Yahoo fills gap left by Google Notebook

 

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By Dawinderpal Sahota

Posted on 5 Feb 2009 at 10:59

Yahoo is taking advantage of a gap vacated by Google with the launch of a new service to help organise web searches.

Yahoo's tool, dubbed Search Pad, is similar to Google Notebook application, which was among a series of services that were culled by Google last month. Although Notebook is still available to existing users, Google has closed the service to newcomers and curtailed its features.

Yahoo's new substitute, Search Pad, will let you edit and copy clippings from websites, organise them so that they're relevant to a particular topic, and then print them out or email them to friends or colleagues. You can also save notes and access them later.

Yahoo says that its research shows that people often use word-processing documents, sticky notes, emails, bookmarks, or a combination of the above, to store and organise information they find on the web.

"These methods can be quite cumbersome and require extra steps which are time-consuming and distracting," says Tom Chi, senior director of product management, on the Yahoo Search blog .

"Search Pad tackles this problem by intelligently detecting users' research intent, automatically collecting visited sites, and providing simple tools for users to organise and add notes - all in one place," he adds.

Search Pad is currently only in a testing phase, but a limited number of users will be able to test it today. In the meantime, the company has released a short video demo to show you how it works.