I agree, Rafael, there are some tweaks that need to be made to the UI. Little things like not being able to scroll down with the arrow keys and other such annoyances are problematic. I’m waiting to see what sort of user feedback on bugs and features they receive and respond to before I complain, however. Make your voice heard, and the issues may just come out in the wash.

In fact, I already discovered one thing that bugged the hell out of me — the extension made it very difficult to actually get things into my notebook the way I wanted. I did a little testing and found a workaround: the bookmarklet gives you way more control, and works perfectly. I made sure I mentioned it to the team, and they assure me they will be looking into it.

I confess, I didn’t notice the issue with sharing single notes, and I agree that is a feature/issue that needs to be addressed. I’ll look into it myself after work.

As far as defining themselves, I think they’ve done that. Their main goal is to be a “smart” contextual notebook. To have collaborative features that allow people to curate and act on ideas, and gather inspiration and knowledge from a trusted user base. That is not Evernote and that is not Pinterest, or any other service that I’ve found out there. It does contain elements of each, certainly — and if Springpad can steadily hone in on and improve upon that idea, they could create their own niche. That, I suspect, has always been their true goal, no matter what we ever thought (remember, I was one of the major voices on the vs Evernote train…).

I look forward to seeing where they go. In the meantime, though, my general note taking remains where it belongs — in Evernote. Springpad is my bookmarking and sharing friend, as well as my shopping buddy. ;)