STICKIES NOTES HELP MAKE ORGANIZING A VIRTUAL SNAP

With all the talk about social networks, cloud computing and the latest gadgetry, it's easy to overlook the things computers can do to help us better organize our lives.

One such task is the simple reminder. I work in an environment that requires me to keep tabs on countless tasks that must be done on deadline. In journalism, there's no such things as "Oh, I forgot to do that today, let's just leave a hole where that story should have gone and I'll get to it tomorrow."

To help get me through the day, I rely on a few tools. One of my favorites is Stickies by Zhorn Software. A digital replica of Post-It-type notes, Stickies has proven to be one of my must-have tools on any computer I work on.

Stickies notes sit atop my Windows screen, they are resizable and movable, and I can allow them to reside underneath any programs I currently am working on or force them to always remain visible.

The Stickies program icon sits in my system tray, ever-present on my Windows screen, and I need only double-click it to create a new note. They are saved automatically. I use them for reminders of appointments, phone numbers, quotes I may use down the road, proper titles for government officials and Web addresses. Virtually any snippet of information I regularly use appears on one or another Stickie.

Now I don't like clutter, so having dozens of Stickies visible on my desktop would quickly become distracting, if not counterproductive.

Stickies has a few ways I can deal with that problem. For one, I can set individual Stickies to varying degrees of opacity, keeping critical ones fully opaque while setting ones I rarely need to 50 percent opacity, which allows them to blend unobtrusively into the background. A single click brings them to full opacity, and once I click on any other screen item, they return to the background.

I could also simply "roll" them up so only the header is showing. That allows me to keep large groups of related notes together while consuming little desktop real estate.

Perhaps the coolest way to get Stickies you don't need immediately out of the way is to put them on a timer. Say I have an appointment with my boss to plead my case for a nice fat raise: I can create a Stickie with a list of 10 reasons why that's a wonderful idea -- Stickies automatically numbers list items for you, and will also automatically add bullets -- and put it in "hibernation" until I need it on the day of my meeting. It will remain hidden until the date and time I set for it to reappear.

And in case I am so busy at work I don't see the reminder, I can tell Stickies to play an alarm at a specific time. Or I can assign any music or vocal WAV file to play at a designated time. If I need an even stronger reminder, Stickies can be set to jiggle and flash to be sure it gets my attention. I can only imagine, given our increasingly interactive era of technology, a future version going further, alerting you, perhaps, with a slap on your wrist.

Since Stickies is open source software, many developers have designed programs to enhance it. Some have designed "skins" that alter the look of notes on your screen. I chose the Mac skin, which re-creates the red-yellow-green header fields familiar to Mac IOS system users.

Stickies is an outstanding memo and reminder tool. The program and most of its add-ons, such as skins, are free.

For a copy, send an email to me with the word PCGUYSTICKIES in the subject field.

Credit: Contact Peter Grad at [email protected]