Personally I’ve never felt quite at home in Word to write a story. Instead, I’ve always been using creative writing suites or pre-production packages.

That’s right, there is screenwriting software that’s specifically designed to help you formulate ideas and work in a simple, but flexible creative environment.

Celtx

I’ve written an article about yWriter in the past, a tool that would help you with outlining and working on your stories. A creative writing suite, if you will. Celtx is different. Oh sure, Celtx will be able to help you with your creative writing, but it’ll do so much more.

Celtx is screenwriting software that aims to aid in all media pre-production. So what does this mean? Whether you’re working on a novel, a film, a comic, a radio or podcast broadcasting, or even a video game, Celtx will help you put down those ideas and help you plan them in a quick and efficient manner.

With all types of features and support, you won’t have to jump over and through between five different screenwriting software applications anymore (if you even used any). Everything can be written, planned and colaborated from within Celtx.

Below we’ll take a look at some of the most prominent features in the application. Believe me, if you’re in the creative business, this is one application you’ll want to add to your arsenal.

Writing Suite

For the storytellers, Celtx comes equipped with the same basic tools you’d expect and a few more advanced ones as well. With a place to list your characters, locations and the like, you don’t have to worry about losing track again. When outlining a story, you can also use the storyboard feature you’ll be discussing below. One cooks with the ingredients at hand, and in our case there’s a buffet already laid out.

One of the most important aspects of Celtx – and its greatest features – is the ease with which one can embed other types of media. If you feel the need to add a picture, drawing or movie fragment to your work, or even an mp3, you can do so with a few clicks of the mouse. One of the reasons I prefer to use the Celtx screenwriting software sis that it doesn’t try to force you into certain ‘development roads’. You can use your own creative way to get at your destination.

In the writing category, Celtx comes with a few different editor flavors: Screenplay, stageplay,  AV scripts, audio play, comic book and text. It doesn’t matter in what branch you’re working, Celtx does not discriminate.

Storyboards

I have already mentioned the storyboards. Although you can indeed use them when you’re writing a novel, they’re much more commonly used in film production.

Create different sequences and easily add individual pictures and drawings, or even do a batch import. Label and narrate your pictures to create a detailed and intricate storyline. If you want, you can even specify the camera shot you intend to use.

Drag and drop groups of images to change the order of events. When you’re done (for the moment), print the pages or share them with your partners. If you want you can even play them in a full screen diashow.

Download Celtx for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux at Celtx

Believe me, this doesn’t even begin to describe what Celtx can do. I’ve been using a lot of software, but this is certainly one of the most amazing screenwriting software suites I’ve ever seen. If you’ve got something to add, or are left with an unanswered question, head for the comments section below.

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Today, I will continue with the article in a slightly different perspective and add four more entries to the list. Hopefully, they will prove to be of good use to bored teenagers with too much time on their hands. Again, these will all be things that can be done online.

5. Start a blog, Tumblelog or Twitter

In this time and age, I won’t be surprised if every teen has their personal blog or a Twitter account. If you don’t, sign up for one. Start a blog, Tumblelog or Twitter account and use it as an emotional and creative outlet. Start by jotting down how you feel, what you’ve done, what you’re looking forward to. Think of it as a diary for the world to read.

Personally, I prefer a Tumblr account to a Blogger or Wordpress blog. It’s much easier to set up and is perfectly suited for those with very short attention spans who couldn’t be bothered to compose full-length posts all the time. Tumblelogs allow its users to upload short blips of text, photos, links and quotes quickly and easily. However, don’t feel restricted — this doesn’t mean that you can’t try your hand at a short story or other works of the written word. Let your creativity flow. Who knows, blogging could just be your sally forth into professional writing or journalism.

6. Read

“The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read.” — Benjamin Franklin.

Reading is, without a doubt, one of the most rewarding past times. Why waste a perfectly good chance to get some reading done? There are an abundance of sites which provide you access to free ebooks, both fictional and non-fictional. The most widely known one is probably Project Gutenberg – a collection of over 30,000 free ebooks in over 50 languages. They also serve up audiobooks (either human-read or computer generated) and loads of other stuff. Their site is massive and navigating around can get pretty messy. Start by checking out their Top 100 books or the ones which were most recently added.

