14 DAY TRIAL // The days of sticking notes on the fridge with magnets are long gone. These days we have e-mail, SMS and heaps of other methods of reminding ourselves those things we just know we will forget. iSticky takes the stickies that have been around on the Mac since forever to a whole new level.
This program has so many great features I don't even know where to begin. What is the sticky? What defines it and what is its purpose? Yes it does sound like something a hack-philosopher would say, but they are very valid questions.
IMPORTANT! Don't Forget! A sticky is meant to be a small note that you can place anywhere, whose purpose is to remind you of an upcoming task or event.
Unlike traditional notes, which you see five hours before and five hours after the event they were supposed to remind you of, iSticky lets you assign an alarm to each and every note. You can choose whether you want an audio alarm, or a visual one, having the note shake.
Traditional notes can be placed anywhere, and while your computer screen might seem like a very limited space in which it would be impossible to loose a note, having many applications and windows open is a sure way of loosing a sticky underneath.
For every task, a note must be iSticky lets you create an infinite number of notes, however, it also lets you create as many categories as you want, giving you the freedom you need to easily differentiate between notes for work, school, shopping lists and just about anything else you can think of.
Furthermore, each category can have different visibility and layer settings. You can have notes that stay invisible in the background, out of sight and out of mind until their appointed time comes and then they become visible and mote to the topmost level.
This sort of interaction can be combined with the reminder options to make the notes shake or beep for attention.
Just like colored paper... You can customize the appearance of notes to your heart's desire, link with categories and match with your Mac's theme. The program comes with a large number of defined appearances for ease, but you can create as many personal themes as you want... stick creatively!
You can even link stickies to a file. Just drop the file on a note and from then on, every time you select that file in the Finder, the associated note will spring to the front. Store comments or tasks, anything you can imagine.
No more stickies falling under the fridge! Other stickies programs have notes that are difficult to manage because they can be edited or deleted too easily. iSticky has notes that have to be double clicked for editing so it never happens by accident when you are moving them around.
Another great feature is the ability to archive every note. Keep notes, ideas, phone numbers or just about anything in there. They are indexed for fast searching, and can be placed back on the desktop or on your iPod with just a few clicks.
Like making paper airplanes from the little notes The best thing about iSticky is the ability to share stickies. You can stick notes in real time to any other iSticky user's desktop over Bonjour. Send back that phone number or appointment date, let people know of a change of schedule for the evening's meeting, anything you can imagine. But it doesn't stop here.
iSticky also lets you send real time notes to any other person wherever in the world they might be, using the iSticky server. Getting an account is easy and free so anyone can join and share nothes with other users. Even better, you can use the iSticky server to sync your own notes, over different computers. No matter whether you are at home or at the office, you have the same notes everywhere.
As if that wasn't enough, the program also lets you send out stickies as e-mail to anybody. No hassle, just select a person from your Address Book. And if you need to reach someone who is highly mobile, you can send them a sticky as a SMS message. This is completely integrated with the iSticky server and it's easy to add credit to your iStickyServer account.
Security freak? No problem... iSticky lets you encrypt your data on your hard disk, iStickyServer and the notes your send over LAN or WAN with 128 bit AES encryption. This way you can be sure that your notes are secure when traveling the globe to reach another user, and that your mom, dad, boss or wife don't read your notes.
The Good This program has all the features you could possibly imagine and then some. It takes stickies to the next dimension with great mobility and communication options, and the notes themselves are the closest thing you can have to little bits of paper sticking on your monitor.
The Bad My only problem is the transparency of the notes which makes them hard to read, especially when they start overlapping.
The Truth This application will change the way you think about and work with stickies. Once you start placing notes on your colleague's desktop you get hooked. It simply puts any other stickies program to shame.
Here are some screen shots of stickie madness, click to enlarge:
