Sticky notes for Windows - Notezilla

Posted by 22111
Nov 17, 2013 at 09:15 PM

Purchased Notezilla lately? On bits, 40 p.c. off? Well, I don’t think it’s worth 60 p.c. of 30$ - from what I know about it, I wouldn’t want it for free.

I trialled it some years ago, together with more than a dozen competitors. I remember that it was really expensive, but didn’t offer anything outstanding to justify the price difference, neither with lesser-priced competitors nor with free ones.

In fact, I preferred one of those, and I would have even if all of them (incl. Notezilla) were free - but I did not even install the preferred one, since I got aware the concept of screen “post-it’s” is/seems to be ridiculous (see below since we are some years later now, so I could be mistaken NOW).

Let’s begin with the “mimick a physical thing” concept: That’s ridiculous to begin with, and the old men here will remember those early electronic PIM’s mimicking a physical A6 ring binder agenda - they quickly died. I even remember one outliner that had / continues to have such a screen layout / background image (especially for you, I had a look in my archives: it can be seen here: http://www.tgslabs.com/en/winorganizer/screenshots/ - this is really terrible even if they don’t “overdo” it as much as some of those early electronic agendas did it). So it seems nobody wants this in PIM’s - but then, why would you want such mimicry with screen stickies?

Especially when with outliners (and a good workflow, i.e. a good system to work in and with them) it should be easy to have an inbox / several inboxes, AND totally easy access to them, “from anywhere”... and even in the background, i.e. with a correct setting, ANY possible outliner should receive a short note, by way of display of a text entry dialogue popping up anywhere, and store it to (at least) ONE OF SEVERAL targets (= as child of those targets), e.g. in the form control-F12 popping up this:

“Your Note please here:” and you would input:

“pw.I MUST kill my wife as soon as possible, I simply can’t bear it (sic) anymore!” Enter

And the popup would vanish again, and in the background, in ANY outliner, your note would become a child of the parent item “Wife” in the section “Private” of your outliner - without this outliner popping up if you only have a single screen where it is hidden by some other application.

THAT’s the way outliner people should process their “little things in-between” (in our above example, please distinguish between idea = little thing, and its possible execution, which would perhaps ask for a special, additional outline for all possible details), and not by multiplying ugly stickies… which on top of it, can be “tagged”. Gautam, stickies should not BE tagged, they are there TO tag, see?

Now Gautam claims, “Stick notes to Anything.”, the “anything” being capitalized and italicised, and this claim is the third line on his homepage today.

Now my trialling has been several years ago, and Notezilla stickies stuck to “anything”, they would not come cheap at 30$, but their price would be justified. So let’s see:

1 - What about putting a sticky to an Excel table? Popping up whenever you open that table? Ok? Good.
2 - Now, how about putting a sticky to some CELL on that Excel table, and another one to another cell of it? Ok. Very good.
3 - And now, how about putting a sticky to some Outlook mail, popping up whenever you display that mail? Ok? Tremendous.

4 - And now, how about those aforementioned stickies popping up on any system where you open those files, and where Notezilla is installed? Wow!
5 - And finally, ditto but where Notezilla isn’t installed even? Perfect!

So I tried to find out, by our false-friend google… well… I’m not sure at all.

Now, perhaps items 4 and 5 are just wishful thinking, but tasks 1, 2 and 3 should be easy (cf. Gautam’s prominent claim above)... or does he give big lies within the third line of his homepage?

(And yes, I know there are paid “specialists” for putting stickies to OL mails, but that’s not the point. If I charge 30$ (= in Europe, about 30€) and (verbally and graphically) insist on my stickies to stick to ANYTHING, I must be aware that my user expects to NOT have to buy additional software to stick notes even to files / records to which my stickies do NOT stick.)

But as said, if Notezilla does do the tasks 1, 2, 3 (and perhaps even 4 or even 5), it’s well worth its money. But that remains to be seen.