Our next candidate spreads its wings over more than just fictional work. ibiblio is the fruit of collaborative efforts between two departments at the University of North Carolina. The result – one of the Internet’s largest collections of software, literature, music, art, science, politics, and cultural studies.

Munseys is where you should go if you’re looking for a good read. Most of their 20,000 books are off-mainstream titles and are available in 10 different formats including PDF, Plucker, iSilo, Kindle and MS-reader.

7. Get an online job

Probably one of the best ways to spend your time online is to make some money while you’re at it. Be aware, there are currently a lot of scams going on that require you to sign up for a membership before given a chance to work. Personally, I’m very skeptical and prefer not to part with my money before I can earn any.

Thankfully, there are some safer job alternatives. If you have a good grasp of the English language, you can easily earn a buck working online. Ryan Dube shared some of his suggestions, which include working as a freelance writer and getting paid to review movies.

Or if you prefer (or think that you spend too much time online anyway), you could spend some time looking for a part-time job. Interacting with others in the workplace will teach you to harness the essential communication and public relations skills required after you graduate and step forth into the job market. Furthermore, work trains you to be responsible and to adopt proper time and money management.

Having several previous jobs listed in your CV with good references will certainly impress your future employer and provide you with an advantage among your potential colleagues.

If the idea of holding a job sounds attractive to you, we’ll go on step further and point you in the right direction. Charnita described 8 sites to hunt for the job you want, provided you already roughly know what you want to do. In another article, Ryan listed 10 more sites to help you with your job search. You shouldn’t have trouble looking for a job with all those resources!

Or, closer to home, MakeUseOf is always hiring.

8. Plan Your Career

Before graduating from high school, you should already have an idea about your job choices. If you still haven’t made up your mind about your future profession, you should start now. What exactly does an editor do? What qualifications are required to pursue a career in fashion? What makes a great CV?

There are several great websites that will guide you while you’re making these tough decisions.

CareerAdvice springs straight to mind. This UK-based website details everything you need to know when making career decisions i.e. what the job involves, what qualifications and experiences employers look for, working hours and of course, the expected salary. It’s a fantastic place for teens to spend their free time, researching on the types of work they’re interested in. It also shares valuable advice on nailing an interview and how to come up with an impressive CV.

Another great site is the Occupational Outlook Handbook by the US Department of Labor. The handbook is basically a collection of every known profession in the United States, with detailed descriptions about the job nature, work environment, required qualifications, earnings and employment rates.

The last career-related website that I’d like to feature is CareerOneStop. As the name implies, it is a one-stop resource for information about the different types of jobs in the US, sub-categorised by states. On top of offering CV and interview advice, the site also features the hottest jobs, jobs with the most openings as well as the highest paying jobs in the country.

That wraps up my post and the top 8 things for bored teenagers to do online. I hope that you’ve enjoyed the article and got an idea or two on how to spend your free time online. As a wise man once said, “Lost time is never found again.” Make full use of the time you have today!

Image credit: SAMAEL TRIP

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Thankfully there is a solution where you can publish your own book, or sell it in a bookshop. The best thing is, you don’t even have to spend a cent. And here’s how.

Lulu.com allows you to sell your book in bookshops, online and allow buyers to purchase printed copies in a simple 5-step process. If you have created eBooks before, this is a service that you must use. You easily and cheaply get your book published in a printed format with its own ISBN number.

Before you start, it is a good idea to already have an eBook created. It is also advised that you thoroughly check it and make sure it has been proofread and edited. If in the future you do find mistakes, you can easily add a revision to the published book.

So lets publish our own first book. The first step is to select whether or not you want to have a hard cover and a paperback. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but it is your book, so I’ll let you decide which option you want to take.

Once you have selected your type, you can now enter the title of the book. Remember that you can change the title later if you haven’t thought of one yet. Next, select how you want your book to be distributed. If you want your book to have an ISBN and sold in shops and online bookstores, choose the last option. With this, you may have to purchase a Distribution Package. This can cost around $75. If you don’t want any of these services, and have your book promoted to a global network, you can choose just to sell it on the Lulu Marketplace.

