There are lots of software and services out there that can be used to gather ideas for future blogposts that comes to mind while reading other blogs, sifting through search engine results or browsing sites. It is during this ‘light-bulb” moments or sudden ‘braingasms’ that some of the best blog posts you’ll ever write are born out of clipping, an image or both while visiting some other sites.

To capture and preserve these ideas on-the-fly, you need something that is always available, convenient, easy to use and something that would not take too much of your time to open, actually use and save the idea or clipping you just spotted. Such services like Wridea have been around and offer a great service, a cool AJAX-powered interface and nice color-coding system to manage your ideas.

However, just like any other third-party idea-management service, you need to open a new window or tab to use it. Something not so good if you’re the obsessive-compulsive type, ideas suddenly pop in your head or if you’re on a slow connection may slow you down, frustrate you and even kill that new idea you wanted to save to begin with.

Thankfully, Google has long had a service that may be ideal for you, that will do all this and more. What’s great is that it’s all free. Bloggers would particularly love this new service as it will allow them to save post ideas and notes on-the-fly. Bring in Google Notebook.

With Google Notebook, you can browse, clip, and organize information from across the web in a single online location that’s accessible from any computer. Planning a trip? Researching a product? Just add clippings to your notebook. You won’t ever have to leave your browser window.

How does Google Notebook allows us to do just that? Why through a nifty browser plugin of course.

Downloading a browser extension enables you to use the mini Google Notebook. The mini Google Notebook allows you to clip information from the web without ever leaving the page you’re on. You’ll never again need to toggle between windows, or copy and paste info from your browser window to another application.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed this plugin, you’ll find a button at the bottom right-hand corner of your browser and that friends is the key to improving your blogging productivity, the Google Notebook just sitting there at your side waiting to take in any clipping, image or link you need for a later post.

Just click on the Google Notebook link on your browser and it will pop-in and ready to use, if this view is a little constraining you can set it to appear as a pop-up window for you to position and move around with as you please.

To add clippings to your Google Notebook, just right-click on the text, image or link you want and click Note this (Google Notebook) from the menu. You can also highlight text or images on any webpage, and click on the “Clip” button in your mini notebook.

You can also quickly clip Google search results by clicking on the Note this link at the bottom of any search result.

Once you’ve collected enough clippings and notes, you can always go the main Google Notebook and manage even more your notes, you could even export them to Google Docs or share them with your friends.

Google Notebook is a great service and will even be greater if it has some more features like an RSS feed for your clippings and notes or a feature to send your notes directly into your Gmail account. Well, let’s just wait and see, for now go ahead and give Google Notebook a try, you’ll be taking down digital notes in no time.