Slashdot Mirror
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."
What was the First Post(it)??!?
Because they are comparing Post-It Notes to the Internet wouldn't it be fun (and time-comsuming) to create an Internet Map using just Post-It Notes? Of course, Post-It Notes stock would go through the roof since it would require billions of stickies but it would be fun!
TW
Television is dead. Long live That Weasel Television
Its amazing what somebody saw in something no one else saw a use for.
p
the saying 'someone's junk is another's treasure' comes to mind.
http://www.snopes.com/business/origins/post-it.as
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
...the world's first Post-It Note is being auctioned on eBay. It comes complete with certificate of authenticity, written directly on the Post-It itself.......uh.......oops.
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.
I've also seen some creative use for these notes that probably were not part of the original ideas either :-)
see a Text Widget
I grew up in a 3M town and had family that worked for them. I was 10 or 11 when they came out and I remember the big deal made about them. There was a 3M exec who worked with the Junior Achievement groups and I would always be hoping and praying that he would bring some Post-It notes in to school so I could get a pad.
It is interesting to note the products of unintended consequences. Just a few: Post-Its, Microwave Ovens, and Vasoline.Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
I which they'd come up with full page size Post-Its with full adhesive backing with a removable liner. That way you could print off CAD drawings and use them as guide templates for drilling and cutting out parts. Sort of a poor man's CAM tool. Think of surfaces like plexiglass where you can't mark on it directly since it would ruin the finish.
Despite common belief, e-mail actually pre-dates the Internet; in fact, existing e-mail systems were a crucial tool in creating the Internet.
Email originated before I was born, and I'm old enough to remember the introduction of the Post-It.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
You realise that before post-it notes, people would simply use a sheet of paper and some duct tape or a bloody paper-clip? (the non virtual, non annoying kind). The brilliant idea of post-it notes was to have pre-cut, pre-glued paper notes. Claiming that post-it notes are ancestors of hyper-links is like saying that the red pen used by teachers is the ancestor of versioning systems...
There have been a number of software products based on the Post-It concept, such as 3M's own app (which includes an ability to transfer notes using XML) and Apple's Stickies.
I'm curious: do fellow Slashdotters find these programs helpful versus other ways of keeping track of snippets of information, such as e-mail?
If it wasn't for the Post-it-note, how on EARTH would users remember their passwords! Got to be the best invention ever for Windows users in businesses everywhere!
"Foreshadowing email, they made informal, asynchronous communication with your co-workers a major part of modern office life."
I hate it when I come back from a lunch break and my monitor shines in yellow with gazillions of post-its from co-workers on it! Sometimes I think people just wait until you leave your desk and then attack you with post-its from behind. Office is so cruel sometimes...
They are bitch to remove from inside the floppy drives.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Amongst other things I provide consultancy for help desks and call centres (migration, training, expansion, logistics, workflow etc.)
On that kind of environment I strongly recommend AGAINST using sticky notes because they are apt to get lost, fall down the back of desks, under keyboards etc. and they do not stick well to fabric partitions, plus, when you see a desk/wall/monitor plastered with dozens of 'please call' or 'urgent' notes not only does it look extremely messy but it also devalues the urgency of the notes and looks unprofessional - it's a bit like if you received all incoming emails flagged urgent.
If a call centre or help desk cannot send electronic notes, I recommend a clipboard for each employee hooked by their desk in a specific location upon which A5-sized pre-printed notes can be left - because each note is arranged in the same way with regards to from/date/subject/priority etc, it is easier than wading through tons of stickies all written in a diferent way and placed on your keyboard, monitor, chair back, or whereever the person chose to leave it. Some advocate sticking notes on the monitor, but if someone comes back to their desk and needs to check something out on their computer they just peel off the pile and put it 'somewhere' to deal with later and they can get lost, forgotten or ignored.
This may all sound a bit over the top bit it just takes one note from a very important customer to go astray and you can appreciate the need for organisation and consistency - I'm not a control freak but sticky notes are not always the best way to do things in some environments.
