Kjellquist Blog

For many years I have kept a spiral note (I have 15 or 20) where I jot down various entries during telephone calls, meetings and generally things I have want to remember for while. I have never quite been as organized to use a day planner (electronic or paper) with all its gimmicks, structure and expense. As a personnel record of my comings and goings, a simple spiral notebook seems to work exceptionally well. Most other people I work with use either a notebook or a day planner of some form. Most aspects of our lives seem operate in the here, now and the recent past. Thus, people (including me) seem to work well with chronological records. Most times I can remember approximately when something happened and thus retrieve it by looking back to the dated page. I often use *** to highlight important things or items of TO DO. Of course at my desk, I also have the standard collection of true “yellow stickies” and little pieces of paper with notes.

So what can technology offer to improve this simple note taking. Well, one short coming of a notebook and stickies is obviously searching and linking these scraps and entries by other than chronology. For example, how could I pull together all the entries about a single person? What about several discussions, telephone calls, or meetings (or combinations of all these) planning an event over several days or weeks. What about those occasions when you do need to search. For example, write down somebody’s telephone number and then forget when you met them! How do I easily share a note with others?

A recent web based application discussed in Tim O’Reilly’s Radar called Stikkit provides all of these features and more. The paradigm for Sitkkit is those ubiquitous little yellow sticky notes. Certainly, when you see their GUI this is the appearance. I look at the GUI and their features more as a series of entries in my notebook. These entries are associated and related etc. just as I need. Tim’s blog also reports that Stikkit has released the API so now you can interface directly.