Philip Colmer
07-14-2003, 05:00 PM
The portability of Pocket PCs makes them an ideal method for keeping information readily at hand ... but how easy is it to make a quick note and then find it again? Resco wrote Stickies to help with just that requirement in mind.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/colmer-jul03-stickies-0.gif" /><br /><!><br /><i>If you've ever been stuck looking for a pen and a piece of paper to quickly jot something down, Resco Stickies might be just what you are looking for. It makes light work of turning your Pocket PC into a multi-talented note taking machine.</i><br /><br /><span><b>What's a Sticky When It's At Home Then?</b></span><br />A sticky can consist of one or more audio recordings, a freehand drawing and/or text, all presented together under a title and an optional expiration date & time. The software comes with twelve predefined titles and allows you to delete any of these that you don't like, or add some of your own, as shown in Figure 1. A nice touch is that if you enter a title of your own whilst creating a new sticky, the software remembers it and adds it to the list of available titles, thus shortening the title creation process.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/colmer-jul03-stickies-1.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 1: The Title Editor</i><br /><br /><span><b>Installation</b></span><br />Installation of Resco Stickies is very straightforward and done in the usual way - run the executable on your PC and ActiveSync takes care of installing the software on your device. Moments later and the Today settings window appears to allow you to specify how you would like the Stickies Today plugin to appear.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/colmer-jul03-stickies-2.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 2: Setting the Today options</i><br /><br />The plugin allows you to specify the font size used, how many stickies are shown, whether or not you want to display expired stickies or only stickies that are due to expire today.<br /><br />Once you've set the plugin options, the Today screen displays a "Tap here to add new sticky" prompt in the area that the plugin is sitting.<br /><br /><span><b>Setting the options</b></span><br />In addition to the settings for the Today plugin, the software offers further choices to set Stickies up the way that <i>you</i> want it to look and feel.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/colmer-jul03-stickies-3.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 3: General settings</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/colmer-jul03-stickies-4.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 4: Initial settings for new stickies</i><br /><br />The default mode for a new sticky can be either writing (aka drawing) or typing. The default page style can be blank, grid, ruled lines, dotted lines, left margin, top margin or left-top margin.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/colmer-jul03-stickies-5.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 5: Notification sound options</i><br /><br /><span><b>Creating a Sticky</b></span><br />Well, it couldn't be easier really - just tap on the Today plugin or, if you've selected the option, press the Record button. From there, you can make your recording, draw on the sticky, type on the sticky ... or do any combination of the three, as Figure 6 shows!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/colmer-jul03-stickies-6.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 6: A fully featured sticky!</i><br /><br />If you want the sticky to expire by a certain time, there is a quick drop-down menu to choose from.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/colmer-jul03-stickies-7.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 7: The drop-down expiration menu</i><br /><br />If, however, you need to pick the date or be more accurate with the time, you can do that as well.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/colmer-jul03-stickies-8.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 8: More precise expiration</i><br /><br />Once you've got your stickies created, the software displays them in expiration order, along with a preview screen, as shown in Figure 9. Stickies that don't have an expiration set have a white circular icon next to them. Stickies that are due to expire have a white circle with a quarter fill in red, whilst those that have expired are completely red.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/colmer-jul03-stickies-9.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 9: Managing your stickies</i><br /><br />You can change the sort order by clicking on the column name. From this screen, you can also edit a sticky, expire it or delete it.<br /><br /><span><b>Gotchas</b></span><br />I found a couple of issues with the software:<li> The page style that is set within the options is a global setting, not a per-sticky choice. In addition, it isn't possible to change that setting from within the sticky itself - you have to go all the way back to the options page.<br /><br /><li> I couldn't get the record button to work - Pocket Informant kept on picking up the action instead. Problems like this make me think that Microsoft needs to provide a centralised method for handling the hardware buttons so that these clashes can be avoided.There are a couple of areas where the software could be improved:<li>If you've got a lot of stickies, I think it could start to get difficult to manage them. It might help if there was an option to group the stickies by title.<br /><br /><li>It would be nice if the software offered more choices for editing a sticky, such as being able to select the drawing & move it on the page, or supporting different colour, or importing an image, or ...<span><b>Where To Buy</b></span><br />The software can be <a href="http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&platformId=2&productType=2&catalog=0§ionId=0&productId=31206">downloaded from Handango</a> or purchased for $14.95 (affiliate link).<br /><br /><span><b>Specifications</b></span><br />This program will work with Pocket PC 2000 & 2002. The program takes up 173KB of RAM on the device. It can be installed on a storage card.<br /><br /><span><b>Conclusions</b></span><br />The software does what it says it does and in a straightforward way. There are some nice touches that show that the developers have thought about the user interface and how to make it easy to use within the constraints of the device. It perhaps isn't as sophisticated as the notes feature in Pocket Informant, but it is serving a slightly different need and, given the problems & suggestions above, I think it meets those needs.