AT&ROFLMAO
"See some tileable and desktop backgrounds [backgroundsarchive.com]"
There's a Post-It joke in there somewhere...
Theres still no better way to get a bunch of people to collaborate over solving a problem than sticking ideas on postit notes on a framework sketched out on a Very Large Piece of Paper (TM.) stuck on a wall.
What I could do with is a way of capturing these things and then cutting and pasting portions of the thing and moving them around and then reprojecting them, rinse and repeat..
I could do it with a laser scanner (of the sort used to capture egyptian tombs) and a high deffinition projector I guess.
Good for web site design, FMEA, Business process re-engineering and the capture of complex systems.
No time to lose, I'm off to start up a new business right now, just as soon as I have recorded the idea on a postit note stuck on my monitor. Now where did I leave them....
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Slashdot has run out of articles to post...
Just jot it down and stick it on your monitor.
If you are really security minded, you can simply stick it under the keyboard.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Romy and Michelle invented Post Its
Seems someone tried to mark this anniversary by selling a post-it note on eBay UK. Bids got upto £1.8 million, but then that bid was retracted. I managed to get a screenshot of it. See the screenshot here
If Carling made signatures they would be the best signatures in the world...
from TFA: "At 3M, however, there is a long-standing policy that permits employees to spend fifteen percent of their time working on projects of their own choosing." I guess Google can't be credited with innovating that (although I've never seen anyone claim that they had). I wonder how many other companies have done something like this?
I would like us all to recall that line from the original Star Wars movie where Obiwan Kenobi tells Darth Vader:
"If you cut me down you will only make me stronger".
PCs, the web have not cut down post-it notes, only made them stronger or transformed them.
I still see a few computers in every office with post-it notes plastered around the monitor with fresh pads of them in every supply closet.
Every desktop I have seen has an electronic analog of post-it notes. Even gnu/linux with the KDE ( I don't know abut Gnome ).
I hate you, Post-it Notes. I hate the person who invented you. And most of all, I hate my uptight, neurotic and textbook case of passive behavior ex-roommate who communicated exclusively through you.
"Mister Fry. Come here. I need you."
...hmm talking to inanimate objects eh!?
AT&ROFLMAO
I've always liked the concept of post-it notes, since my memory for tasks is abysmal (or rather I'm too easily distracted from the tasks I need to complete). I've tried using post-it notes, but the problem is that usually after a few hours, they stop sticking. I've tried using other brands but I can't get any of them to stick for more than an hour or two. Anyone have any experience with a brand that will actually stay stuck on vertical surface (e.g. monitor, fridge, etc) for more than an hour or two?
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
...'cause they use multi-colored neon Post-Its. :)
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
Vaseline was gunk that kept seeping out of the joints on an oil rig's drill bits.
The fella who noticed that wounds didn't get infected if you covered them with vaseline lived into his 90s, and credited his long life to a full-skin vaseline massage given to him by his nurse everyday.
Who knew that Romy and Michele also had a hand in creating the internet as well.
I know one of the primary developers of the chemical they used to make it sticky...he was on the original team. And I think I rememeber him telling me that they only gave them a one time 50K bonus. (Might have been 500K, but he said it was pretty small, so I think it was 50K). Thats sad.
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.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
They're notes. How exactly are they hypertext? They are annotations, like tooltips.
Macintosh post-it notes: the post-it note for the rest of us.
Saturday Night Live's Macintosh Post-It Notes Parody.
Coral cache.
GTK+ dependencies:
http://xpad.sourceforge.net/
For KDE:
http://pim.kde.org/components/knotes.php
But most of all, I hate white Post-It notes. They just blend into the white background of that important document that was forwarded to you five days ago and the document was supposed to be completed and edited by you, duplicated, bound, and circulated to upper management by YOU, five minutes from now, on this date, as indicated on said Post-It.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I've used those mega post it and they are indeed really useful to stick on a wall, windows or anything you can imagine for a presentation.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
I just glued a post-it on my monitor that says "ITS IS NOT IT'S" with an arrow to your it's.
His post-it note is actually pointing to Goatse. DO NOT LOOK.
