Blog: MIT Professor Creates Software to Organize the Details of Everyday Life; List.it

MIT Professor Creates Software to Organize the Details of Everyday Life
Campus Technology (01/05/09) Schaffhauser, Dian

The computer can be a better tool for creating to-do lists and jotting down other information, says Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor David Karger. Karger, a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, has created List.it, Web-based note-taking software that makes it easier for people to write down short notes and find them later. People ultimately will spend less time entering, storing, and retrieving information, whether email addresses, Web URLs, or shopping lists, using List.it, Karger says. List.it is available on the Firefox browser sidebar. Users can enter information on the fly via the quick input box. A synching feature provides back up for notes, and installing List.it on multiple computers mirrors notes to all of the machines. "I would never make the claim that we're trying to replace Post-its," says Michael Bernstein, a graduate student in Karger's lab. "We want to understand the classes of things people do with Post-its and see if we can help users do more of what they wanted to do in the first place."

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