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3M adds a digital approach to the low-tech Post-It Note [Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.](Saint Paul Pioneer Press (MN) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 29--It's a tried-and-true low-tech office-brainstorming strategy: Festooning a wall or whiteboard with a constellation of interrelated and inscribed Post-it Notes to develop and test Big Ideas. Now 3M is taking this approach into the digital realm with a new Apple iOS app, Post-it Plus, that lets the members of those brainstorming sessions take those notes with them. Post-it Plus incorporates a camera-scanning function that captures those physical notes as a group and makes them virtual. Once transferred to an iPhone or iPad, the notes can be shifted around on the device screen, much like the physical ones, while kept together in a virtual "board." The "digital notes are kept separate, moveable and easy to arrange in a grid or any other formation," 3M said in a statement. The app can capture up to 50 notes at once per board. Post-it Plus also lets users share boards with others using e-mail and social media, and to export them to online-storage services as well as Microsoft Office apps such as Excel and PowerPoint. "Post-it Notes continue to be the go-to tool for capturing thoughts and ideas in the analog world," said Paul Kim, 3M's vice president and general manager for stationery and office supplies. "Now (they can) share those ideas with others in the digital world." The 3M app recognizes many Post-it Notes formats, ranging from 3-by-3-inch versions to jumbo Post-it Big Pads notes, with more compatible formats coming soon. The free app, is designed to work on Apple devices running the recently released iOS 8 operating system. Get details at Post-it.com/plusapp. Maplewood-based 3M has a lengthy history of adapting its famed Post-it Notes for the digital age, and has taken a widely divergent range of approaches over the years. In the late 1990s, the company released Windows-based Post-it Software that rendered the notes virtual for the first time, and -- in an hint of the Post-it Plus app to come -- let users arrange their notes in "memoboards" as well as on the PC desktop. Soon afterward, 3M released Post-it Notes for Printers that could be fed into the laser and inkjet printers of the time, along with Post-it Notes Design Software for conjuring up highly customized notes. In 2011, 3M unveiled the Post-it PopNotes app for the iPhone and iPad. That app allows users to draw a PopNote by freehand or type it, and then set it to arrive at a certain time. Users can set the device's GPS to have notes arrive when a recipient is in a predetermined location. Last year, 3M entered into a collaboration with the Evernote online-notebook purveyor to offer an iOS-based Post-it Note Camera app for digitizing, organizing and sharing the 3M notes. Evernote's online-character recognition made notes' content very searchable. In addition, 3M and Evernote offered premium users of the latter service a higher app version packaged with specially branded, bundles of physical Post-its. Information on the notes is scannable, which adds it to Evernote and makes it searchable and editable. ___ (c)2014 the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.) Visit the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.) at www.twincities.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |