Update:  Their Google Notebook importing feature is now live.

I’d discovered a wonderful service called Evernote.com through my iPhone. It came to me as an app recommended by a friend.

My first thought was, “Oh, look, another Google Notebook with added features.” Handy as it is, I’m already entrenched in Google Notebook, so even though I’ve added Evernote.com to my list of tools, I’ve never really done anything besides play with the iPhone app.

Today I learned that Google is abandoning it’s Notebook feature. Two things went through my mind:

• Google, you suck.  I came to depend on something of yours and you’re pulling the plug on me.
• Thank God I’d discovered Evernote!

And, as Andrew Sinkov of Evernote.com told me today, they are building a tool to allow Google Notebook users to import everything they have in Notebook over to Evernote.

I’d already done it manually, simply by using Notebook’s export feature (I displayed each notebook as a HTML page and then captured it from there into Evernote … it took about an hour to grab everything, but in the process I ended up skimming through some of the things I’d captured — that I’d forgotten about — and now have lots of ideas for articles).  That being said, I’m looking forward to their import feature, as it may pull things over more dynamically.

If you haven’t discovered Evernote.com, it’s actually lightyears ahead of Google’s Notebook.  More ambitious.  Their stated mission is to become the external extension of your brain.  How they’re doing it is to create a free form database that is accessible via the web, and via a mobile device, as well as having software you can download (for free) and load on your main computer.  Everything connects through the Evernote.com website and syncs up.  So if you take a note one place, it’s available everywhere.

Also, it’s much more than just screen captures from the web.  Using their apps for various devices (iPhone, Smartphones, etc.) you can record voice notes and snap pictures.  Once synced up to Evernote.com, OCR software actually reads your pictures, capturing any next therein, and indexing it in your database for easy retrieval.

That means you don’t have to jot something down, or type it, you can just take a picture of it.  Say, for instance, notes on a class chalkboard.  Bing!  Instant class notes in your database.

How cool is that?

Anyway, that’s why I’m saying “Goodbye and Farewell” to Google Notebook, and “Welcome Home” to Evernote.

My hat’s off to whoever did this bit of clever, harmless hacking…

The signs near the intersection of Lamar and Martin Luther King boulevards in Austin usually warn drivers about upcoming construction, but Monday morning they warned of  “zombies ahead.”  [Read Full Story]

Sounds like something I would have done when I was a teen.

If you shout at your hard drives, you just might slow them down. They don’t like it.