Gettin' Stikkit widget

I've long thought just how odd it is that the sticky notes stuck to your virtual desktop are, well, stuck to your virtual desktop. The affordance of being able to stick a sticky note of the paper variety to someone else's desktop or your other desktop never seems to have made the leap across that atom-to-bit chasm.

Since we released the Stikkit API, I've eagerly awaited a Stikkit widget for my OS X dashboard. And as if by magic, here it is...

Stikkiteer James Adam rolled up his programmatic sleeves and tucked into Dashcode to build a full-featured and well-styled Stikkit Dashboard Widget. Create new stikkits, find and edit existing ones—multiple at a time—and click the "synch" button to save them to Stikkit online. And the widget grabs a snapshot of the latest online each time you show the dashboard so that you always have piping hot stikkits just when you need them.

While you're there picking up your copy of the widget, be sure to read Adam's thoughts on "Stikkit - My Smart, Short-Term Online Memory."

And if you're a Windows stikkiteer, you've a widget too, thanks to the work of Brett Kelly on winstikker. You might have run across Brett's detailed piece on "How to Make Stikkit into Your Personal GTD Powerhouse" featured on Lifehacker a little while back. He also wrote a utility to import your Gmail contacts into Stikkit. Writes Brett, "Any more of this stuff and people are going to start to wonder if I work for Values of n (makers of Stikkit - and no, I don’t work for them - yet ;)."

This is the stuff of Stikkit and the very reason we sat down to write it in the first place and then—quick as we could given the time-constraints of a small team—followed it with a complete, fully-documented API. We're so appreciative of the efforts of so many people to share their expertise with the community, whether that be as apps and code, tips and techniques, detailed write-ups, suggestions, and bug reports.

(Want to try your hand at a widget all your own? No matter which platform you call home, if you're up for a little tinkering you can use either of these two widgets as a starting point as both keep their source in plain sight—and winstikker is licensed as Open Source.)

P.s. Apologies for the title... I just couldn't not.

Stikkit quick with Quicksilver

There are few applications that truly revolutionize the way you use your computer. And only one I've ever come across that utterly invigorates every interaction and application, every nook and cranny. Of course I'm talking about Quicksilver for OS X, described by its author Nicholas Jitkoff as: "A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data." A bold claim—and at the same time a rather vague one. Yet Quicksilver delivers. Whether it clocks you from the word go or quietly sneaks up on you through daily use, QS has a habit of enriching the apps it touches (and there are few it doesn't).

As an avid QS'er (Quicksilverer?), I was thrilled when Merlin Mann tipped me a little while back to the fact that he'd roped Nicholas into building a full-fledged QS plug-in for Stikkit. The plug-in enables you to send text to a new stikkit, edit an existing one, append and prepend, search by text and tag, jump right to the Stikkit you were after, and more. True to form, QS has again revolutionized the way I use yet another app—this time my own.

(If you're a Quicksilver user, simply type Command-Space or your QS trigger of choice, Command-" to get to the plug-ins list, select "Refresh list of plug-ins" from the actions gear at the bottom of the window, and the Stikkit plug-in should show up in the list.)

Fabulous work, Nicholas!

P.s. I'd be remiss in not giving props to AppleScripting talents of Stikkit user iNik who first plugged QS into Stikkit.

Austin on Rails Happy Hour

The week of SXSW is fast approaching and evening events are starting to pop up. Last year I helped organize the first Austin on Rails Happy Hour with Damon Clinkscales and Rob Jones. This year the Stikkit team will be pitching in to help make this event happen and Rael, Asha, and I will be there and look forward to meeting you in person.

Last year's event was a ball—we had over 150 people show up and many great introductions were made and friendships formed.

The Austin on Rails Happy Hour (stikkit!) will be held on March 12th from 6-9pm.

The venue will be the same as last year: Buffalo Billiards is comfortable and inviting, has shuffle board and pool tables, and plenty of room to meet fellow Rails developers.

There will be free drinks and appetizers. If you are not attending SXSW and don't have a badge, you'll need to RSVP. Check out the Upcoming event for more details.

Technorati Tags: community, sxsw, rails, stikkit

IMified supports Stikkit

I've been on something of an IM-as-super-client kick for some time now, and when Rael first unfolded the idea of Stikkit to me, my first thought was that someday perhaps we could even stikkit via IM.

The entire Stikkit team lives and breathes in IM and we've kept meaning to find a few spare cycles to pull together our very own StikkitBot.

And so we're pretty excited to see that the recently released IMified has just hooked up Stikkit as an available IMified service. Send a message to the IMified bot and you instantly receive a URL to follow to add Stikkit to your newly-created account. Once you've added Stikkit as a service, you can create stikkits through the bot. They plan on adding more features to the service soon.

Overall, IMified is an impressive first take on something that I hope will become more and more mainstream.

Stikkit in your pocket

This is just too freakin' cool for words. You know those groovy fold-it-yourself PocketMod booklets?