The next step is to choose the size, binding, and colour of your book. It also gives you the manufacturing cost and this will be deducted from the total sale price of the book when it is sold in print. You may also want to check out the Book Pricing page which tells you how much cost is taken out of the book when someone purchases it.

If you have chosen to get an ISBN for your book, you can then choose one of the preferred options.

The next step is to upload the electronic version of your book. Simply click on browse and upload your file. Remember to ensure that your file does not have a cover page on it as this will be created later. Your upload may not be accepted by Lulu as well. Make sure it is in a format that they accept and the font the text is in is acceptable as well.

Now, the fun part – creating a cover for our book. There is a simple wizard that you can use to make the front cover and the back cover of the book. You can add images, write a blurb, change the theme or change the layout to the many different that options Lulu offer. Make sure you have a look at all the themes and layouts and choose one that you like.

Now that our book is complete and we have a front cover, it is time to give our book a description, put it in a category, give it some keywords and add a license to it. This is to ensure people can find it on the Lulu Marketplace, or other locations where it may be viewed (such as Google Books)

Since our book is ready to be published, the next step is to set a price. I have decided I want to make $10 profit from this book. If you want to offer a downloadable version of the book, make sure you select the option. When setting your price, decide between your acceptable profit margin and readership. So it may be worthwhile to have a lower price and allow more people to buy it. This can benefit you in a number of ways. Firstly, the more people that buy your book, the more publicity and exposure it receives. Secondly, people have a higher chance of buying the book at a lower price which means more sales and effectively making up the difference in price if you would have set a high price.

We are now done. All you have to do is to review your book, and to make sure that all the information is correct. Once done, click Save and Finish.

Congratulations. You have now published your first book. All you have to do is promote it and watch the royalties role in. A good way to promote something is on a blog. So if you want to learn Java Programming, why don’t you have a look at my published book on Lulu.com?

Have any of you, MakeUseOf readers published a book? Here’s your chance to share it.

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If you haven’t guessed from the quote above, this article is about writing a novel. Well, more specifically it’s about the great website that is going to help thousands of budding and accomplished writers write a novel in 30 days; including yours truly.

I first came upon this website when talking to a professional writer in an online forum. He mentioned it in passing so I looked it up. Basically, National Novel Writing Month (or www.nanowrimo.org) is an organization set up with the intent of liberating that novel inside all of us. The site, which is what I’ll be discussing below, is set up like a social network for participants to get you writing by way of support, advice and of course, competition.

Signing up is free and lands you with your very own profile page for the site. You can see mine here in the screenshot. Seeing as the whole purpose to this site is for the community and connections between the participants, you’re encouraged to customize yours to the fullest extent. The basics like uploading a profile photo, a short bio and links to your blogs and sites are all catered for but then the reality of what you’re taking on is also gently nudged in there.

Right across the top of your profile page there is a word count bar that stares at you mockingly, willing you on. Obviously mine and everyone else’s reads zero because the competition doesn’t start until the 1st of November. Once that date comes you’re expected to write at least 50,000 words, a novel, in 30 days. There is also a counter on the homepage that will start clocking up the words as soon as the competition starts. It combines all of the participants submissions and is sure to rise into the billions.

The ‘novel Info’ tab on you profile is where you give a brief summary or ‘blurb’ as they’re known about what you intend to write. Then there’s the ‘Writing Buddies’ section which is the equivalent of ‘Friends’ on every other social network – I suspect seeing who can gather the most buddies will become a sideline contest as it is with every other network.

Probably my favourite part of the site is the procrastination station which will attract every writer because it’s the biggest universal problem when you’re sitting in a dingy home office with a spinning chair that seems much more entertaining than a 50,000 word target. There are some cool finds such as the 2009 NaNoWriMo Wallpaper that you can see in the screenshot above, which is aimed at keeping you on track. The procrastination station also contains some other ‘help’ sections such as ‘Self-Pity and Optimism’ and ‘Last Minute Motivation’ – which act as a kind of a therapist for the struggling writer. Better than the old cliché; whisky.

They also organize events and get-togethers such as the Write-a-thon fundraiser where you raise $200 and get four tickets for yourself and other writers to attend a gigantic writing frenzy in San Francisco for six hours.

