Lifehacker put out a note about one of Google’s latest, Notebook, and one of the comments pointed out that Clipmark already offered the same functionality. I thought I’d take a look at both of them. I love Google’s stuff by and large, but there are some alternatives I prefer, plus it seems prudent not to centralize all one’s online information. So I think Bloglines is easier to work with and sort through rss subscriptions than Google Reader. I think del.icio.us blows Google Bookmarks out of the water. So when I hear about a couple of alternatives to a Google tool, I usually check them out.

Starting with Google Notebook, I installed the Firefox plugins with no trouble. After I did so, I had a small Notebook icon in the lower right Firefox frame that allowed me to open or close the notebook; when it’s opened it’s in a small summary view which can either close (back down to the icon), minimize (to a small hovering line on the body of Firefox, or open to a new/full window with all the details. It’s extremely easy to add clippings by highlighting the desired text and right clicking to choose “Note this.” I can create multiple notebooks and switch which one I’m adding to (or create new ones on the fly) through the Actions option on the summary view.

I like the interface — I right click extensively for “additional” options anyway, so putting the “Note this” in the right click menu works perfectly for me. So to clip something, it’s just like copying: I highlight the desired text, right click, and choose the new “Note this.” The three “levels” available are a little confusing at first, but I quickly sorted out how each was useful. Clipping is possible in any of these modes. It’s intuitively and quickly usable, which I appreciate.

I would like some modifications, though (of course!). I’d like to be able to copy and paste out of the full Notebook view into my articles, preserving the links and such. As it is, I have to use the Firefox’s Edit/Copy after highlighting in the full view, no right click copy is given here. And when I do Firefox’s Edit/Paste, it carries over only the text of the link and not the link as well. I’d also like to be able to right click on the links shown in the summary/full views of the notebook and be able to copy link location like I can normally in Firefox. As it is, at present right clicking on links in the summary and full views causes the link to come up (and in the same page, not a new window or tag), which I find confusing and clumsy. Particularly since opening up the full view does cause a new window/tab to open (my tabs are set to capture new windows into tabs; your mileage may vary).

As you can imagine, there have already been a number of reviews of Google Notebook published: here, here, and here .

But I think some of these folks are missing the point. I would never consider this a substitute for del.icio.us. That seems like an odd equation to me. del.icio.us is about organizing links, Google Notebook is about saving and referencing snippets out of assorted web pages. In particular, I’ve been using this to save up collections of links and comments for articles that I write, including this one! Afterwards, I discard those notebooks now that I’m done with them. It’s a great way for organizing the bits of info I come across when researching something.

That said, I do agree that this makes Google Bookmark look like even more of an orphan. That tool needs to be overhauled or quietly dropped.

I went on to check out Clipmarks, and I want to like it. It’s also a plugin and you have to sign up for a free account (the Google Notebook also requires a google account, which anyone with a gmail account (for example) already has). This utility has been around a while longer. I googled up reviews here, here, and here.

Once you install the extension you have to remember to customize your toolbar in Firefox, and drag the Clipmark icon to one of your toolbars. Their simple “setup” view on their webpage does not mention this last part, so that could be a little tricky for folks without the investigative chops to figure it out.

Once it was properly installed, I had four new icons (I rearranged things to keep my real estate at the top minimal). To clip something, I clicked on the green clip button, hovered over the text/pictures I wanted until an orange outline appeared, clicked again inside the orange outline of what I wanted. I had some trouble with this — the orange outline does not always show up, and when it did, sometimes I clicked on the inside of it with no result, and so forth. Perhaps it was just net latency time — now that I think on it, it may be reading in the entire web page in order to find the html/css blocks contained in it. If I was patient and waited until my hovering created an orange outline around texts and blocks in the web page, then I was able to click inside the orange outlines I wanted to clip.

At this point the chosen block and the save and print icons turn orange. The save dialogue box then let me tag, title, and categorize the clipping. It seemed to need me to log back into Clipmarks frequently, I’m not sure why or what was going on; I had another window logged into Clipmarks open at the time. My clippings defaulted to public until I changed it (the save clippings dialogue box contains a link to change the default, which is a nice touch).

To review the Clipmarks snippets, I had to go back to my logged in Clipmarks window and go through the “mine” button (since I made all my clippings private). So it’s more cumbersome to retrieve the saved clippings than in Notebook, but since it’s on a proper web page, I’m able to copy text and links as I’d like.

I also poked around the public clippings. If I want, I can flesh out my login with a profile and list my blogs, pictures, IM handles, emails, use an avatar or photo, list a little about myself and so on. There’s a tag cloud available of public clippings in order to choose different sets of clippings to look at.

I do like the overall look and feel of the Clipmarks site. The orange highlighting does need to speed up because its unresponsiveness is confusing: I started clicking all over to try to get something to happen, and wasn’t sure what was going on for a while. That issue about repeatedly signing in needs resolving as well. I’d also like some way of conveniently looking at thumbnails or summaries of my clippings without necessarily going back to the Clipmarks site.

I think there’s pros and cons to each. I like the general design and scope of Clipmarks and if I were more oriented to the social aspects of sharing clippings, I’d go that way. As it is, I’m a private misanthrope and I like the intuitive copy/paste interface of Google’s, so I’m going to go with that. I’d encourage you to look them both over and see what you like. If you object to plugins (as one reviewer did), you’re sort of out of luck…