. Comments and tags. We use comments as teachers to give feedback about sources the students find and clip. Tags help us teach students about finding main ideas in text, and connecting a text to bigger ideas and topics.
9. Search bar--tags are good, but not all our students are good with tags. Being able to search a notebook for words and phrases would be wonderful.
10. Free! If it took ten years to get what we're getting, imagine how long it would take to get money for a online notebook service! :)
Bonus: A way to migrate our students' existing notebooks to the new service without a lot of hassles.
And that's all. :)
We've had a lot of success getting students to organize information and keep track of it (yes, middle schoolers lose things like note cards and papers). I hope we can find something that won't necessitate a lot of re-doing.
Thanks for listening!
Any hope for pasting screenshots (from snagit, or similar) directly into a note without having to save and import? I realize this presents a challenge for web interface. Thanks.
My vote goes to keeping things simple. To those asking for subtags, quasi-folders, etc, I say give Ubernote a try as is. Using tags creatively is a much more powerful system than organising notes in a hierarchy. As for ordering notes, you can do this in a number of different ways using the drop-down menu at the top. If you want your own order within a tag/folder, then order alphabetically and number accordingly in the title. For the developers... have you come across Boswell (for Mac)? This is the most powerful (and simple) text organising application I have come across. There's no folder hierarchy, but rather 'filters' (tags), which automatically link notes to as many notebooks as you like. Very powerful search manager too... Incidentally, this is the one area of ubernote that I think needs improvement: advanced search e.g. find me notes with x tag and y tag; or find me notes with x tag or y tag but not z tag... i.e. some form of boolean search involving tags as well as text. Without a powerful search option, ubernote will have limited use for big collections of notes.
I am an educator who had been using Google Notebook with students. First of all, we are going to switch to Ubernote. I have spent 2 days testing all the other tools and this one comes the closest to what we need. We still would love to have 2 additional features:
1. Students can unintentionally plagiarize by confusing what they have copied versus what their own words are. Would love to see a field for adding notes about highlighted text that is snipped from websites. In this way, the student can add his/her own notes and I, as the teacher, can leave additional notes.
2. As others have said, subtagging. We use this for research projects and it is nice to be able to have a primary tag called "Civil War project" (which UberNote supports) and then add subtags to classify even further. We have had students learn how to evaluate their own notes by tagging "wheat" and "chaff" or "keep" and "lose." Tagging as a learning tool is very important for students.
I'm glad I found you! I appreciate that you've surveyed the community to solicit new features.
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