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Saved by Stickies

sticky skinsIs your desk swamped with scraps of paper or sticky notes – slips of paper reminding you to attend a meeting, change a student’s grade in Blackboard, check out a book for your research, make a phone call, respond to an e-mail, talk to a TA, or pick up milk on the way home from work? Do you ever feel like you’ve been sucked in the undertow of a ‘notes-to-self’ tsunami and that you’re desperately gasping for air? If so, then Stickies to the rescue! Virtual stickies, that is.

Stickies is a computer program (for both Mac and Windows) of virtual sticky notes (similar to Post-It ® notes) that you keep on your computer desktop. By using this program, you can eliminate the myriad scraps of paper that pile up on your desk and have a pesky way of getting lost or forgotten. Stickies can organize all those snippets and reminders into one convenient place.

Features of Stickies on a Mac computer
Stickies come pre-installed in your Application folder on a Mac. This application has simple, basic features. Stickies notes can:

  • Float and stay on top of all open windows
  • Be transparent
  • Be one of six different colors
  • Be arranged by location on the screen
  • Be resized and easily moved around your computer screen
  • Have bulleted lists
  • Display images that are dragged into them
  • Display the date created and the date most recently modified
  • Create a clickable link when you drag a URL from a browser, document, or an Apple’s Mail message

Features of Stickies on a Windows computer
Stickies (for the Windows OS) is a free utility from Zhorn Software. It is a small, simple text-based program that does not affect the system files in any way.

In addition to having the same basic features found in the Stickies program on the Mac (except for inserting images), this Windows program has these extra ones. You can:

  • Put a sticky to sleep and hide it until you need to be reminded of that information
  • Set an alarm to have a sticky grab your attention at a certain time
  • Send Stickies over the network to co-workers
  • Use them in roll-up mode to save space on your computer screen
  • Give the note a title (in a title bar)
  • Snap several sticky notes together to keep them neatly lined up
  • Set hot keys to create a new sticky note and to show or hide all stickies
  • Download skins for a different look and feel

With all of your fragments of information tucked safely in your Stickies notes, you’ll never have to worry about a ‘notes-to-self’ tsunami ever again.