Interesting; I would rank Notebook's utility as a research tool as the best thing in the entire Google suite other than the search engine itself, with Gmail a close second. Install the right-click browser plugin and watch how quickly you start grabbing text fragments from online documents.

But I find the Google Documents to be very useful. They have a lot of work left to be done and are definitely limited and sometimes frustrating, but I find Docs very useful when I'm doing research and want to do word processing from multiple locations. It has saved me a lot of time. Then again, I am so permanently sick of Microsoft Office that I've switched to Open Office (which is in many respects better, I think, as well as free).

Google personalized homepage and Desktop, however, I find cumbersome and useless.

One of the things that I have observed during this conversion to Google is the strong habits that I develop to gather and process information. These habits can be ruts, and it takes some effort to get out of them and into more beneficial patterns. Nic, I am happy to hear your report about Notebook because I have the sense that it could be so much more than I am making of it. I just need to start incorporating it into my information gathering system.

It sounds like our g-page setup is about the same (except I've not been using notebook-- I'll have to try that). My family has been cured of ADD by Google Calendar as well (the cell phone text messages reminding me where I have to be in an hour are awesome). Do you have any privacy concerns, though? I've not read the TOS (which are probably "not meant to be read, much less understood"). Although I've no problem with someone in Mountain View, CA knowing that I'm seeing an allergist on Monday, the notion of providing the NSA with an itinerary upon which they can base their capture plan should I ever violate some obscure passage of the PATRIOT act causes me concern...

Picasa’s red-eye correction system works beautifully, as do many of the other Picasa editing features if your photos are of poor quality.

Great post, Gordon. I am a HUGE Google fan, but I was previously unaware of notebooks. Looks like a sweet application. The only drawback so far for me was the test run I just gave it on Westlaw. I used a U.S. Supreme Court case, and it actually pulled a reference into the notebook along with the clip, but it was the reference to the Supreme Court Reporter (S.Ct). Bummer. I was also hoping it would pull page numbers from the clipped section of the opinion, but I knew that was a long shot. I think I'll shoot Google a suggestion. If they could pull that off, notebook could shave hours off of legal research projects.

In a related note, I love docs and spreadsheets. Even though the actual spreadsheet application is subpar, the ability to collaborate is huge. I have a "job" that requires me to track attendance in 5 separate weekly classes, and I have no assistants to delegate the job to. I simply require each instructor to take roll and enter it on the online spreadsheet. I love it!