Even our ancient ancestors had to write stuff down.

The first known list from prehistory was found written, or more accurately drawn, on a cave wall somewhere in France. It was a series of images representing condiments and other items a typical caveman was instructed by his wife, er, mate, to bring back to the cave, after his day of hunting, gathering and discussing his tool collection with his hunting buddies.

Well, actually we made that up, but if it wasn't so time consuming to carve into the cave wall, such a list might have been found. And if it had been found, it most likely would have been noted on Wikipedia, a modern list of interesting topics.

People need lists to remember things, to help organize things, to arrange and order things. Lists are helpful.

Post-it notes are ok, but I keep losing them.

Keeping lists of names, addresses, phone numbers and appointments in one place for reference and easy retrieval is more than a convenience, it is a necessity in the modern age and there is no better way to keep such lists than let your computer rembember everything for you.

In addition to the items above, using the computer means adding other important items to your lists, such as email addresses, Web Sites you visit frequently or need to revisit occasionally, IDs and passwords required by software, and other security concerns. Naturally, keeping lists requires software, frequently software that goes beyond the very basic applications that come bundled with your computer.

Complicated list keeping software, the sort used by many companies, can be expensive, difficult to learn to use, and is most likely overkill for what's required by the average person. What most of us need is an easy to use program that requires only nominal data entry skills, does not take hours to learn to use and is powerful enough to meet tough data handling rules without being overly complex.

Computers don't have to be so complicated, do they?

Heck no! Functional complexity should be concealed behind an easy to use and understand interface, so that the user benefits from the computer's powerful algorithms without themselves having to deal with confusing technology just to look up a piece of valuable information when required.

Record keeping requires links between important pieces of related data. A relational database engine can maintain such relationships in powerful ways. For example, any list of people or companies in these technological times will require the ability to store multiple phone numbers for each listed item. Along with phone numbers, an unlimited number of notes associated with each listing is almost mandatory.

Breaking lists into categories is a great way to help manage lists. A good list manager application should allow the user to put names into smaller lists, or categories. A sophisticated list manager will allow names from a master list to also be placed in as many smaller lists as might be necessary for whatever purposes.

Get organized with Categories.

A simple example would be a master list of friends, family, professional contacts, business acquaintances, neighbors, club members, church members and so on. Each of those definitions could be maintained as a different category with names appearing both in the category and in the master list, as well as in other categories.

Another category might be added, say a Christmas Card List, where selected individual names from any other category might also be included in the Christmas List category. The database will maintain these complex 'many-to-many' relationships, while all you will have to do is switch names between categories as you choose without concerning yourself about how to keep track of it all.

At Christmas time, you just go to your Christmas card list and get the names for mailing out cards or making some phone calls. The possible combinations are endless and completely up to how you want things organized.

Don't dare forget her birthday.

Keeping track of anniversaries and birthdays and other important dates and appointments is always useful and represents the keeping of another list, this one time sensitive. A time sensitive list needs the computer to keep track of the date and reminding you when any important events are coming up. Such functionality should include the ability to tell the computer how many days in advance to announce an upcoming event and how frequently such announce-ments should interrupt your work with a pop-up screen to remind you.

How about keeping track of phone calls, another specific list. Keeping a list of special calls, with a timestamp and note attached can be another useful function in a list management application. For job searches and other activities where serial calls are made and received, a place to jot down notes of each conversation and the time and date of the call can be very useful.

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