Despite the praise I had previously bestowed upon Google Notebook, Google has decided to stop development on this unappreciated service.  With Notebook on death row, where do we go now?

First, let me clarify.  Current users of Google Notebook will still be able to use it for the foreseeable future.  However, they will soon stop accepting new members.  Additionally, the Firefox extension that makes Google Notebook so useful will probably be broken by the next major update, and Google will do nothing to fix it.

This seems like the perfect opportunity to move over to Evernote.  Evernote has all the features of Google Notebook, plus a few more tricks up its sleeve.

The great thing about Evernote is that there is a multitude of ways to control your notes.  There is a desktop client for Windows and Mac, so you can edit your notes even while offline.  There is also a portable version of the client that can be installed on U3-compatible flash drives.  Even better, Evernote is available as an iPhone app; there is even a version for Windows Mobile.  Finally, there is a Firefox extension that works similar to how the Google Notebook extension worked.  For non-Firefox users, there is even a bookmarklet that can save your web clips.

Evernote has further capitalized on the demise of Google Notebook by saying that they will provide an importer for people migrating from Google Notebook.

The only downside to Evernote is that there is a limit to the amount of data you can clip per month if you are using the free version.  Of course you are encouraged to sign up for the Premium service if you don’t like that.

However, unless you are really taking advantage of Evernote’s advanced features, such as optical character recognition for submitted photos and the ability to take voice notes, you will probably not even notice the data limit.  Given the writing on the wall for Google Notebook and Evernote’s features and cross-platform support, we are giving Evernote the rare Just Plain Tech Seal of Approval.

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