google minus

everyone and their yapping newborn puppy has been posting screenshots of google+ over the past few days. it's not that I feel left out, really-- it's just that I'm going to use 'everyone else is' as an excuse to blog a bit about google too. but not about new google stuff--I haven't been invited to join the new facebookesque google+ thing yet. I just wanted to gush randomly about google notebook, which was sadly discontinued way back before I even got home from Canada. maybe it's weird that I still use it now, but oh well. I love my google notebooks.

as most people know, I'm rather incurably addicted to notebooks, and I have at least one for everything you would ever want to take notes on. in my life, of course the internet needs its own notebook. and who better to host such a bottomless notebook than google? according to their lovely about page, their mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. notebooks are perfect for that! and naturally, internet note-taking calls for internet notebooks.

I mainly keep eight google notebooks. four of them are devoted to various novels-in-progress. one is purely for recipes and food-related links, another for listing and organizing the 100 things I might want to do with my life, and another houses the results of my informal survey (which I will someday blog about in more detail, I promise). lastly--though actually it was created first, long long ago--there is the one labeled EVERYTHING, which comprises a very long list of quotes, pictures, thoughts, links, and other randomness. that one is my favourite.

in google notebook, just like with real notebooks, the one I last looked at shows up on the top of the pile. just like with real notebooks, I can occasionally tear things out and stick them somewhere else. just like with real notebooks, most of the time they sit untouched in a nice, neat stack in the corner. only rarely do I find myself with a reason to pull out any of them for more than a split second. usually I'm either pasting in a very quick quote and its reference, or I'm frantically scrolling around looking for a recipe I'm sure I must have copied in at some point.

the best part about google notebooks is they are incredibly easy to edit, add to, and rearrange, unlike some other less-cool google applications. so I'm glad that even though google has given up on developing their notebook thing, I still get to use it. hopefully it will keep working for a long, long time yet.

any suggestions for a back up plan, just in case google notebooks ever dies completely?