Post-It Notes Go Electronic!

   For those of us around the computer field for a long time, one of the defining memories is the first time we saw Sidekick. It was an epiphany. All of a sudden there was this whole series of things you could look up, copy information to and paste back into programs. Sidekick coexisted with the DOS screen – actually popped up on top of it – and it was really something.
   In these days of Windows, we are used to multitasking, copying and pasting things from one application to another. But you have to use the clipboard, usually, or do some dragging and dropping, which can be a pain. Wouldn't it be just wonderful if you didn't have to do those kinds of things.
   3-M Company, which brought Post-It Notes to the world years ago and created a revolution in the office has now brought Post-In Notes to a computer screen in front of you. And let me tell you, they are as simple to use, as handy and as much an innovation as Sidekick was in its day.

so easy to use it is second nature. This distinguishes them from all the other products like this we've seen. Some of them do many of the same things but take so much management of the program that it greatly reduces their usefulness.
   Install this program (a reduced-function, time-limit version is available from 3-M on the web) and you'll get a little tiny Post-It Note on your desktop. You can keep this on top or not. If you don't keep it on top, clicking on an icon in the system tray generates a new Post-It Note. Alternatively, you can pop up the program simply by clicking the program's name on the task bar. When you do that, a small Post-It pad appears and you have the option of clicking on the pad itself to open a new, blank note or clicking on the top of the pad to slide out a little set of option buttons.
   From here you can, once again, click on the main pad to create a new, default, note, or click on one of the buttons. The little multi-colored notes on the bottom left let you create new notes in various colors, in case you want to color-code notes. Of course, you can set the default note color to one of these in the first place (being a traditionalist, I prefer yellow).
   Next to that icon is one of the truly powerful features of the program. It allows you to show or create what Post-It Notes calls "memoboards." Memoboards are, basically, a collection of notes. Clicking on the icon gives you the option of opening one of the existing memoboards, which you can name, or creating a new one.
Notes can be placed into memoboards and can contain anything – telephone numbers, web sites, addresses, information, the names of your children. Whatever your heart desires.
   How handy is this? I have basically abandoned the bookmark menu in Netscape in favor of Post-It Notes. The reason is I use a disk-based page for my frequently-used URL's (see the tutotial on this site for information on how to do this) and it is much easier to transfer these URL's from Post-It Notes than from the
bookmarks menu. I can also annotate them. But even if you don't want to go to that trouble, you can just keep them on a memoboard, copy and paste them into your browser (remember, they will be on top when you call them up) and away you go.
   It took me a while to figure out how to embed frames within one another in HTML. Actually, I figured it out once, printed the code out and then lost the code.Now the code resides happily on a Post-It Note on a memoboard. I just paste it into a document.
   This program has two other very powerful features: alarms and find. Did you want to be reminded to feed the dog at 6 p.m.? Just make a Post-It Note and alarm it. If the dog doesn't remind you, the Post-It Note will. And even if you have a couple hundred of these things and have no idea where you put that note on the

   But the thing I really like the best is the fact that, just like their paper cousins, I can have a bunch of Post-It Notes sitting right on my desktop to remind me to do things. They get done, and then I trash the note which disappears in a satisfying puff of smoke and a "pop" noise, which is built into the program. Just in case I
goofed when I trashed the note, I can retrieve it from the trash before emptying it out.
   This is a great little functional program which is easy to use and rather inexpensive. Like paper Post-It Notes, these electronic ones belong on your desktop. It is one of the handiest programs I have.

                                                 Link to 3-M's Post-It Notes Site