Magic noticeboard holds up notes, no tacks required

The office noticeboard is in dire need of an upgrade. Its big weakness is that it's useless without an accessory: thumb tacks. Inevitably, those tacks are absent when you need them most, or worse — found painfully underfoot. That's why we love this electrostatic noticeboard, which doesn't use them at all.

One of the finalists in the 2010 James Dyson Awards, the electrostatic noticeboard, called Stix, only requires you to rub your note on it for a second to build up a charge. Then simply let go, and — voilà — the paper stays in place through static electricity. Since there are no tacks, rearranging your notes is as easy as sliding them.

While designer Jonathan Jordan says the first stage in creating his project was to select the best material to build up an electrostatic charge that will hold a piece of paper, he (perhaps wisely) offers no clue as to what that material is. Our guess: something that easily becomes negative in charge, like polypropylene or vinyl.

In any case, we love the idea, and hope it gets made soon so we can trash our tacks for good. Sure, this kind of board probably wouldn't let you put up notes two or more pages thick, but what's the point of that anyway?