Using our new Stikkit API, Aaron Straup Cope has stuffed his stikkits into his pockets to take with him when he's away from the keyboard.

Writes Aaron, "The possibilities are endless if by endless you mean four or five letter-sized sheets of paper . . ."

Wow!

Stikkit awaits your API calls

Stikkit may, at first blush, seem to be all about emulating its ubiquitous paper counterpart. And while we certainly do draw inspiration and analogy from the role of notebooks, sticky notes, receipts, index cards, and other scraps of paper in organizing your life, Stikkit is no more about virtual paper than the sticky notes spackling your office and home are about actual paper.

At the core of how we conceived of and are designing and building Stikkit is the belief that the success and endurance of the humble sticky note is its being an affordance. Its dimensions encourage the bite-sized, the smallest atomic unit, the stand-alone. Its shape invites arrangement: horizontal for process, vertical for lists, or just clustered by relatedness. Its color runs the gamut from strictly representative — importance, status, assignment — to simply pleasant.

Above all else, sticky notes represent particles in flow. They're appointments to be scheduled, to-dos to be done, bookmarks (both literally and figuratively) to be re-found, and fragments to be rewritten, re-filed, or simply re-stuck.

Every time I see a cluster of physical notes either purposefully stuck in a neat line or seemingly clustered in some novel formation, I can't help think about where that information's headed and for what purpose.

While we do obviously have strong ideas about the present and future of Stikkit itself, we've never presumed to know just where, how, or to whom you're going to stikkit. Nor how you want to use your data. And in what formation it'll be most useful to you.

So, to provide at least the more programmatically-inclined of you the ability to fold and form your stikkits for your own purposes, we give you the Stikkit API.

We've opened the back door so the tinkerers and mashuppers among you can get your hands and code on your Stikkit data quickly and easily.

By "quickly," we mean that there are no hoops to jump through to get rolling with the API: if you've got a Stikkit account, you've got the key. Log into Stikkit and then visit your account settings to grab your unique API key.

By "easily," we mean that we've made the Stikkit API as simple and intuitive as possible. The API is REST-based, so you simply pass it HTTP requests, and you get back data in the data format of your choice. And even more than that, it's Stikkit-based, so it works just the way the site itself does — just the way we think an API should work.

So let the origami begin! Visit the Stikkit API page for details on how to get started. And be sure to drop by Stikkit API forum to ask questions, share ideas, propose hacks or apps, or show us what you've built.

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!

Dan's gravity-defying page corners

Our crafty designer Dan Cederholm (the pixel-talent behind Rollyo, Odeo, and other things ending in "eeyo") contributes the 24th installment of 24 ways, a web design advent calendar chock full of
CSS, JavaScript, API, Ajax, and other webilicious stocking stuffers. Dan's Gravity-Defying Page Corners came to him while working on the next generation UI for Stikkit future.

Oh, and it's written as a poem, no less.

"So on the night before Christmas all through your house, get your page curling by stirring your mouse."

Stikkit on your desktop

We're always thinking about ways to keep Stikkit close at hand. Assuming you do too ;-), I thought I'd point to a couple of little apps we've come across to do just that.

Steven Frank's lovely little WebKit-based WebDesktop for Mac OS X overlays Stikkit (or any other site for that matter) on your desktop, leaving it dimmed until you start interacting with it. An auto-refresh setting means fresh content shows up without need of a manual reload.

And Stikkiteer bmassey finds Bubbles, a system-tray enhancement for Windows, a perfect way to keep a logged-in instance of Stikkit at hand.

Have a Stikkit hack to share? Pop in to the "Widgets, Hacks, and more" forum and let us know.

Salutations, gentle stikkiteers.

Today's build of Stikkit brings a couple-three enhancements we thought you'd like to know about.

• Stikkit salutations mean Stikkit will only respond when spoken to.


• A new "magic words" cheatsheet is just a click away.


• Streamlined signup brings immediate gratification: sign up and get sticking in mere seconds (without need of first confirming your email address).

(Feel free to skip the nitty-gritty and watch Stikkit salutations in action.)

Stikkit salutations

Our team is constantly improving and tweaking the Stikkit "magic word" parser: the machinery tasked with picking events, to-dos, peeps, bookmarks, tags, sharing, and more out of your stikkits and doing something useful with them. The key is being smart (doing only the right thing, otherwise keeping out of the way), not clever (thinking we know what you mean and stepping on your toes).

This is decidedly not artificial intelligence: Stikkit relies upon your actual intelligence, providing a pidgin — a simplified language with rudimentary grammar and vocabulary (what we call "magic words") — that's easy for you to remember and Stikkit to understand.

There are times, though, when you'd like Stikkit to stop listening. To turn Stikkit's parser off, simply prepend your stikkit with !! and it'll completely ignore any magic words in your note. Or you can point out particular paragraphs or words for Stikkit to ignore using !, as in "! Can't touch this." or "Please don't !share with rael." (Stikkit thoughtfully hides these exclamation marks when displaying your stikkit.)

