Unlike Evernote, which has a straightforward one-format-fits-all philosophy, Springpad offers a variety of item types. To add a new item, you click on a plus sign in the top-right corner of the screen; a drop-down menu lets you add a Note (if you want to type in text), a Task (to-do items that you'll want to check off later) or "Look it up."

This last lets you do a Web search -- type in your search terms, and you'll get results from a number of categories: product, place, movie or show, recipe, book, album, wine or person. Once you've found the item, it is saved to a format that (if appropriate) pulls in information from various Web sources.

For example, when I searched for the 1999 film Topsy Turvy, I got data on the movie from Netflix, the ability to add it to my Netflix queue, and associated links to Amazon, IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. If you mark the item as something you're interested in purchasing, you also get alerts when its price changes, or if it becomes available (and wasn't before).

Springpad also lets you add additional notes to your entries, changing the original note/task/link into the beginning of a topic. For example, if I've created a Task for something I need to do for a meeting, I can add a note to it about a question I need to ask during the meeting. You can also, if you wish, post the note to your Facebook account with one click, or send it out via email.