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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."
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
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.
I actually find it easier and more convenient to stick real notes onto my monitor than work with those things on my desktop. The notes are always on top, can be moved easily if necessary, and can adhere to the frame of the monitor to stay out of the way.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
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
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.
No.
They take up screen real estate, which is a very limited resource. I often use post-it notes myself, to write down useful info from the computer. More, I sometimes print sidebars and paste them to the sides of the monitor (i.e. SFR and memory map for 8052 while developing programs for it, or basic help for some new program - I had "mouse gestures" in "printed sidebars" before I remembered them.) - these actually "increase screen real estate". (same reason I think no 15" ultra-hi-res super-duper LCD screen can replace a good, ol' faithful 21" CRT).
There are things that are good on screen only, things are good in both worlds, and things that are good IRL only. Post-it is good only as non-virtual.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
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?
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.
It is interesting to note the products of unintended consequences. Just a few: Post-Its, Microwave Ovens, and Vasoline.
Probably the most lucrative example of this is Viagra, which was originally developed as a heart medication. I heard that the original developers considered its unintended side effect so unfortunate that they ceased development of the heart medicine until someone at Pfizer realized that perhaps the side effect might be worth something. I suspect that's an urban legend though....
Sailing over the event horizon
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.
I actually find it easier and more convenient to stick real notes onto my monitor than work with those things on my desktop. The notes are always on top, can be moved easily if necessary, and can adhere to the frame of the monitor to stay out of the way
Actually in Mac OS 10.4, the postit notes widget can be made to do all of that. This hint at MacOSXHints.com shows how to keep the stickies always on top. They are easy to move and can be put back into the dashboard at any time. Maybe not as good as on the rim of your monitor, though.
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!"
For instance, Propecia was originally a prostate medication. It blocks the uptake of testosterone in certain tissues. The effect they wanted was that the prostate would shrink. It also makes one's dick shrink and it stops hair from falling out (eunuchs don't go bald, by the way -- one way to think about Propecia is that it chemically castrates the man who is taking it). One of these side effects was worth a lot of money.
There's a lot of tetracycline that gets prescribed in this country for zits.
There was one drug I remember reading about that was intended to treat some kind of frivolous Western medical problem, didn't do so well at that, but turned out to work really well on a particular tropical disease. The drug company gave the remaining stock to Doctors Without Borders, but didn't make any more of the drug because there was no profit in it.
With great power comes great fan noise.