The Future of Post-its

Despite the increasing number of digital ways to record information, post-its are still flourishing. Recently, the CBC featured an story on the reasons why the post-it note is still a popular method of not keeping. One of the main reasons post-it notes seem to be everlasting is the convenience, accessibility, and simplicity of them. This desire for an easy, quick, and manageable technology to jot thoughts and simple notes on is nothing new. As a history student, I have often used a pile of post-its while reading and going research, to remind me to look at specific things later on. The Zotero research application does allow highlighting while researching online, which is preferable over writing on a post-it-notes that I will most likely lose.

Additionally, there are some digital applications which play off the idea of post-it-notes. For example, List.it plays off the simplicity of post-its. List.it functions as a sidebar on firefox, where users can type in a short note, which will be displayed in a post-it like manner on the side of the screen. The only problem with this set up being that you have to be using firefox for the program to function, so the speed of start-up still doesn't compare to the speed of using a post-it. Desktop Sticky Notes allows users to post notes anywhere on their monitor, includes a to-do list features, and a note archive. The colour and size of the notes can be manipulated in Desktop Sticky Notes, however the notes themselves do look a bit clunky on the screen. This clunky appearance is overcome in the MoRun.net Sticker Lite application, which allows users to fade notes into the background, and automatically dates every note. Despite all these digital post-it-note applications I'm not entirely convinced that these applications are as convenient as the traditional post-it-note, as no matter which way you look at it you have to be using some form of technology, and can't merely reach for sticky piece of paper.