Post-It Notes - 25 Years of Hypertext in Paper

RexDart writes "A Minneapolis/St. Paul magazine, The Rake, has a fascinating article revealing the history and development of the humble, ubiquitous Post-It Note. An intriguing tale of a dedicated visionary working the system to bring an innovative product to life in a monolithic, tradition-bound organization." From the article: "Two and a half decades later, as the little yellow notes celebrate their silver anniversary, it's easy to forget what a recent innovation they are. Thanks to their material simplicity, they seem more closely related to workplace antiquities like the stapler and the hole-punch than integrated chips. Instead, they're an exemplary product of their time. Foreshadowing the web, they offered an easy way to link one piece of information to another in a precisely contextual way. Foreshadowing email, they made informal, asynchronous communication with your co-workers a major part of modern office life."

timeline

[cahiha]

Seriously! Minnesota's greatest invention prefigured email, hypertext, and the digital revolution.

No, it didn't. E-mail and hypertext preceded the PostIt note by a decade or two.

Re:Electronic Equivalents

[Arimus]

And not to mention having a real bit of paper can be handy when your PC decided to stop being a useful pile of electronics and become a device for providing frustrating hex dumps on a blue screen ;)

Seriously though I prefer real notes as I don't need to login to my desktop and wait for all the networking stuff just to read a note saying "X tried to call... can you call back?"

Re:Electronic Equivalents

[ultrasound]

I have been using on screen 'Post-it' notes for many years. I run my own business and have to multitask far beyond the task switching capabilities of my memory, so these notes are great for temporary and semipermanent storage.

I started using freeware post-it like software that allowed arbitrary sized/coloured notes to be left on the desktop, however I gradually migrated to using MS Outlook notes, which I use for all of my notes. Currently I have about 40 different notes active. Usually only one or two are displayed on the desktop, the rest I open as and when I need them. They are incredibly useful as aid memoires for the various tasks I have to perform. A permanent TODO note lists various outstanding tasks or items I am working on. Other notes may contain e.g.

o Various ideas for specific projects
o Admin items that need performing
o Outstanding tasks for design
o Things to order (stationary, components)
o Records of temporary/permanent changes to local Network
o Site kit lists (cables, tools, software, dont forget your passport etc.)

I want to migrate away from Outlook to e.g. Mozilla Calendar, but I need a good replacement fo the Post-its, as well as the Contacts database. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Re:Users celebrate!

[Skiron]

Does usage of GNU/Linux, Mac OS or another UNIX-derivative somehow increase brain memory capacity?

No, but said users have a bigger brain capacity to start with...

bloody paper clip?

[bobalu]

Yuck. Point taken, but what a nasty mental image! Wouldn't want too many of those on my desk. :-)

Actually the real innovation was the glue that wouldn't "set", so you could remove the thing later w/o tearing the original. It was a failed experiment that they found a use for. I believe the guy was looking for a way to keep his place in a hymm book at church. He didn't want to deface it.

Re:Other ideas for Post-It technology

[Anonymous Coward]

How about bigger [officedepot.com] than full page?

Virtual Post-It Notes

[bender647]

GTK+ dependencies:
http://xpad.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

For KDE:
http://pim.kde.org/components/knotes.php [kde.org]

Re:Really ...

[Breakfast Pants]

Whenever said it doesn't really matter.