Undoubtedly, the best part is the community forums pictured above. It’s full of all sorts such as professional writers, right down to the average person who wants a challenge. They help you with motivation and give tips to first time participants who may find the going tough. However, the part of the community which I’m finding useful as I research my idea for a novel is the vast amount of knowledge on the site; especially when it comes to practical questions.

For example, I saw a question from a writer about how a foreign national would go about obtaining a British passport illegally in Russia. Obviously this was to make his/her book more real. The writer was flooded with answers and tips within an hour or two – cutting out days or even weeks of research. Indeed, the site will prove a lot more useful than those useless WikiHow articles that we’ve all looked at in utter disappointment.

For anyone who has always wanted to unleash that novel that’s inside them then I suggest giving NaNoWriMo.org a go. As for me, I guess the challenge will be even more difficult as I plan to keep a regular blog on my website before, during and after the 30 day challenge. I’m chomping at the bit to get going. Let the “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon” begin!

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• store notes and web pages from my research stage for offline view.
• quickly create a to-do list and alarms out of assignments and tasks, and be able to be synchronized to iCal (then to my mobile) so I’ll always get reminders wherever I am.
• access my email easily.
• track and record my writing assignments and submissions.
• post to blogs and also serve as a word processor – both in WYSIWYG and HTML view.
• show the word count for each of my submissions.

The most important thing is the whole features should come free and in one package (as I’m a bit tired switching back and forth between applications).

Then I remembered about Firefox – the browser that can be transformed into almost anything that we want it to be, and wondered whether I can expand it to be THE writing tool I’m looking for.

The Hunt for the Add-ons

Everybody knows that one of the greatest things about Firefox is the wide range of add-ons available. What I did was search for the right writing addons for Firefox with the right features. I found too many options so I have to be super selective.

And the winners are:

1. Scrapbook –> This is the first writing addon for Firefox on my list. Scrapbook is like a storage house for all of your research materials. You can easily send any web page to be archived inside Scrapbook, either by dragging and dropping it into the Scrapbook sidebar (Option + K)

   

   or by right clicking on the page and choose “Capture Page”.

   

   Add folders, sub-folders, notes, and organize them to your heart’s content by dragging and dropping. I could go on forever as I really love this tool, but there are still a lot to cover so I’ll just link you to our previous coverage on this nifty tool.

2. Scribefire –> Since most of my writing assignments are in the virtual world and need me to be familiar with HTML, I think I’ll just use this powerful blogging add-on to also serve as a WYSIWYG word processor. Scribefire allows its users to easily switch between rich-text and source editing.

   

   To get a clearer picture on what this baby can do, check out the comparison between Scribefire and Deepest Sender.

3. Extended Copy Menu and QuoteURLText –> Sometimes you run into texts that need to be handled with more than just standard “Copy” feature.

   

   These two add-ons provide Firefox users with the ability to go beyond that. Extended Copy Menu enables users to copy the selected text as plain text or HTML, while QuoteURLText will include Page Title, Location and copy date to the copied texts to be used as perfect quotes.

4. Word Count Plus –> Another common thing about writing assignments besides time limits – a.k.a deadly deadlines – is dimension limit or more popularly known as word count. If you have to count your writing word by word, believe me, whatever reward you’ll get won’t be worth the hassle . Imagine J.K Rowling counting the words in her books.  Scribefire is a writing addon for Firefox that has its own word count tool (right click –> View –> Word Count), but for other content – like website text – there’s Word Count Plus.

   

   To use it, just right click on the selected text and choose count words.

5. PageZipper –> How many times have you encountered an article that spans to several pages? Some are so long that it can be turned into a book. Clicking “Next Page” once or twice is still bearable, but if the number goes into more than ten and you have to do it on so many articles, you’d better use PageZipper.

   

   This add-on will combine all the next pages into one and saves you the click. (please note that not all webpages are compatible with this tool) But the usage goes beyond that: if you’ve archived the combined pages using Scrapbook and done a light editing with Scrapbook’s tool – like Highlighter, Annotation and DOM Eraser – you’ll have a tidy document ready to be printed.  See here for T.J’s in-depth look at PageZipper.

6. Toodledo –> This is the add-on version of the online service with the same name. I chose this one among tons of to-do list tools because this one can easily synchronize with iCal and GCal. It means that there’s no way that I can escape from all of my writing assignments.

