SmartNote 2

SmartNote—a Post-it-like note-taking application for Windows 98—was the first software I released publicly, as freeware. I created it for a competition organized by Info Exame magazine, which it won, although no surviving record of the result is available. The experience led me to build a much improved second version: SmartNote 2. Thousands of people used it and sometimes wrote with suggestions and questions.

The application resides in the Windows system tray, from which users control their notes. When visible, notes float on the desktop like physical Post-it notes and can be hidden selectively. Additional features illustrated by the images include:

• An advanced alarm system, including yearly, monthly, daily and intra-day notifications. The alarm sound can also be customized.
• Notes can be set to shut down or restart the computer, as well as to run some specific application.
• Notes can have different importance levels and categories, for easier search and organization.
• Note search by key-word, importance, category or behavior.
• A single "physical note" can be used to display the contents of several notes sequentially over time (e.g., from the same category). This is useful to avoid cluttering the desktop while still keeping an eye on the various available notes.
• Notes can be pinned always on top of other windows.

Although this is really old, made while I was still in high school, I remain proud of it. It was developed using Visual Basic 5 at a time when I was starting to learn how to program. It originally worked fine at least until Windows XP, though it has not been tested on recent Windows versions.