Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I believe the first PIM program to offer this kind of functionality was ECCO Pro, with
its Shooter. The Shooter is very similar to the Zooter in Zoot -- clearly, the Tom Davis
liked the idea. Both of these are small icons that float at the top of the active window
and pop up a very handy menu of tools for collecting data from the screen.

Black Hole
Organizer then introduced the icon that is similar to the ADM folder icon, and (I guess
from your comments) the ITSD folder. BHO is still available, but does not seem to have
developed much in recent years.

Another program with a similar approach is My Notes
Center (www.mynotescenter.com), which has something called the Text Collector,
which floats about on the screen waiting for you to drag and drop info into it.

BTW,
ECCO Pro is a pretty good task management tool, even today, despite the fact that it's
been 10 years since development stopped. It may be worth a look... the only thing it
lacks from you list of requirements is Outlook sync, and actually, it may have that but
I'm not sure.

Steve Z.

I thought of Ecco Pro too, but I don't think it will sync with Outlook (before Outlook's time) but it will sync with a Palm.

Scrivener, whose praises I'm always ready to sing, has a floating scratchpad for rapid thought-recording (as have several Mac note/databank programmes, such as DevonThink).
It's a desirable for any self-respecting writing or information management tool.