In order to better your experience with Stickies, I’ve put together some shortcuts that you may have not actually tried out. Granted, if you use Stickies extensively anyway, you may actually know of them already.

Nab Some Text

First off, you may be wondering how exactly Stickies can go beyond the basic function that it has. Rather than proselytize about how great it is to be writing text on electronic Post-It notes, I’ll inform you of this function that’s incredibly practical. Let’s say you’re in a hypothetical situation where you need to remember three long-form URLs. How can you make this a little easier?

In order to remember a URL, simply highlight it in your browser, and then press Command + Shift + Y. After that, a sticky with all of the URL will automatically pop up on your screen. Do this a few more times, and you’re golden. In fact, this function works for any bit of highlighted text across all apps, and that’s pretty great.

Multi-Task

So how many of you actually slap physical sticky notes on your screen while working on your Mac? It seems like it can get kind of cluttered. In Stickies, you can mimic this real-world tool by simply pressing Command + Option + F. After this, Stickies will always appear over whatever application you happen to be using. However, you may be thinking that even this would clutter your desktop a little. Never fear, for you can simply press Command + Option + T, and the entire note will become translucent, allowing you to see what lies beneath.

This is ideal for working with major projects where you need to quickly jot down notes and refer to them. Perhaps you are working with code and want to copy and paste simple bits of it. Maybe you need to keep a checklist of a workflow. This is great for keeping that information in view while still working on your projects.

Incorporate Some Media

Albeit not being a keyboard shortcut, Stickies offers a drag-and-drop function that will allow you to pull all forms of media into any of your open notes. This means videos, pictures, music… anything. My suggestion for this ability is that you use it when working on projects that require you to look over video or pictures.

Granted, this applies mainly to an educational setting, but I’m sure those of you out of school could make use of it as well. Say that you are having to provide an analysis over a news clip or any other video. Simply pop it into Stickies, use the floating function, and you can write while you watch – simple as that.

Other Shortcuts

• Option + Tab: Create a list on your sticky
• Command + M: Collapse the sticky
• Command + W: Closes the sticky, but first allows you to save it in text form
• Command + ~: Simple, but useful. Allows you to rotate between stickies

Conclusion

Stickies is a relatively simple but powerful tool, and even if you don’t use the shortcuts provided, you should at least take a look at it. Besides, you never know when you’ll be bringing your Mac to the grocery store and need a list, right? (That’s a bit of a stretch.)

What other shortcuts do you know of on Stickies? Do you have any other tips or tricks that you could share with us?

So far, sounds like just about any other “sticky note” app out there. So why should you care? Well, mainly because Sticky Notes has a depth of features rarely found in applications of this type. Let me show you a few of my favorite advanced features. Since we’ve already covered sticky-note applications many times before, I will not spend time on the basics, and go straight to some of the things that make Stickies different and better than the rest.

Note Styles

Once you start using a sticky-note Windows program to jot down quick reminders, you may find yourself writing notes about all sorts of random topics. Some may be about work, others may be code snippets, while others may be personal. If you’re a freelancer or juggling multiple projects, you may have several different work-related categories. Like many other sticky-note applications, Stickies lets you configure the font used in any note separately, as well as the note’s background color. But more uniquely, it also lets you save those properties for the future as “styles”. So you could decide that important notes should always have a red background, while ones related to your sweetheart should always come in pink. No problem – set the hue and font you like just once, and use Alt+number to instantly switch any other note to this style.

This way, even when your screen is chock-full of notes (as mine often is), it is always easy to spot the note you’re after.

Nothing Is Ever Truly Lost

When using “real” sticky notes (ones made of paper), has it even happened to you that you took a sticky-note off the wall and threw it into a paper basket, only to find yourself frantically hunting for it through the trash the next day? With Stickies, this never happens. The sticky notes you close are kept in a neat management interface under “Closed”, and are sorted chronologically by default. As you can see, the maximum history size is 999 notes, which is plenty, even if you use Stickies intensively. You can use Stickies’s built-in search function to find notes in any category:

Recurring Reminders

Many sticky-note applications let you set reminders for the future – this is not an innovative feature. But here, again, Stickies takes things to the next level and lets you set recurring reminders:

You can have a sticky-note hidden all the time, and have it pop-up once a week. Say, “water the plants” or something like that. And you get to set how exactly it pops up. It can either just appear on the screen (and you may miss it if you have many), or it can instantly be shown on top of all other windows. You can also have it trigger an alarm – this isn’t something I can show in a screenshot, but basically, in an alarm mode, the note “vibrates” and shakes in a very visible way, attracting your attention even if it is small and you have a very large desktop area (say, two 24″ monitors).

Scoop

The last thing I want to show you about Stickies is actually an add-on from the Stickies Tools page. There are several extra utilities that not all users may need, and are offered as separate downloads (just like Stickies itself, these are also free).  The one I’d like to show you is called Scoop, and looks like this:

Scoop basically lets you configure dynamic categories for your sticky-notes on your Widows PC. For example, all notes that contain the string “//muo” are considered a part of my MakeUseOf note category. Once a category is configured, you can instantly do something to all notes in it.

For example, let’s say your screen is super-cluttered, and you’re now working on one specific project and want to see only the notes that have something to do with this project. No problem:

Clicking the Solo option will hide all notes that don’t belong in this particular category. As you can see, you can do quite a few other things with each category.

Final Thoughts

The most important thing about Stickies is something that can’t really be shown in a screenshot (or three) – it is lean and very, very fast. Creating a new sticky note is instantaneous, as is searching using the management window, or filtering notes via Scoop. It may not be the only sticky-note application in town (not by a long shot, in fact), but for me, it is one of the absolute best.

What’s your sticky-note solution? Do you even use one? Let me know in the comments!

Several years later, Art Fry, a colleague of Dr. Silver, used the weak adhesive to stick a bookmark into his hymnbook. Subsequently, he went on to develop what we now know as Post-It notes. The product didn’t break through until the 1980s, but is probably 3M’s most popular item today.

Meanwhile, the handy stickers have found their way onto computer desktops and into the world wide web. In this article, I will review three online tools that allow you to keep and share sticky notes online.

Listhings – collaborate

On Listhings you can create online canvases for your online sticky notes. They can be used to keep track of personal notes or you can share single canvases to work on a project with others.

When you share a canvas, it appears in the list of canvases of your partner. Now, whenever you post a note to the shared canvas, it is instantly replicated on the canvas your partner is viewing. You can also drag and drop notes from one canvas to another. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to attach files to Listhings notes.

Within the settings, there is a hint that it will soon be possible to “take notes from outside Listhings”, i.e. send notes to Listhings. You can already define, which canvas those notes should be sent to per default.

Postica – share files

Postica lets you attach files to your online sticky notes. You can even share the note and the attached file with a friend by sending the note to their sticky board. All you have to know is their eMail address.

While this may not be the best way to quickly share personal files, it’s a great way to backup documents online and add a note to them. I mean, how long can a file name be? It’s easier to tag a note to the document. The file size limit is 5MB. However, there doesn’t seem to be a total limit. Unfortunately, you can only add one file per note.

Another cool feature of Postica is its integration with Twitter. You can add Postica as a friend and subsequently stick notes via Twitter direct messages.

Stickr – comment websites

Stickr is different from all the other tools because it’s almost like a social network. You can use it on any website, either to leave a note for yourself (private) or to share thoughts and ideas with the world (public). There is a 140 character limit for each sticker and you can hit a “Follow Me” button on each sticker, so you can follow the person who posted this sticker.

After signing up, you have to extend your browser to work with Stickr. You can either install a plugin or drag and drop a bookmarklet into your browser’s Bookmarks toolbar. I decided for the bookmarklet.

Notes are not visible until you click on the bookmarklet to launch the Stickr menu. The menu lets you select which stickers to view, for example popular ones (you can like or dislike stickers), your own notes, or the ones from people you follow. The menu also allows you to close all stickers or create a new one. On your Stickr homepage / profile you’ll see a list of stickers you have posted and some more statistics.

Stickr also receives a thumbs up from me for supporting OpenID, as well as login via Google, Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed accounts.

For desktop sticky notes, check out these articles:

1. Stick This On Your PC by Karl
2. Make Your Own Sticky Notes with Notepad by Saikat
3. Organise your life with digital Post-It Notes by Mark
4. 5 Little Useful Sticky Notes For Linux by Damien

So have you retired your post-it notes, yet?

Image credits: nornir

Notes are a quick and easy way to keep track of random, but significant thoughts and ideas. They can also help you to remember important phone number, things you need to get done or appointments. The difficult part is to keep your notes organized and not forget about them.

If Thunderbird is your eMail client, you will find the following Thunderbird notes addons very handy for organizing your thoughts and ideas. In addition, they may help you to increase your eMail productivity.

