Merlin Mann advises

I'm thrilled to announce that Merlin Mann has joined the Values of n advisory board.

Merlin is the inventor of the Hipster PDA, the reason you even know what a Moleskine is, and the one-person productivity guru behind 43 Folders,

You could say Merlin and I met during his well-podcasted wrestling with a book titled, ironically enough, "Productivity Hacks." (I was the guy behind the "very nice man from Cambridge — our editor [Brian Sawyer]—... whose life we temporarily ruined"; I was series editor of the O'Reilly Hacks series and Brian was my associate editor.) Yet it wasn't until some time later that Merlin and I actually spent some time together. And we've spent a goodly amount of time since, going through the ins and outs of Stikkit present and future, always homing in on that fine line between getting things done and getting in the way.

If you've not yet read anything by Merlin, I highly recommend his fabulous "Inbox Zero" blog-series. It should be required reading for anyone even considering an inbox of their own, let alone anyone who has already moved in and now wants out.

Merlin's unique blend of determination to get things done, ability to find the silliness in even his most trying attempts, and willingness to share it all in an inviting manner is a true gift.

We're honored to have Merlin working and playing along with us and making Stikkit all the better for it.

Search Stikkit from your Mac

Our recently featured stikkiteer iNik has gone so far as to set up a page of his own for Stikkit tricks. His most recent: search Stikkit from your Mac by adding some simple one-liner magic to Firefox (this'll work for Windows users too), OmniWeb, LaunchBar, and Quicksilver. Nice.

When a notion comes along, you must stikklet

While our latest build of Stikkit featured a complete do-over of peeps (screencast), it also brought with it a whole host of improvements, including a brand new "stikklet."

Our handy "stikklet" — the Stikkit bookmarklet (try saying that three times fast) — means you can stikkit right from the comfort of your browser.

Click the bookmark/favorites link and the stikklet pops up right inside the very page you're on or, if you prefer, in its own window off to the side. It'll be pre-filled with the title of the page you're visiting, any text you've selected, and tagged with any keywords it found in the page at hand. Add your own notes, edit any of the found content, and click the save button to stikkit.

(Our stikklet is here pictured here stikking my friend Marc Hedlund's brilliant new startup, Wesabe.)

Pick up a fresh stikklet while they're hot! [you'll need to be logged in]

How Cinnamon uses Stikkit

Stikkiteer Cinnamon recently discovered our little yellow notes and integrated them rather nicely into her process for managing her custom purse making business.

With Stikkit, I can create the to-do list, but I can have it email a person the info on the list by just telling it to "email order@ordername.com" after I type in the info on the stikkit. I can also create a Stikkit email address and if I get emailed something that I want to add to a stikkit, instead of having to cut and then go paste in another window, I can just email it to my secret email address with Stikkit. If I have to do something on a specific day, I can also set it up to remind me either via email or via a text message on my phone. And it knows dates because it also incorporates a calendar. So I can create a stikkit that says "order book club book, bookstore open till 7, the name of the book, 1/19/07 remind me" and it will add all the info to a stikkie, add the entry to a date and email me to remind me to get the book.

Did I mention I'm in love with this app? Cause I am, like totally and completely.

Hearing about how people use Stikkit in their lives is both deeply gratifying and incredibly helpful. While we obviously know Stikkit is being used, stikkiteer feedback and stories like Cinnamon's are how we know just how.

Thank you Cinnamon!

iNik's AppleScript stikkiteering

The other morning during my normal morning routine I ran across a forum post in our "Widgets, Hacks, and more" forum by stikkiteer iNik that had me jumping up and down (literally).

iNik wrote a comprehensive AppleScript package (for Mac OS X) dubbed New Stikkit Package that you can run in various forms: as a stand-alone double-clickable AppleScript application, hook into Quicksilver or Launchbar, or use as a Mac OS X service from just about any other application. It'll even send notifications to Growl.

Seeing people like iNik write useful pieces of code that support an application I care about never gets old. When people ask me, "How's Stikkit going?" I never fail to tell them about people like iNik.

Check out his work, grab a copy and give it a spin, and be to let iNik know what you think.

Thanks, iNik!

Peeps are made of people

A Stikkit peep [slang for "person"; also brightly colored, animal-shaped marshmallow treats, but that's neither here nor there] is essentially a contact, a card in your rolodex, an entry in your address book. A peep can be a person or an organization, a villa in Tuscany or emergency numbers for the babysitter — anything for which (or for whom) you want to track phone numbers, addresses, bookmarks, birthdays, notes, and other salient details.

In its new incarnation, a peep is more than a static "address card." It's a dynamic, ever-growing collection of the details you jot down about someone — on any number of stikkits — over time. Mention Susan Miller for the first time along with her phone number, 503-555-1212, in a "Marketing Teleconference" stikkit and Stikkit will create a brand new peep stikkit for her. Jot down Susan's email address a few days later in another stikkit (Send report to Susan Miller at susan@example.com), and Stikkit will automatically add her email address to her Peep stikkit. And so on and so forth.

Stikkit will link to Susan's peep stikkit from every other stikkit in which she's mentioned. And vice-versa: in her peep stikkit will appear links to each of those stikkits.

If you're the sort of person to whom this sounds a lot like lightweight CRM, this will sound a lot like lightweight CRM ;-) Managing the details regarding the important people in one's life is just as crucial as managing one's customers.

The practice of accumulating details about people and places as you get to know and interact with them mimics real life: you'll find just such details in your email inbox, scribbled on scraps of paper, decorating the corners of your whiteboard, and wending their way outside of the four or so lines you're given in your standard paper address book. After all, it's seldom to never that you get to know someone entirely (even their contact details) all at once. And even if you were to — they hand you their business card, for instance — who types or pencils all that in? If anything, you usually choose one or two salient details and summarily ignore the rest.

And so, we invite you to take a peek at the new peeps feature. We think you'll find it as useful as we do. All feedback welcome on the forums, where you'll also find how-to documentation.

Simple Stikkit tricks: Drag and drop an iCal event

On a whim the other night I decided to try dragging an iCal event from iCal to a new Stikkit window, and was delighted to see that it did pretty much exactly what I expected it to do: it pasted in a text version of the iCal event and, lo and behold, Stikkit noticed it too, scheduling without batting an eye.

Watch that event fly!