I am not too sure about Google Notebook

It's now been about a month since Google Notebook was released (see Note This from the official Google Blog). I wonder how many people are still using it? Has it been useful for you guys out there? Many have blogged about the functionalities and features of this service from Google (see A Closer Look at Google Notebook). Its defintely a nice tool to use, but has it been really that fantastic? I've been using it while:

1. Researching for new articles for my blogs.

It's neat to have something that resides in my firefox browser that I can simply right click on my selected text of interest and then click on "Note this (Google Notebook)" and wella it saves the text and the link. Using it in this manner keeps the flow and momentum of my research going at a steady pace, the train of thought is preserved.

Many times I use this feature in conjunction with the del-icio.us "TAG" button that I have in my tool bar. In this manner, I save the link to the web page together with comments, and at the same time I can then tag my link as well.

2. Jotting down my thoughts.

Yes, the other thing that I've been doing is to quickly jot down ideas and thoughts that I've been thinking about everyday. The ability to just get the notes written quickly, and then coming back to them later to organise them using the "Section Heading" feature is quite neat. However, I don't do this often because I am not constantly tethered to my computer and the internet. And ideas come and go at a flash and its seems easier to note things down on my Treo600.

So I am still not too sure about the usefulness of Google Notebook for this purpose. Certainly I have not made use of the collaborative features of Google Notebook yet. Perhaps this is where it can shine.

In Conclusion

The one thing I really cannot stand about Google Notebook is that after capturing all our thoughts on this great tool, how do we get it out ! I mean, the only thing we can do it Print. What I would have liked is for a feature in which I can just copy all the contents of one notebook, section headings and all, and then paste it into something else, e.g. MS Word, notepad, etc. But there isn't a feature in which I can do that! Maybe I am missing something here, can somebody tell me if there's a better way to do this?