Yoono Buzz It: Notebooks Reinvented
Duncan Riley
32 comments »
Social surfing recommendation site Yoono has released a new plugin “Buzz It” that takes services such as Google Notebook to a new level.
Most people would be familiar with notebook and scrapbook style sites and plugins. You can add notes, reminders and links. Buzz It takes those basics and incorporates a rich Web 2.0 experience.
The plugin is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox and installs a new toolbar. It’s an initial negative that can be fixed. Relevant buttons on the toolbar (in Firefox) can be dragged onto existing place holders at the top of the browser.
Recording sites or notes with Buzz It is as simple as highlighting text or a page, then pressing a button or using the right click menu. An Ajax overlay appears with the relevant information. The plugin pulls images and videos from any site being viewed and then displays those results in the Buzz It sidebar, empowering drag and drop functionality into an entry. Amazon book links and even Google Maps can be generated inline and added to any post.
Buzz It also doubles as a blog posting tool. Most major platforms are supported and it’s one of the better blog posting tools I’ve used. It needs some work, the markup generated is below average and images posted are served from the original site and are not reposted locally; however for a MySpace user or casual blogger these are not going to be major issues. It’s simple, clean and easy to use.
The plugin integrates with Yoono’s social surfing recommendation platform and comes with the usual site recommendation style tools typical of this sort of service. If you’re in to this sort of thing then it’s one of the better services out there and currently boasts of having over 700,000 members.
Yes, Buzz It another plugin with (OMG!) another toolbar but looking past this I can honestly say that it is impressive. It’s smart, cool looking and is bound to have a broad range of appeal.
thanks a lot
Look very cool. Looks like something I’ll have to play with! Thanks!
Thanx a lot man! It really helps my business!
looks like something I want to use. Installing another toolbar will be hard though…
Thanks for the information, i’ll give it a go tonight.
“takes services such as Google Notebook to a new level.” of unnecessary complexity, may be. of asking a user to name each damn note. of giving a user a dozen extra options, rarely or never used. of adding a whole extra toolbar AND a sidebar!
Lets pretend for a second that all you really want is just to save the damn clip to come back and find it later. and may be put it next to 10 other clips on the same subject. like when you are hunting for an apartment, or saving job postings, or doing research for a school paper. would yoono be a good solution then? i did not get a sense it would be…
Google Notebook, may be. Notefish - definitely. Simple and elegant, with no bells and wistles, and no “rich Web 2.0 experience”. It just plain works to make web research easy.
Cheers,
Eugene Mizin
http://www.notefish.com/
Wow, this is an interesting media to capture information. Its 1 step above delicious and other book marking site. its really going to help students as well every bloggers.
Thanks for Sharing
http://www.suggestusability.com
why is everyone saying wow ? its terribly slow. I think if any of web annotations should click it should be very fast.
There’s one big problem with such toolbars and extensions, they only work in FireFox or IE
If only there was some sort of cross platform browser plugin or extension framework.
I really wish stumble upon worked in Safari and OmniWeb!
http://bla.st/software/
This concept reminds me of Plummer. But Plummer may find it hard to have a broad appeal like Buzz It because it is still based on invitation-only.
Duncan, While such tools make microblogging really simple, they hotlink images from the source which not everyone may approve of.
The only way to save ‘BuzzIts’ is either with tabs on the toolbar or on a drop down menu. I cant imagine how much fun it will be to find my stuff when I’ve saved 30,100 or more! And the title box shows up every time I want to save something even if it is on the same page. Too many of these products seem so promising but they dont think through practical user functionality. I want a tool that allows me to save, share, retrieve and most of all use it in a logical, practical method.
Wow this is pretty cool. And very easy to use. Looks good.
To Mashaziva :
Just to make sure you did not miss something :
Why would you want to create a new Buzz for each bit of a page you want to save ?
Just add a note to the existing Buzz that deals with that page (or subject, or whatever you chose to group your notes in a Buzz).
