Over the years we've learned that what people really want is random access memory - much like a brain. You left something behind in Cleveland, say, or Kuala Lumpur, and you can't remember what.

Just type in the place, or anything connected with the thought or object that you can possibly recall. What, your memory doesn't have a keyboard? Well this one does. It's a Web site called "Stixy," and its makers say it's a virtual refrigerator door for sticking up notes. Instead of magnets, you type in the notes and stick them on the door. You can also stick up pictures, songs, Beethoven's "Ninth," to-do lists, blocks of text taken from somebody else's work, and anything else you can think of that will stick to a virtual refrigerator.

Music has to be posted to the refrigerator as a "document." Currently there is no player. But a digital file is a digital file. Your computer's own player will be able to recognize it. Since you can share your pages with others, you can share music this way.

If you're a really organized person, you might have more than one refrigerator. Think of it as a freezer, or a double-door refrigerator, or a walk-in cooler. Certain kinds of things would only go on certain kinds of doors. Be careful about this, because you're on the verge of building a structured database, and if you do that we don't want to know you. Stixy is for people who can't remember what they did with the magazine they put down just a minute ago.

If you're worried about not being able to find things later on, a list of all the refrigerator doors you made is off to the side of your computer screen. You can also tag things with key words like "trip to," or something like that, and use the search function later.  Careful now, you're on the verge of getting organized.

Stixy is free, and since it's all on the Web, it works with PCs or Macs. Find it at Stixy.com.

GOOGLE'S A SKETCH

Google "SketchUp 6" is a free graphics program that, as you might expect, is quite different from other graphics programs. Its focus is architectural, and the core of the cleverness is you can push or pull parts of anything you create to make courtyards in solid buildings, or add domes, wings and colonnades to simple cubes.

That's just the basics, because there's a lot more you can do. For example, a freehand tool lets you draw any kind of figure and push that down to ground level to create an atrium or court, or pull on the drawing to create a tower or bridge. Any shape, whether a simple square or circle, or a closed freehand curve, can be pushed right through a structure to create a tunnel or the kind of architectural hole-in-the-wall you see in some modern buildings.

You can model any kind of building you can imagine, and then add windows, doors, decks, sheds, arcades, etc., and have them done with dimensional accuracy to match the rest of the building. A "components" library has figures of people, furniture, trees and shrubs along with stuff you seldom think of, like microphone stands, in case you're designing a stage or recording studio. The textures library lets you set your walls in brick or stone, floors in wood or tile, etc.

The drawings can be extended to make entire cityscapes or landscape settings by adding surrounding buildings and settings from the real world. Pictures of existing buildings and grounds can be traced and those structures added to the one you create. Alternatively, you can start with a photo of an existing building; either alone or in its setting, and modify that to see how your changes fit.

Enormous power here, and all for free. The professional version of SketchUp Pro 6 is available for $495, but what it primarily adds is the ability to use drawings from other architectural programs, like the market leading AutoCAD, from Autodesk. The pro version of SketchUp also lets you take the 3-D model you created and make two- dimensional floor plans and layouts, which would then be used for blueprints. You can see lots of examples of finished and semi-finished work by going to Google.com and doing a search on the key words, "SketchUp Gallery." You can get the program itself at SketchUp.com.

•  iBakeSale.com  has made arrangements with more than 400 retail businesses to return a portion of an individual's purchase money to charity or community groups that register on the Web site. Most of the retailers are well-known, like Starbucks, Nordstrom, Macy's, Gap, Wal-Mart, Brooks Brothers, etc. As the shopper, you can list which organization you want the funds to go to, and then purchase things normally. You can elect to keep some of the cash-back reward for yourself. It takes 30 to 60 days for your cash-back to become available.

• The FranceRadio.net site we recently recommended for downloading free music seems to be "hors de combat," as the French might say. In other words: it's not up there and working anymore. Was it something we said? Could be. Because within a couple of days of our reporting that you could download music here for free, boom, they were gone. We'll keep checking to see if the site returns. In the meantime, you might try Skreemr.com, using Real Player, which lets you download music.

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