Zoho Notebook is an online notebook that allows you to note or record many types of media. Maybe you carry around a notebook or pad to jot down notes. Possibly, you use an online notebook such as Google Notebook. You might even use a standalone note manager such as Evergreen or Onenote from Microsoft. Zoho Notebook is a web application that is in the same tree. The difference is Zoho Notebook is a might oak compared to those sapplings.

My interest in reviewing Zoho Notebook was sparked by my disdain for Google Notebook. I find myself thinking, "If this is the best Google can do, I feel sorry for them." It really is a pathetic attempt at an online notebook. Zoho, on the other hand, seems to have created an online notebook from the ground up. They grew to feature all tasks, needs and future proofed it. It's is simply an amazing effort to meet all the needs of an online notebook user.

Before I continue prattling on, let's get to the review.

Zoho Notebook is a beta application. I'm starting to see a pattern in the Zoho applications; all seem to be in beta. That's ok, as Zoho Notebook loads almost instantly and presents you with the following screen:

Zoho Notebook uses a, wait for it, notebook metaphor. The pages of your notebook are represented by tabs on the side of the screen. Want to rename them? Be logical about it. How would you do it? Yep, click on it and type the new name. Tada. You now have a new name for a page. It's a great way of looking at your notebook and an easy way to divide your sections. Simple and functional.

THE BASICS

This is a good time to explain that Zoho Notebook considers anything you add an object on your page. You can move that object around wherever you want. There are some standard options for each object. You can pin them in place, which holds them where you want, you can also delete the object. Other options include sharing, commenting, verisioning and title editing. One thing that confused me at first, but became very powerful, is that you can layer your objects. One option missing is the ability to somehow organize your objects. It'd be nice to see them layed out in a square, have them cascade or minimize them. If you look for help you'll get a single page that is more of a feature walk through than help. 

The first thing I did was dig into the basic functions. I added a box of text and typed some items. This is a basic editor for making quick notes. It works well, as expected. Next I tried to get fancy and add a Zoho Writer page. It worked, sort of. When you click on the add Zoho Writer page it asks whether you would like New or Existing. If you select New don't start typing. You have to wait for Zoho Writer to load. There isn't a display telling you it's loading, so anything you type will be lost when Zoho Writer loads. Creating that new page doesn't integrate it into the current page you are working on. It creates a new page. This is an important distinction, as there is a function on the bottom of the menu to add a Zoho Writer document to your current notebook page. The caveat here is that when you save your Zoho Notebook it won't save your Zoho Writer additions at the same time. 

Next I added an image. You are offered the option to get the image From a URL, Upload or Collection. The collection option shows all the images you've uploaded. The process to add an image works well, but you cannot minimize an image. When I was putting up screenshots for the review it was a pain to workaround the larger images. It'd be nice to minimize or turn the images into a thumbnail.

I proceeded to upload audio. I was amazed that the online notebook will interface, though flash, with your microphone. You can upload snippets of files, though there is no posted limit of how big they can be when you upload. If you look on my page you'll see I uploaded a snippet of a song. It worked well, very well in fact. The player used is a Zoho branded one with controls for play and stop. You can also move the placement indicator to move through the audio.

Adding a video clip to your notebook was a little problematic for me. When you select the Add Video option you can either paste the embed code from an online service or record your own video. There is no ability to upload video. No problem. I decided to embed a clip from the Hulu service, but it didn't work. I did post a YouTube video, which is probably the best song ever created, and it worked great. You can drag the object around the screen without interrupting the video. Oh, the YouTube video does have bad words.

I skipped the Add HTML option and jumped into the Firefox extension. It doesn't appear there is an IE option for this functionality. You have to allow Firefox to download from Zoho, but after that you should be set after a quick restart. The Firefox extension adds a context sensitive option on the right click when you are at a web page. The options are to snap the website or snap a region. The snap a website option copies the page you are on to the notebook. The links are not live. When you snap a region, up pops a little square that you can take a snapshot of the website with. You can also highlight text and snap that to your notebook page as well. Guess what? It works well. My only issues is that you need to have your Zoho Notebook loaded when you do this.

OUTPUT FEATURES

There are a few output features to run through on Zoho Notebook. They are pretty powerful and haven't been in seen in online notebook applications before.  

Export: This allows you to export your notebook or page in MHT format. MHT format is a way to combine multiple web pages into one file. This allows you make your notebook portable. For some reason the MHT file didn't load for me after export. 

Publish: I took a leap of faith and published my notebook. When I did this it said "You are about to publish. Once published, the content can be accessed by anyone online." I thought that was sharing. There is also an option to embed your notebook, but when I selected that option it was blank. Once the leap of faith was taken it was pretty cool. The darn thing actually publishes a notebook! You can find mine by clicking on this link. The only drawback I saw was the audio player wouldn't work. It would show up, but you couldn't activate it. I think the audio player actually displayed, "Try Again later."

Sharing: I liked this feature and didn't like this feature. Sharing only works with other Zoho users, but you do have control whether they can only read or they can read and write. 

Overall, Zoho Notebook is a very powerful application. It's a one stop shop for collecting all the tidbits of electronic information you have placed all around. It is a visual application, though. If you are linear, like fixed borders you're going to have a learning curve. But, it's worth it.

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