However, we are working on a layout in a future release to group buzz in “folders”
best regards,
Xavier
Xavier. i wasnt referring to adding notes to the content but for what i could see, if i want to highlight separate snippets on a page, a title box would open each time i highlighted. i welcome your clarification
Sounds interesting, specially for the community… I will test it first of giving my oppinion
I say - YASN - toolbar - boo!
- Make it a button that will fit into a empty slot on my firefox already; without using my screen realestate
Pallet Jack, do you know that toolbars are customizable in Firefox ?
You absolutely can chose to put for instance the BuzzIt element, say, next to your favorite Firefox button, and close the remaining of the Yoono’s toolbar, that will take just a few clics…
Allow us to give users more choice…
Ok so Duncan doesn’t like toolbar plugins. Can I ask, what is the alternative to a toolbar plugin? In other words, how could you achieve this without a toolbar?
Jason Alba
CEO - JibberJobber.com
Because you will change jobs in the next 3-5 years…
To Jason Alba,
I just installed this and using it from the contextual menue in Firefox without the toolbar - works perfect.
Amit
agree on the hotlinking, which is why I noted it in the post.
Jason,
how many toolbars is too many! every single app that insists on loading a new toolbar is a vote against it in my book. I don’t need any more toolbars. Easy substitute, you can integrate functionality by including buttons in the navigation toolbar or along the bottom in Firefox…or simply give users the choice as to where they put them. Examples: BlueOrganizer + Twitbin I’ve reviewed recently at TechCrunch, I also use Search Status for Firefox which has an extensive range of placement options, totally up to me. I’m not against extra buttons, but an entire toolbar is overkill when many people are already running existing addons.
I am working on an idea very similar but on a slightly higher level/end result… I’m glad I read these postings, cause I’m reading up on creating Firefox extensions in addition to the toolbar.
Thanks!
Mashaziva said:
>> “Too many of these products seem so promising but they dont think
>> through practical user functionality. I want a tool that allows me to
>> save, share, retrieve and most of all use it in a logical, practical method.”
Mashaziva, please give Notefish a try. I think you’ll like it. If not, I owe you a beer (and a better tool to save, organize, and share your web clips).
Best regards,
Eugene Mizin
info@notefish.com
Duncan, Firefox lets user choose all that. Using the Customize feature, select what you like in Yoono’s toolbar, put it where you like it, and close the toolbar with one click…
We have 3 major features in Yoono toolbar :
- buzz it
- the suggestions ticker
- Surprise me.
I’d bet people would not be happy to have 3 new items installing themselves in the navigation bar (where many extensions already land).
Nevertheless, they CAN do it if they like…
They can even drag and drop this toolbar to the top or under the status bar !
All that is pretty flexible, right ?
Simultaneous bookmarking (atleast to del.icio.us) would be a good feature to add. I still like the annotation/research done by Diigo toolbar with lots of other features. Yoono is a different approach though. It is not a pure bookmarking tool but more of a note taking tool - competition to Google Notebook. Yes it looks better than Google. Please add the feature of “folders” as you mentioned, Xavier.
Toolbars are evil. Why does the yahoo bar automatically re-install every time it has been disabled? Pagination seems a good idea if it does its job properly, as is screen-real-estate. I love scrolling marquee type boxes where space is at a premium.
Do you know of any program that tests if one’s Website has been blocked and what reason would a Website be blocked?
Regards,
Coral
http://www.coralpoetry.blogspot.com
Looks great, but as you wrote about the plugin “It’s an initial negative that can be fixed”.
I don’t see any way this can work without a plugin, do you?
Gal
I just tried this tool and I must say it’s very impressive. I can fancy more than one occasion I’ll use it.
Also check out Plum…. which is much better than Yoono
Google Notebook and NoteFish are much better options
Phani, you *have* to be kidding… or you did not try it…
I installed Yoono tool some days ago and I think it’s terrific. What a relief to know I can clip and share anything I want directly from the web page in just one clic. I just can do without it now. Yoono is efficient but also fun & addictive. No way I continue using another clipping tool !