Webware

Zoho released its Notebook service today, better rounding off its suite of Web-based productivity tools. Zoho Notebook (more here) is really more like a scrapbook than a notebook. You can add spreadsheets and word processing files from your Zoho folders. Even more fun is Zoho's capacity to hold songs and video--as well as Web pages and RSS feeds--from a hard drive or from around the Internet.

Zoho Notebook collects files and feeds into a tidy interface.

The capability to share your stuff with other people makes Notebook a potentially cool tool for group projects at school or work. Chatting with other users in addition to recording and playing audio and video could flesh out the experience. Overall, Zoho Notebook was pretty speedy in my tests using Firefox; I didn't bump into as many delays as I have with Flash-enabled features elsewhere. I like the clean interface, which is way friendlier than a wiki and makes exploring features a cinch. Adding an RSS feed brought up a useful, resizable window that could be pinned into place, shared, or commented upon. Other inserted content appears in this widget-like way.

But inserting content was a hassle more than a few times. Adding a URL brought up a window labeled "Add SRC," which wasn't self-explanatory. When I typed the New York Times' URL into that field, suddenly Zoho vanished and took me to the Gray Lady's domain. The next time I added a URL, however, Zoho Notebook did what it's supposed to do by embedding that Web page within my Zoho book. Once I added CNET.com, I could click around the site without leaving Zoho. Unfortunately,when I wanted to keep an article, Zoho said the page contained no data and didn't let me save it.

Inserting videos wasn't snappy.

Hitting the Back button took me to a blank Zoho Notebook rather than the one I had just filled with content. And later, once I had a full Notebook again and then refreshed my browser, Zoho maddeningly cleared my content and took me to a blank slate. Zoho had already saved most--not all--of my work, which wasn't apparent initially.

What good is a notebook if you need to be online to use it, and if it makes your notes disappear? For projects that I'd need to access from, say, a rural summer cottage, connectivity concerns make Microsoft OneNote software more appealing than Zoho Notebook or any Web-based competitor such as the bare-bones Google Notebook (see more). If you only need to access a light amount of news and tools stored online, then a home page service like Netvibes could be just as useful. Zoho Notebook still has its purpose, and for digital research, it handles a wider breadth of content than bookmarking services such Clipmarks (read more).

Nevertheless, I'm still waiting for some puddleproof, shock-absorbent, crash-free, electronic-paper gadget that will make it possible to keep a digital notebook or scrapbook in my pocket. But if Zoho smooths Notebook's wrinkles, I'd check it out again and consider using it to plan something fun with friends around the country, like a mojito-soaked beach reunion on some crystalline coast.

Here's a new Web app that will knock you flat: Scrapblog. In development since last year, the site finally went public on Monday, April 2. It's a service for creating online multimedia packages, in particular, collections of photos and videos. As you might gather from the name, its designers want to deliver a level of flexibility that's similar to what you get when you're building a real-world scrapbook.

With Scrapblog, it's easy to place photos anywhere on a page, rotate them, crop them, and so on. The same for videos--but so far, you can get video in only via YouTube URLs. You can also set presentations to music (Scrapblog's canned selections only so far), and set transitions between pages. You can then embed your presentation in a blog or a social network page.

Building a Scrapblog

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Notwithstanding those restrictions--and a few bugs, especially around publishing projects--nothing that I've seen, Web-based or not, does the job of creating free-form presentations as well as this application (disclosure: I have not used Keynote). Here's one I created in a few minutes.

CEO Carlos Garcia told me that Scrapblog has attracted an unusual demographic for a Web service: 80 percent of its users are female. A lot of them are what he calls "mommy bloggers": mothers setting up pages to document what the kids and the family are up to.

Certainly, you can create a more engaging presentation with Scrapblog than you can with a photo-sharing site, or even a blog such as Vox (review). However, the free-form nature of the system means that getting your presentation just right will take time. There are good templates on Scrapblog, but since the whole point of this system is to let you express your creativity, I think that even users who start with a template will spend a fair amount of time modifying it to create just the look they want. Scrapblog is no replacement for PowerPoint--although I'll give bonus points to any CEO who uses Scrapblog instead of PowerPoint in a presentation.

As I said, Scrapblog is an excellent online application. It's based on Adobe's Flex and uses a lot of the fancy user-interface options available on that platform. However, because it's online there are a few snags. Mostly, the speed of uploading photos is limited by your connection, and if you have a lot, it can be frustrating to wait (although if you already have images Flickr, Yahoo Photos, Webshots, or PhotoBucket, Scrapblog has a simple interface for quickly "sideloading" the images into it). And, of course, you can't use it if you're offline. This summer, the company will release a standalone front-end to the service using the Apollo (review) runtime, Garcia told me. It will allow you to import photos directly from your hard disk and upload them all to the service when you choose to "publish" your scrapbook.

The service is free. In the future, premium services may include printing options and licensed content (graphics, themes, and music).

See also: Vuvox, Tabblo, LetterPop, and Apple's iWeb.