Everything about that blurb annoys me:
"has a fascinating article revealing the history and development of the humble, ubiquitous Post-It Note."
Anything small yellow and square can't be humble. Just ask SpongeBob SquarePants.
An intriguing tale of a dedicated visionary working the system to bring an innovative product to life in a monolithic, tradition-bound organization."
We are talking about Post-It Notes, right?
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.
I suppose so, if you are generation X. Everyone else knows they are modern. Why doesn't liquid paper get the same accolades? It's been around longer. Whatever happened to liquid paper anyway?
Thanks to their material simplicity, they seem more closely related to workplace antiquities like the stapler and the hole-punch than integrated chips.
Again what about liquid paper? Workplace antiquities? A scrivener's tools are workplace antiquities: blotters, quills, inkwells, candles, etc.
Instead, they're an exemplary product of their time. Foreshadowing the web,
Ooh, puh-lease! No it didn't.
they offered an easy way to link one piece of information to another in a precisely contextual way.
What the fuck are you talking about? Post-It notes are about as contextual as writing on a cocktail napkin.
Foreshadowing email, they made informal, asynchronous communication with your co-workers a major part of modern office life."
Foreshadowing email my ass. Email existed before Post-It's. Asynchronous? Do you even know what that means? Who the fuck used Post-It Notes to communicate to other people? I just used them as reminders for myself. And if other people saw them at my desk any communication was unintentional.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I'm watching you. -your ex-roommate]
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
They are just a combination of paper and tape. Both of which have been around since... uh ... BEFORE staplers and hole punchers. People have been doin your so-called 'asynchronous communication' for a loooooong time. *yawn*
This is just another serving of the kind of corporatized "news" that litters our media environment. Obviously written by PR flacks at 3M, headquartered not surpisingly in the same town that the originating newspaper comes from, the only purpose of this article is to sell more product. Never mind the article being factually incorrect -- email goes back to the 60s -- this is the sort of advertisement that passes for actual news everywhere these days.
I avoid traditional media to get away from this self-serving crap. Why does Slashdot have to propagate it?
Paper hypertext indeed.
Yeah, I'm always clicking on (or otherwise selecting) links in Post-it notes in order to retrieve and view other documents. Some people think of them as mere pieces of paper with a strip of adhesive, but they are unaware of the linking feature.
-- $SIGNATURE
At one workplace, some guy took PostIts to the extreme. He had the complete outer edge of his 17" monitor covered in PostIts. I once remarked to our manager while standing next to his desk, that if we got him a 19" or 21" monitor, we could improve his productivy immensely.
One of my colleagues who worked for 3M told me:
3M is very engineer-driven -- a lot of 3M products (e.g. Post-It) were invented/developed by engineers.
Of course, an engineer with a Vision still has to sell the idea to management/marketing.
The secret: make it flat. According to my source, 3M management/marketing wonks really like things flat.
Savvy engineers therefore pack their prototypes into flat boxes -- even if a cubical box would be more efficient.
-kgj
-kgj
This would be a good opportunity to pimp "Stickies", a free Windows program to have post-its on your desktop. Includes a lot of features that real postits don't have. I've been using it now for about 2 months and I love it. http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/
Here is a version with a higher resolution, so that you can indeed understand the parody of the Newton's handwriting capabilities: http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/16044/
Eh... or in case you don't, you are probably right, that "girlfreend" mistake was recognised perfectly, as that person hand-wrote it wrong too.
Is someone really glorifying the post it note? I am sure the inventor made a pile on them but post it notes are evil.
They get lost in the shuffle and misplaced. Those who use them lack accountability. Perhaps post it notes plugged a hole for a short time but now the world would be better without them.
It really, really works!
And I love the cream. --J
P.S. Thinking of you,
and having a great time
in Disney World.
This artical should have been called "Post-It Notes - 25 Years of BBSs in paper.
Insert Pithy Quote here.
At Bell Labs, the standard "routing slip" was green, so they were referred to as "greenies".
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The submitter sure has a huge boner for Post-Its.