XNote

With XNote, you can attach sticky notes to individual eMails.

To take full advantage of XNote, you should first add the XNote button to your Thunderbird toolbar. For this > right-click onto an empty spot in your toolbar and select > Customize… This will bring up the “Customize Toolbar” window. Locate the XNote button and drag it into a convenient spot within your toolbar. Then hit > Done in the customization window.

You can also create a sticky through the right-click menu. Simply > right-click anywhere into an eMail and you’ll find the > XNote option at the very top of the menu.

In this Thunderbird notes addon, sticky notes are attached to a single eMail and will appear only when that eMail is selected. You can re-size the sticky and move it to any location on your screen. It will disappear as soon as you select another eMail and reappear when you select that eMail again.

To see which eMails contain notes, you have to manually add a new column to your folder display. To do this, > left-click the right-most icon on the bar that lets you sort eMails by subject, date, etc. and select > Notes from the list.

For more tips a tricks, visit the XNote port to Thunderbird 3.

ThunderNote

ThunderNote is a Thunderbird notes addon that allows you to keep track of multiple notes within different categories.

It works much like a standalone tool, only that it is integrated into Thunderbird with a separate toolbar button. You can add the button to your toolbar as described for the XNote button above.

When you click the button, ThunderNote launches within a separate window.

You can now add categories and notes. This extension features only the bare necessities, i.e. writing notes, organizing them within categories, printing individual notes, syncing, as well as import/export through CSV files.

For more information about ThunderNote, visit its Google Code site.

Are you looking for Thunderbird-independent note taking apps? Jeffry covered Four Free Quick Note Taking Apps For The Mac. I compiled 3 Dead-simple Apps For Note Taking & List Making (Windows and online) and I introduced the online tool Springnote. Saikat recently wrote about OrangeNote – A Smart Note Taker & Clipboard Manager. Finally, Shankar introduced Everntote.

If you haven’t done so yet, I recommend you to extend Thunderbird with Google Calendar to handle your appointments. I have described the procedure in my post How To Integrate Google Calendar Into Thunderbird and even though the versions have changed, it essentially still works the same.

Have you adjusted Thunderbird to increase your productivity? Please share what works best for you!

1. Sticky Notes

Sticky notes is the default sticky note application for Gnome. It is an applet that you add on the panel and access it via a simple click on the panel icon.

Sticky notes is a simple app and it is easy to use. You can configure the background color, font color and the default width and height. On the sticky note itself, you can also toggle the lock to prevent accidental deletion of the note content. While it is simple and short of features, it still can perform its task well, and one good thing is that it integrates well with the Gnome desktop and can access to the language library of the system. This gives you the capability to select the input method and the unicode characters.

2. KNotes

Knotes is the default sticky note app in Linux KDE desktop. It is highly configurable and comes with plenty of features not found in any other apps.

KNotes is actually part of the KDE PIM suite and an integrated component of Kontact, but it can be used independently as well. Being tightly integrated with the KDE framework, it give you functionality like drag and drop notes into emails, sending/receiving notes over a network and print note.

Features like editing the background color, font color, title font, text font, default width and height and the tab size are also available in KNotes. You can also paste note from the clipboard and perform a search to find that particular to-do list. You can add a title to each note for easy reference in the future. I found this nifty feature very useful and it is apparently missing from all other sticky notes apps.

On thing that I don’t like about it is that it doesn’t allow you to resize the sticky note on the fly.

Gnome users can also install KNotes from the repository, but must be prepared to install a whole bunch of KDE files.

3. Xpad

Xpad is a third party sticky note app (not to be confused with the xPad text editor and xPad sticky note for Mac) that is loved and used by many. It is lightweight, simple, yet extremely useful application.

Xpad is highly customizable. You can add basic styling (bold, italics, underline, etc) to the text, change the background color on the fly, resize the notes and even choose if you want to have scrollbar, window decoration on the notes itself. Each note comes with a toolbar that allows you to control all the note on an individual basis. You can even add or remove extra icons to the toolbar to make it more interactive.

Some of the Linux distros that are not using Gnome or KDE as the default desktop environment actually used Xpad as the default sticky note app in their distribution. If you are looking for a lightweight, yet highly configurable sticky app, this could be a great choice for you.

4. Pin ‘em up

Pin ‘em up is a Java-based sticky note application, which means it can run in whatever platforms that supports Java, including Mac, Windows and Linux.

