Why Use Google Notebook?
- Accessibility: Web-based wordprocessor, accessible from any Internet-connected computer
- Citation Aid: Automatically cites web links for later bibliography / works cited pages
- Researcher's Dream: Ideal for harvesting images and collecting research project sources / quotations
- Formatting Options: Permits rich text formatting and hyperlinking
- Flexible Organization: Add section titles and create multiple notebooks
- Drag and Drop: Move notes and section titles by dragging and dropping in your browser
- Collaborative: Offers collaborative options with others: Let them privately view or jointly author with you (not publicly editable like a wiki can be)
- Publishable: Can immediately post to the web, also printable
- Searchable: If you have it in a Google notebook, you can locate it with a search query
- Free!

Why Use Google Reader?
- RSS Compliant: Wealth of high quality content of individual interest is now distributed via RSS, which requires an AGGREGATOR 
- Accessibility: As a web-based aggregator, it is accessible from any Internet-connected computer
- Feature-rich: Goes beyond Bloglines in permitting starring and sharing of specific posts (Here are my currently shared posts - note Bloglines lets you share ALL your feeds)
- More Powerful Searching: Permits use of customized live RSS feed searches with tools like Google Blog Search and Technorati
- OPML Support: You can import and export your subscriptions (from other software programs or web services like Bloglines) using built-in support for the OPML standard
- Free! 

Why Use FireFox?
- Safer: More viruses and malware programs are written to deploy in Internet Explorer for Windows than any other web browser. FireFox is safer and less dangerous to use (less malware prone)
- Great Text Zoom: Control + to zoom in, Control - to zoom out
- Google-friendly: FireFox fully supports Google Notebook's functionality. Some other browsers (like Safari on Mac OS X and Opera on all platforms) do not. At least not yet.
- Tabbed Browsing: Control-T (Mac users Command-T) to create a new tab. Multi-tasking is so much easier. (Yes, IE7 supports tabs now, but it seems less intuitive)
- Cross-Platform: FireFox works the same on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh-based computer systems
- Extendable: A wealth of helpful, free add-ons are available for Firefox
- Free!

Instructions for  subscribing, reading, starring and sharing web feeds with Google Reader are available on http://siteblog.wikispaces.com/subscribing.

 Options to Add Clips To Your Notebook
- In any Google search click NOTE THIS in the search results
- On any webpage, right click (Mac users control-click) text, an image or a link and choose Note this (Google Notebook) 
- To save the full URL (web address) to an image or webpage, click on the link from search results and THEN add it as a clip to your notebook

 Create your section titles first
- Section titles always go at the bottom of your notebook when they are created
- Move your clips under the correct section category later

 Use the Mini-Notebook
- Browser extensions that support the Google mini-notebook let you stay on a webpage while adding clippings
- Make sure (in another tab or another browser window) you have the desired notebook selected and open
- If the desired notebook is not shown in the mini-notebook, close it, make sure the desired notebook is open in another tab or window, return to your webpage and open the mini-notebook again (click on OPEN NOTEBOOK in the lower right corner of FireFox)

 Miscellaneous Tips
- Double click in a clip to edit it
- Use text styles, colors, fonts, sizes and links to make text in your clips communicate more effectively
- Remember there is NOT an "undo" feature in Google Notebook! (yet)
- Differences from a wiki: A Google notebook cannot be made publicly editable like a wiki, and a revertable history of edits is NOT kept for a Google notebook
- No Tagging (yet): You can't add "tags" or other types of meta-data to Google Notebook clips at this point

 Other Resources
- Google Accounts (you need a free Google Account to use either Google Reader or Notebook
- Google Reader FAQ
- Google Notebook FAQ
- FireFox info and download links
- This review of the Google Notebook Beta in May 2006 is good and also includes links to several other similar research clipping tools.
- Practice adding images to your notebooks using Flickr Creative Commons search and YotoPhoto!

 This Google Notebook is shared by Wesley Fryer under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.