But what if you want Stikkit to only respond when spoken to?

A new feature we're calling "Stikkit salutations" does just the trick. Prepend any line or paragraph with Stikkit, and Stikkit will start paying attention (until the end of the paragraph, i.e. next blank line). The rest of your stikkit is completely ignored. This is especially useful when you're pasting in extended notes for a meeting and only want Stikkit to notice the date and time for the meeting itself. Or when forwarding an email message to Stikkit, you can safely call out a line or three without having to chop out what you don't want Stikkit to misconstrue.

Here's an example of Stikkit salutations in action:

Marketing Meeting

stikkit, schedule a meeting on January 20th at 4pm.

We'll be talking about the marketing materials deadline of March 8th.

stikkit, share with susan@example.valuesofn.com

Forwarded email message:

> To: jj@example.valuesofn.com
> From: olivia@example.valuesofn.com
> Subject: Marketing materials deadline
>
> JJ-
> Let's meet about that marketing materials deadline.
> -O

Stikkit salutations come in four delicious syntactic flavors (I'm partial to the third):

stikkit,
stikkit:
s,
s:

Of course if you don't use any salutations, Stikkit does what it has always done and pays attention to the entire stikkit.

"Magic words" cheat-sheet

While there's really not much you have to remember when using Stikkit, we thought a cheat-sheet would come in handy. Click the help link at the top of any Stikkit window and it'll pop right up. (Thanks for the suggestion, Ev.)

Streamlined signup

In the course of our Stikkit home page redesign it turns out we left out one seemingly-innocuous yet forehead-smackingly obvious UI element: on-screen signup confirmation :-\.

Most of you were nice enough to assume you'd just missed a pop-up and happily clicked the the emailed link, leaving you signed in and none the worse for wear. But we were beginning to wonder about the few who took the time to sign up never to be heard from again.

We took the opportunity to not only repair the bug but completely rework and streamline Stikkit signup. New signups can now dive right in and start sticking stikkits without need of first visiting their email inboxes. The only restrictions on what you can do before email verification — necessary to prevent misuse — are that you can't share, set reminders, or log back in should you log out. These restrictions are instantly waived the moment you click the emailed link and log in.

We always appreciate hearing what's working for you and what's not behaving as expected, what you'd like to see in Stikkit, how you're using it, and anything else that's on your mind. Please do pop by our forums and get involved in the ongoing discussion and future direction of Stikkit.

net@nite: "The people behind Stikkit"

I had the pleasure of hanging out (virtually, at least) and chatting with Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte on their weekly podcast net@nite. Uber-organizer and pal Merlin Mann was kind enough to demo Stikkit on a forthcoming episode of Leo's Call for Help show and they were taken with it enough to invite me to chat about some of the ideas behind our work.

You can listen to the podcast at TalkShoe (Episode 7: "iPhone?"; I pop on at time index 27:47).

Finance class project looks at Stikkit

Livejournal user Justin (aka sushicrusader) promoted Stikkit (and Values of n) as HPV (high potential venture) in his Entrepreneurial Finance class. I look forward to hearing his findings.

First Round and Rob Hayes join the team

I'm thrilled no end to announce the addition of First Round Capital to Values of n's first round (led by Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures in October of this year).

I was lucky enough to spend a goodly amount of time with First Round's managing partner Josh Kopelman early on in Stikkit's life and came away bolstered by Josh's firm grasp—early though it was—on what we were building, why it was interesting, and thoughts about where our little yellow notes might lead us.

As if this weren't enough, this investment brings long-time (at least in Stikkit-time) and always-on supporter Rob Hayes to our board.

Rob and I met at PC Forum earlier this year where we fell into easy conversation — one that continued late into the night and has been ongoing ever since. He suggested I spend some time with Di-Ann Eisnor and the folks at Portland-based startup Platial, that we'd be a good complement to one another: he was right and we've been sharing an office in Portland's vibrant Pearl District ever since.

Rob's experience building simple, intuitive, integrated applications for the small screen at Go Corp and Palm means he is intimately familiar with what we're trying to accomplish with our "small page" approach to personal productivity (and we don't have all that pesky handwriting recognition to worry about). While he's never needed to ask why we're building Stikkit, Rob is never shy about asking how we mean do it. His active, engaged participation, strong business focus, and expectation of at least deep thought if not absolute answers to the tough questions has meant a lot to me over the past months and I welcome his continuing that role in an official capacity as a member of our board. (Not to mention his irreverent sense of humor and devilish grin–as seen on Flickr.)

(I've previously referred to Rob in this blog as "one of the early sausage makers" behind the scenes in Jerry Kaplan's Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure, the book that started me on this entrepreneurial path back in 1994.)

Rob and First Round join our already stellar group of Silicon Valley- and Portland, Oregon-based angels brimming with encouragement, inspiration, and just the right mix of hands-on and light touch.