I am a fan of Apple’s Stickies application, which saves virtual notes on your screen. Stickies has been included in the Mac OS since System 7 and is simple, elegant, cute, and convenient. As the Mac OS progressed so did the features in Stickies, but it is still a digital Post-it® Note.

Chronos L.C. created StickyBrain as a more useful and powerful Stickies replacement. StickyBrain 2, back in the early days of the transition from OS 9 to Mac OS X, had a lot of features that put Apple’s Stickies to shame, was still simple to use. StickyBrain 3 is even more full featured.

Feature Rich

At first glance StickyBrain’s features may be overwhelming. This simple note manager application borders on a Personal Information Manager and a simple Word Processor, and is more integrated into the Mac OS than ever before. You can change the style and font of your Notes with its links to Font Book, and it pulls your contacts from the Address Book. StickyBrain 3 is also a Contextual Menu choice so you can copy or integrate data from almost any Macintosh application. When surfing the Web and want to grab text, a picture, URL, or most anything, you can do it easily with a Control-click of the mouse. It also links notes to each other and to contacts in your Address Book, plus can launch your email program and mail your note to that contact. StickyBrain even has a feature similar to Tiger’s Spotlight that can quickly search all your notes directly from a Menu bar icon or as a Dashboard Widget so you can find StickyBrain entries fast and easy.

Full Synchronization

StickyBrain 3 surpasses the previous versions with its ability to synchronize with other Macs and devices. It has built in .Mac integration so you can upload or back-up your notes from your desktop Mac and download or mirror them on your portable Mac. It syncs your notes to a Palm device and iPod and your notes are saved as Rich Text Format so it is easily copied and pasted into other applications. It also has the ability to save as a Microsoft Word Document for cross platform use. For images, it includes the ability to import pictures from your iPhoto Library from within StickyBrain.

More Features

When on the Internet, chances are you visit sites that require passwords and although Safari remembers passwords and stores them in Keychain Access, Apple’s built in Password Manager, StickyBrain 3 is somewhat better. You can capture the URL as a clickable link and enter your Password for easy retrieval later.

The cool sample documents in Sticky Brain 3 help get you started. There are some useful and unusual documents like The Declaration Of Independence and The Bill Of Rights, a map of the U.S., a list of popular baby names, common toll free numbers for travelers and a list of telephone area codes sorted by State.

Check It Out

StickyBrain 3 may not replace Microsoft Word, Palm Organizer, iSync, Keychain Access, or even Stickies, but the $39 price tag and the convenience of some of the best features of each in one simple application, makes it worthwhile. Try the free 30-Day full-featured demo and see if StickyBrain 3 is right for you.

by Art Payne