Rating: 5
pick
Version tested: 2.93
Shock Sticker is a desktop “sticky” notes program that offers a full range of features including full rich text editing, alarms, passwords, and quick notes transfer to other users of the program. Notes can be hidden and retrieved from the tray icon or minimized to small floating icons on the desktop.
In the past few days I’ve come across no less than three desktop notes programs that I had not seen before. Most noteworthy of these is Shock Sticker, because (a) it offers a full range of features, and (b) has a very nice/useable method of minimizing notes so that they are easily within reach but do not crowd the screen.
Although I find desktop sticky notes programs to be interesting and useful, I stopped using them some time ago simply because I had so many on-screen at one time that my screen was too cluttered, and I remember minimizing/maximizing them to the application in the system tray was less than intuitive. What I like about this program is that it minimizes your notes to a small floating icons on the desktop that take very little space on the one hand but keep all of your notes readily accessible on the other (see screenshot). Here are some notes on this program:
- Minimizing/hiding: notes can be minimized to floating icons, or hidden and retrieved using the program’s tray icon. You can easily hide and show all notes if you need to (or otherwise unhide or maximize just the note you need).
- Display: you can use a little red pushpin on the note itself to keep it showing on top of other windows (works for when note is maximized or minimized). A note’s color can be easily changed. You can select one of the default available colors or, if they aren’t to your liking, create your own color schemes in the program options.
- Editing: offers full rich text editing. The editing toolbar (on the note itself) can be easily shown or hidden, which is quite cool. URLs typed into a note are ’live’ and will open in the browser when clicked.
- Titles: each note has a title that can be edited freely. Seems like an obvious feature but is in fact sometimes absent from sticky notes programs.
- Searching: you can find text within a note, or use the ’find’ command from the app’s system tray to search across all notes.
- Passwords: can be set for individual notes such that a user is unable to maximize or unhide a locked note without one. Although you can set an application level password (rather than individually) it did not seem to work when I tested it.
- Alarms: can be set for each note.
- Connectivity: notes can be instantly sent to an IP address or to someone on the network who is running the application on their machine. Note that I did not test this feature myself.
- Sound effects: this program features clicking and whizzing sounds whenever you use its different functions. This was a little strange at first but I soon grew to like it. You can switch sound effects off from the options page.
- Memory use: takes about 12 megs in memory, which is not a lot for this type of program.
Wish list (or how this program can be even better):
- URL linking: I would love to see the ability to link a word to a URL, such that I do not need to clutter a note with the full URL and can use it as a de-facto bookmark manager.
- Snapping to edges: for minimized or maximized notes, it would be fantastic if there was an option whereby these magnetically snapped together (or close together) whenever they were within x pixels of each other.
- Import/export notes function.
The verdict: this program came out of nowhere to become my favorite sticky notes. It does not offer PDA support, as Stickies does for example (another excellent freeware stickies program), but I find that to be a nonissue myself. Highly recommended.
Compatibility: Windows 2000, 2003, XP; no info on Vista.
Go to the download page to get the latest version (approx 611K). Also visit the program home page.
As far as I can tell it doesn’t have export/import feature and most importantly it doesn’t have a neat notes manager. I definitely prefer Stickies as I can keep my notes off-screen in Manager, notes are nicer looking and the software is more user friendly. The only thing that Stickies seem not to have is password protection but then it’s a bit odd function in a note taking software. And notes on-screen can be minimized to title also taking up very little monitor space. So I see Stickies as a hands-down winner.
Eve,
I think Stickies is a fantastic program, and it does have a number of features that Shock Sticker doesn’t (e.g. telling a note to sleep for x minutes rather than having to set a time for an alarm, case functions for text, seaching the interent on selected text, etc.). The import/export option didn’t occur to me (I added it to the wish list).
However I find the notes manager in stickies somewhat confusing and unintuitive, and what I like about Shock Sticker is the way it compactly minimizes to floating icons, making it easy to manage my notes right on the desktop. I think that Stickies might offer “rolling up” of notes but if so that does not seem to work properly on my machine.
I also like the simplicity that Shock Sticker provides, which is somewhat lost with Stickies.
I also am a die hard stickies user and there is one useful feature I didn’t see you mention. With stickies you can attach a sticky to an application and it hides when you close that app and comes back when you run it again. This is a great feature I like a lot!
The simplicity is quite subjective since I found Stickies to be the simplest and nicest desktop notes software from many that I’ve tried
And Stickies have a roll up feature where they leave only the tab/title bar visible with the buttons “on top” (working much like the pin) and close. I activate it by double clicking the bar which you can set in options.
The manager is good as you can edit the notes there. I do sometimes have a problem with finding the note but the search feature is awesome and it finds what I need in a blink of an eye.
There are also the sleep & wake features that are very useful especially the recurring wake. Not to mention the attach that Michael describes. I feel I should stop praising it cause they will start charging money for the soft
Anyway, there are many alternatives and anyone can find something for themselves. I think you’re doing an extremely good work at putting stuff out there and I’m continuously amazed. Keep it up and all the best
Wow. I didn’t realize “Stickies” has such a strong following. All I can say in response is that one day I will write a “best of freeware” posting and list all the various categories, and both Stickies and Shock Sticker will be mentioned in the “Desktop Notes” section.
Btw I re-installed Stickies before I wrote this review in order to take a fresh look; and yes it is a very excellent program. One of the perks of having my own blog, however, is that I can be subjective, and in this case I will say that at least for the time being I am happier with Shock Sticker
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Boclean detected spyware in this software…It might be a false positive, but I won’t chance it.
I’ll stick to Stickies which I have been using for yeasrs.
BOclean thinks all of the titles by this developer are Trojans. Therefore, I went to the Comodo website and entered a ticket for this issue, asking them to please clarify whether this was a fasle positive.
After more than a week without response, I scanned the installation files using a number of other tools without problem.
And since I cannot wait forever for the Comodo/BOclean people to reply, I can say based on my other tests that I am confident this title is spyware/trojan free.
asd
I was quite happy with this app. The main concern for me is bloat – I want the program to get the job done and not slow down my computer with extra stuff I don’t need. I am not so confident this will run so well on my eepc with XP running…
The only way that Shock Sticker worked for me , is that I DISCOVERED THIS OUTSTANDING SITE while trying to figure out WHY the various features described were ABSENT in every download I attempted…I DID finally manage to get it to spit out notes, which IS useful, but I really wanted the ALARM feature…It doesn’t seem possible that everyone else but me is getting ALL of the features, OR that Vista users are getting a different download… I would actually PAY for this gadget AS DESCRIBED!… What IS going on here?…