Goodbye to 2 old friends

Relax, nobody died. I'm just lamenting the departure of two online tools that are both on the brink of disappearing this month. One is Yahoo Briefcase and the other is Google Notebook.

Briefcase became obsolete for me some time ago; I hadn't added anything to it in at least 3 years, but figured I'd better clear my stuff out before they pull the plug. I've long since discovered that simply e-mailing documents to yourself is a perfectly good way to keep them safe in case your hard drive crashes.

As for Notebook, that one really did serve a good purpose. Things I might otherwise have printed out and stored in binders could be kept handy for later reference. NY Times articles have a tendency to disappear off their archives sooner than later, so I copied and pasted the text rather than trust that a link would remain viable.

I did some research and came up with Ubernote.com* - they make it quite simple to import your Google Notebook files, which I did last night, even under the influence of overtiredness. I've grown increasingly fond of tools that allow you to instantly "clip" something, be it to Live Journal, Facebook or Ubernote.

It's a pain to have to exit one site you're fond of and get to know a new one, but it's worth it to ensure that my favorite passionate moments (including the "Michael Pollan for Secretary of Agriculture" campaign) can always be revisited.

*That's "Uber" with an umlaut.