Two great online note taking solutions: Google notebook and Scrapbook extension for Firefox

Whenever you do some web-based research, be it for a school paper, gathering documentation for any project, collecting reference for an article you are writing, or compiling information about a particular purchase, you need a good system to save snippets of text, images and links.

You will be using the internet and your browser more and more for this purpose in the foreseeable future, and the necessity of a good way to store, access and organize your collected information is crucial.

Of course, you can always copy and paste the text using regular office software, an outline editor or some other program. Or you can just copy images, save PDFs and complete web pages in a particular folder in your computer. But using your own browser to save, organize and access this repository of information is a more practical approach. How?

There are two good, free and easy to use solutions that live right within your Mozilla Firefox browser: the Google Notebook and the Scrapbook extension for Mozilla Firefox (the first one will work, with some limitations, in any browser.)

The Scrapbook extension deservedly won a contest for the best Firefox extension organized by the Mozilla Foundation. Scrapbook provides a reliable system to save anything from a page, from an image or a small text selection to whole pages. The saved snippets and pages can be further edited, for example to get rid of non-significant parts such as ads or navigation items; you can also highlight or annotate passages. Scrapbook adds a new panel in your sidebar (which can be accessed at a mouseclick if you add its icon to the program toolbar), some items in the Menu and contextual commands. For example, if you want to save a snippet of text or an image, you simply right-click it and choose Capture Selection.

This extension provides extensive control on the way you save your selections, and you can organize them in folders and subfolders, reorder them, export the items or generate a list of references telling you exactly where you found what. Compiling a list of links for an anotated bibliography is simplicity itself. Scrapbook comes with an excellent and detailed user manual.

To install this extension you only need Mozilla Firefox. Visit the Addons page, install it, restart your browser and you are done. You can also find more information and the detailed manual and tips in the developer page.

Google Notebook makes web research of all kinds easier and more efficient by enabling you to clip and gather information even while you're browsing the web. Google Notebook lives in your browser, you won't be left with a scattered collection of notes, Word docs, and browser bookmarks to sort through; all your web findings will be gathering into one organized, easy accessible location that you can access from any computer. You can organize your notes in sections; all the linked materials are saved the server together with links to the original websites you used to take your notes. Notes can be shared or private; this makes the Google Notebook a good collaboration tool.

To access the full potential of Google Notebook, it's better to install a small extension for Firefox that adds two features: a contextual menu to save selections, and a mini-notebook on the status bar. When you have installed this extension, you can add web clips to your Google Notebook in three easy steps: a) Select content from a web page; b)Right-click and c) Select "Note this (Google Notebook) You can open and close your mini Google Notebook by clicking the icon on your browser's status bar (bottom right-hand corner).

The Notebook can be integrated in your Google homepage by adding the Google Notebook gadget.

Filed in: GTD notetaking notebooks organization getting-things-done