Anyone who have used Java app on their system will know that it won’t run as fast (and look as nice) as the native app. This is also true for Pin ‘em up. It does feel clumsy when you try to move the sticky note around. However, Pin ‘em up does comes with some useful features that could worth a second look.

First of all, Pin ‘em up allows you to sort your notes into categories. You can define your own categories and categorize your notes into their respective groups.

Secondly, it supports importing/exporting of your notes to your own server to sync them with other computers. This is useful if you are using different computers with different operating systems.

5. Tomboy Notes

Strictly speaking, Tomboy notes is not a sticky app, but it is an excellent and extremely powerful note-taking app that I think it worth a mention here.

Most people who have used Tomboy Notes will swear by it. Its ability to link notes together with a Wiki-like linking system makes it extremely easy to organize your thoughts and ideas. The best thing is, even if you rename/reorganize your notes, the links will still be intact.

Accessing the notes is often a mouse click away. Simply click on the panel applet icon and you will be able to access all your notes instantly. Tomboy integrates well with the Sticky Notes (in Gnome) and you can easily import your sticky notes into Tomboy. It comes preinstalled in Gnome desktop.

Are you aware of any other sticky notes for Linux? If they weren’t mentioned in this article, please introduce them to us in the comments!

Image credit: closedzero

Last week, WebNotes released a new product called “WebNotes Pro.” It may not be the most cleverly-titled project ever, but WebNotes Pro offers some fantastic new features for a whole new demographic of users.

Whereas the original WebNotes (which still exists, is free, and works great) was designed for a more social group, allowing you to share annotations and use WebNotes as something of a social-bookmarking service, WebNotes Pro is geared more toward the professional user.

As WebNotes sees it, the professional or student doesn’t need to share notes and highlights, they just need to be able to find and access them again, quickly and easily. To that end, you can create multi-colored highlights (fantastic if you’re cross-researching or stumble across something interesting but unrelated), as well as add sticky notes to pages.

Notes and highlights are automatically saved to your WebNotes account as you go ““ no saving or refreshing necessary. From your WebNotes box, you can view the original web page, the page with your annotations on top, or just your notes and highlights. If you don’t want to highlight anything, WebNotes can just be a bookmarking service.

Once you’ve got a bunch of annotations and notes, WebNotes lets you easily compile them into a document that you can share with your friends or colleagues ““ it creates a nice, simple page that you can email or distribute.

But I’ve saved the best feature for last ““ PDF markup. For students or professionals, reading PDF is an all-too-frequent occurrence. Memos, books, and the like all seem to come in the ubiquitous PDF format, leaving you with two options ““ either waste the paper printing, or go without any highlighting or markup. In order to do either of those things on a PDF, you’d need Adobe Acrobat, which isn’t exactly cheap.

With WebNotes Pro, you can now mark up PDF files to your heart’s content, in exactly the same way as you would any other Web page. PDFs are saved to your organizer, which creates for a browsable, annotation-friendly interface for all your PDF documents.

WebNotes Pro comes in one of two formats ““ either a toolbar (for Firefox or Internet Explorer) or a bookmarklet (which works with most browsers). Either one is simple to install, and makes annotating and saving pages much easier.

For me as a student, WebNotes Pro is a fantastic tool ““ it’s great for taking notes on reading, doing research, and keeping all my relevant material in one place that’s accessible from anywhere. As a professional, it’s nice to have a way to organize and mark up the PDF documents and websites that are relevant to what I do. WebNotes has brought me even closer to being totally paperless, and is saving me tons of time daily.

WebNotes Pro costs $9.99/month (again, there’s still the great free product), and there’s a two-week free trial. Students with a .edu email address get an automatic 50% discount.

And YOU, as a MUO reader, get an even better discount ““ we’ve got 100 invites for 3 free months of WebNotes Pro. Try it out, decide how you feel, and either sign up or drop back to the free option.

The first hundred people to click this link, will be taken to the WebNotes website, where you can activate your 3-month subscription, courtesy of your friends at MakeUseOf!

What do you think? Are you sold or are you sticking with Evernote? Share with us in the comments.

Photo: Megapixel Eyes

So, when all else fails, look to the Web! I did just that and found a great solution for sticky notes that offers some great features in addition to the simplicity I admire on the Dashboard. It’s called Jjot, and I have no idea how to pronounce that.

Regardless, though, Jjot’s a pretty cool service. As soon as you visit the site, you’re given three sticky notes with the basic information written right into them. Delete all the information, and start filling up the sticky notes with anything ““ notes, research, and whatever else you can think of.

