Technology, Culture, Commentary on the Internet Revolution

Stikkit - Great, but let’s take it a step further

by Jason on February 7th, 2007

I recently highlighted an interesting little application called Stikkit on my Uncover the Internet site. I found the original application from Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders site for general life productivity and hacking tips.

As I began to share in my Uncover the Internet post, but decided to stay on topic there and share my thoughts here on Emerging Earth instead, why can’t something like this not exist separately unto itself, but be integrated into applications we already use regularly.

For example, what if as in Merlin’s example, I could type an e-mail with little bits of mark-up that gave me all the functionality that Stikkit does. Since it’s already in e-mail, let’s say Gmail, for example, I’ve already got the information collected in a central location for my own future use and I can combine the features of other Google apps for similar activities: directions, mapping, shopping, calendar, communication, etc.

The other downfall I personally have with picking up new applications like this is the learning curve. Granted with this application it’s not like I’m trying to teach myself Auto-CAD or Photoshop out-of-the-box, but it’s still enough to be annoying to me. I think it would be better to train the application on my own keywords and have it start recognizing pointer words that it begins using to mark-up the details of these little notes. To me it works much like the “SmartTags” feature did when they were first introduced in Microsoft Office applications.

I believe the other missing component to this type of functionality is an agreed upon standard on what each tag means and represents. Once this standard is defined, then XML transfer of these types of data could become even more intertwined in our existing applications already getting the mindshare of our attention and daily use time.

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