Even before playing with the new Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, I knew that I would need to be able to take screenshots of the phone itself. Using a digital camera to capture screens externally just wasn't going to cut it. Because the Android platform is open (and now, open source), I really didn't expect this to be a problem. If anything, I thought there would be a way to take screenshots directly from the device like you can with the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Alas, I discovered this is not the case. After scouring Google trying to find answers, I asked Engadget's Editor-in-Chief Josh Topolsky what they used for the screenshots in their review, and he was nice enough to fill me in on the details.

Warning: right now, taking screenshots from an Android device requires installing the SDK. That doesn't make it as simple as pressing a button, but it's not the end of the world. If you've got a few minutes, and a quick connection with which to download the SDK, we'll show you how to take delicious Android screenshots of your own.

• Apple hasn't fired up the cease & desist engine just yet
• They are quietly sanctioning this kind of hacking
• They're listening to demand and are working on opening the phone up
• They already have an iPhone SDK prepared and are waiting for something like Leopard in October because of specific code constraints

The word on the street these days is that switching to a Mac will give you a bunch of new stuff - all sorts of fun software to play with, a CEO with his own Reality Distortion Field™ and a small, rabid cult following that we don't necessarily recommend you join up with. One thing you lose, however, is that Print Screen key; setting up a Mac desktop or notebook will reveal that the key is nowhere to be found, apparently leaving us out in the cold when it comes to capturing that golden moment on your display.

The subject of one of Google's many announcements at Wednesday's Google Press Day was Google Notebook, a somewhat mysterious project that Google has described only as "a personal browser tool that lets you clip text, images, and links from the pages you're searching, save clippings to an online notebook, and then share notebooks with others." Google will be launching Google Notebook sometime next week, but today you can see a whole pile of screenshots of the product in this Flickr set. Even from 18 screenshots, though, it's tough to tell exactly how Google Notebook works, but to my eyes it looks basically like an online bookmark system. "Notebooks" seem to be little more than collections of links that you can manage through a web-based interface. In the screenshots the user searches for "gifts for mom" on Google, and then uses a small pop-up in the corner of the results page to save and annotate one of the resulting links. Then the user goes to the Google Notebook site (google.com/gn, but don't bother, it doesn't work) where all of her notebooks are displayed. This looks very Ajaxy, including some pretty transparent drag-and-drop stuff. Notes can be edited and there seem to be rich-text controls, and of course there are buttons to share or make notebooks private, as well as "New Notebook" and "Add note" buttons. And that, it would seem, is about it. In There doesn't appear to be any tagging functionality or any social aspect a la del.icio.us. In the screenshots the pop-up box only seems to be displayed on Google results pages and I don't see any other indication that this is, say, a Firefox extension. However, this shot shows a URL box, so obviously possible to add URLs that aren't included in search results, just more difficult. A bookmarklet will undoubtedly be created either by Google or some third party to make that easier, but I think very soon we'll see that functionality integrated into Google Toolbar.

Obviously Google Notebook isn't intended to compete with social bookmarking systems like del.icio.us, but while the interface and the snappiness that comes with Google's web apps appeal to me, I don't really see anything Google Notebook can do that I can't already do with del.icio.us (with the possible exception of the ability to rearrange items), and without tagging I can imagine notebooks with many items quickly becoming unmanageable. However, for all I know these screenshots are of an older version of Google Notebook, and what we'll be seeing next week might be something different entirely.