There’s very little in the way of formatting within a sticky note, whether you use Jjot or something else, so I wouldn’t suggest using it as a full-fledged word processor. You can bold text for emphasis, create hyperlinks, and create bulleted lists. That’s it.

The things you can do with your actual stickies is what makes Jjot really stand out.  Notes can be popped out into their own window, dragged and dropped to be reorganized, resized, or emailed to someone else. If you want to use your sticky notes as you would paper ones, you can also print one or all your notes for offline use. Jjot’s real use though is if you’re trying to get rid of the paper clutter.

You can share individual stickies or entire boards with as many people as you want, by providing them with a link to your board. Other people won’t be able to edit the stickies, but they’ll be able to read them ““ great for sharing meeting notes or something similar.

You can edit and create notes without creating an account with Jjot, but in order to save them and create new “boards” (new sets of notes, instead of new individual notes), you’ll need to create a free account.

To make your note-taking faster (one of Jjot’s biggest draws is how fast the application moves as a whole), there are a bunch of useful keyboard shortcuts available. Shift+Control+N creates a new note; Control+U creates a bulleted list in the current note; there are a number of other shortcuts as well, accessible at all times in the Jjot sidebar.

If you’ve got a lot of notes within Jjot, there’s a search function that lets you look for text across all your notes in order to find what you’re looking for. The search is great for someone like me, who likes to have each note only contain one item in order to be able to process it that way.

Jjot isn’t ideal for a full-fledged information management system, and it’s not designed to be. What it is, is a fast, simple-to-learn application for creating notes to yourself and others that are easy to create, easy to edit, and easy to share.

We’ve discussed other StickyNote applications on MakeUseOf in the past.  Karl discussed Stickies for Windows, Saikat showed you how to make your own sticky notes with Notepad, as well as Superstickies, Linoit, Posti.ca and StickyTag.

What’s your app of choice for the little notes you take all day?

Even as research went online, taking notes on that research really didn’t. It still involved either cutting and pasting into Word, or writing furiously in a notebook. Research became easier, but recording it fell behind. That is, it did until WebNotes happened.

WebNotes‘ motto is “Annotate. Organize. Share.” That’s exactly what they do, nothing more and nothing less. For bookmarking and other features, as we all know, I turn to Diigo. For pure research, though, WebNotes is my new favorite, and may be my last.

WebNotes is not the only Web annotater I’ve ever used (I even loved the annotation features of Diigo), but it’s the simplest- which, for research, makes it the best. It’s simply a tool for taking, organizing, and sharing (if you want) your research findings.

Set-up is a breeze: once you’ve got an account with WebNotes, you either install the toolbar (a Firefox extension, Firefox-only) or a bookmarklet with many of the same features (which worked in any browser I tried). Then navigate to a site you’re using for research, and let the fun begin!

With WebNotes fired up, you’re able to highlight any text on a page, as well as create sticky notes that float on the page. There’s no limit to how many you can do, and WebNotes works surprisingly well in every page I tried to use- highlighting and note-taking were always responsive. The way I liked to do it was to highlight relevant things on the page, and then write a couple of notes about the key points of the article.

WebNotes’ usefulness doesn’t end there, though.  Once you’re done taking notes, the organizer gets the spotlight. Right from the organizer page, you can see all the highlights and notes you grabbed from a particular page- it becomes your notebook, with all the information you need right there in one place. You can look through your highlights, read your notes, and see where it’s all coming from.

One small feature that I loved is that WebNotes automatically updates your organizer as you send it more information, meaning you don’t have to constantly hit “Refresh.” It’s a small feature, but a sanity-saver.

You can organize notes into folders, with endless numbers of folders and sub-folders possible. From the organizer, you can launch any page on which you’ve taken notes- with or without the notes on it.

Though sharing features aren’t the point of WebNotes, they’re extremely useful and easy to use. You can share a page, and its highlights and notes, to another person whether they have a WebNotes account or not. Each page gets a marked-up permalink, which you can send to your friends and study buddies. Pages can also be shared via email, or even turned into a PDF. This makes WebNotes useful for group projects and studying, which is a great feature.

WebNotes is still in private beta, but I’ve managed to snag 100 invites from them. The first 100 people to register for WebNotes by clicking THIS LINK will be able to try the private beta – for everyone else, it shouldn’t be long before it’s public.

If you manage to snag an account, please come back here and let us know what you think about the site.   Is this something you see yourself using often?   In your opinion, how does it compare to other note taking sites?