Small Business

Simplify Online Research with Microsoft Thumbtack

By Dave Johnson

Updated on: January 14, 2009 / 12:55 PM EST / MoneyWatch

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:6a905d98-0332-4c3f-8b25-75737cd9b675&showPlaylist=true&from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Thumbtack Introduction">Video: Thumbtack Introduction</a>

When I was 12, doing research meant walking 2 miles to the library (uphill, of course) and then photocopying pages out of the encyclopedia at 10 cents a pop. These days, I spend all my time clipping notes from the Web while blasting Nirvana on my iPod. I'm always looking for a good way to store and organize all those notes, though. As if reading my mind, Microsoft Live Labs has released Thumbtack, a Web clipping tool that lets you store and arrange your notes online.

Copy any part of a Web page and paste it into Thumbtack, where you get a thumbnail version of your content. Of course, you can double click an item to see it at full size, and all the links are still active. You can create multiple collections, and drag and drop clips among them -- check out the video for Thumbtack in action.

Sound familiar? It should. Thumbtack is similar to Evernote, which went public this past summer. Thumbtack is a little different, though, thanks to its extensible set of gadgets. One gadget, for example, plots all the items in your collection with addresses on a map. Another gadget helps you change the layout of items on the screen. You can share collections with co-workers, either via a Web page or e-mail. It's off to a good start, and I expect Live Labs will continue to improve this little goodie.

Dave Johnson was employed by Microsoft Corporation at the time this article was written.