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I have a dual display setup and often have to switch focus frequently from one display to the other. Often when I return my focus to one of the displays, I have a hard time finding the exact point I was looking at. I would like to find a utility that would put placemarks - sort of like the placemarks on Google Maps - on the display, to mark where I was. They need to be "always on top", and I need to be able to drag and drop them. Have Googled a lot without finding what I'm looking for.

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Have you looked at tools intended for presentations/screencasts? Your question brought to mind OmniDazzle (which is not itself helpful since it is for Mac only). – Kevin Reid Oct 5 '11 at 22:36
Hi Paul, thanks both for the answer and the advice. Sometimes I got a good answer but was hoping for better - so I'd mark the answer "useful" but without accepting it as a final answer. But I want to encourage people to answer my questions so in the future I'll be quicker to accept them. – Jim Oct 6 '11 at 2:58
Paul - note improvement in my accept rate! :) – Jim Oct 6 '11 at 3:04
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There are a few tools for annotating the desktop, but leaving the marks in place and being able to move them seems to be the difficult part.

I was wondering about a sideways solution. You could use the Sticky Notes app in Windows to just put sticky notes near the items you want to focus on.

Under windows vista, you can make Sticky Notes be always on top from the tools menu. For some reason under Windows 7, this option was removed, so you can use nircmd to fix it:

nircmd.exe win settopmost class Sticky_Notes_Top_Window 1
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the taskbar can be sorted on some of the newer OSes too, drag the thing to remember to the left. Without knowing the OS used the question is unfinished. – Psycogeek Oct 6 '11 at 1:48
I think he wants to remember the physical location on the screen rather than which app. Yeah, without OS it is guesswork. – Paul Oct 6 '11 at 2:11
The Sticky Notes app will work for this. Ideally, I'd like multiple blinking red dots! Thanks Paul. – Jim Oct 6 '11 at 3:00
Note that you can change the color of the notes, and you can increase the font-size with ctrl-> (I think). It might be enough to aim your attention in the right direction. If not, there are other "sticky notes" apps out there, perhaps you can find one that will let you add flashing text :) – Paul Oct 6 '11 at 3:56
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