   

   Another reason is that adding a new task to Toodledo from Firefox is a snap, just hit Command + Option + A (Mac) or Control + Option + A (Windows/Linux) (or use the “Tools –> Toodledo –> Add task” menu). If you are curious, you can read more about Toodledo.

7. Evernote –> If there was no 40 MB limitation on the online storage, this extraordinary service would be my choice of the ultimate writing tool. I filled up Evernote’s limit in less than a week, while my Scrapbook size has already passed 100 MB size and still growing. But that doesn’t mean that I would waste all of the great features. Evernote is a great tool to add, edit and share notes (text, voice, pictures) from any devices that you have from wherever you are.

   

   My sudden muses will never go down the toilet again, I just make quick notes with Evernote, and then manage them all at home – make copies to Scrapbook and delete the originals from Evernote.

All in all, these writing addons for Firefox are the nearest thing to a perfect writing suite for me. But each person has his/her own preferences, so my choices could be different from yours.

Share your favorite writing-related add-ons using the comments below. If you know of another tool that could replace these combinations, you are welcome to share.

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Few of us have the skills to create our own fonts. Fortunately, there are tons of free text fonts available on sites like DaFont, FFonts, 1001 Free Fonts or Fontex. Once you have downloaded your favorites, you’ll need to figure out how to install those fonts. Here’s a basic guide on how to install fonts on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Please uncompress / unzip all fonts before trying to install them, preferably into a separate folder. If you select a manual installation process, you can unzip files right into the respective font folder. Make sure you delete eventually included text files, which don’t belong into this folder.

Windows

Supported fonts:

• TrueType
• OpenType
• PostScript type 1 (requires Adobe Type Manager (ATM) or ATM Deluxe; comes with Windows XP and up)
• Windows bit mapped FON

Installation process under XP:

• Close all applications.
• Select font files and copy them into C:\Windows\Fonts folder.

Alternative installation process under XP:

• Close all applications.
• Go to > Start Menu > Control Panel (> Appearance and Themes) > Fonts.
• From the > Fonts folder menu open > File > Install a new font…
• Browse for your fonts and click > OK to install.

Installation process under Vista and 7:

• Close all applications.
• Right-click font files to be installed.
• A menu will pop up, select > Install.

Alternative installation process under Vista and 7:

• Close all applications.
• Go to > Start Menu > Control Panel (> Appearance and Personalization) > Fonts.
• Right-click into the list of fonts and select > Install a new font… from the menu.
• Browse for your fonts and click > OK to install.

Ubuntu Linux

Supported fonts:

• TrueType
• OpenType

Installation process to install for single user:

• Close all applications.
• Open > /home folder.
• In the menu open > View and > Show Hidden Files.
• You will now see the > .fonts folder. If not, create that folder.
• Copy font files into the > .fonts folder.

Installation process to install for all users:

• Close all applications.
• Save fonts in a separate folder on > Desktop, e.g. > newfonts.
• Open > terminal and start command > sudo cp -R ~/Desktop/newfonts /usr/share/fonts
• Optional: rebuild font cache with command > sudo fc-cache -f -v

Damian has written a thorough post on How To Install Microsoft Text Fonts in Ubuntu Linux.

Mac OS X

Supported fonts:

• Multiple Master (OS 10.2+)
• TrueType
• data fork TrueType (DFont; OS X+)
• OpenType
• PostScript type 1 (requires ATM or ATM Deluxe; comes with OS X)

Installation process under Mac OS X:

• Close all applications.
• Open folder that contains fonts to install.
• Select fonts to be installed.
• Drag and drop the selected font files into the > Library’s Font folder.

Installation process under Mac OS 10.3+ using FontBook:

• Close all applications.
• Open folder that contains fonts to install.
• Double-click icon of font to be installed.
• FontBook opens and you can preview the font.
• To install only for you, click > Install Font button.
• To install for all users, select > Preferences and change > Default Install Location from > User to > Computer, then click > Install Font button.

Troubleshooting

I hope the above guide was thorough enough, but you may still run into problems. Just in case, here are possible solutions to some of the most common issues.

Fonts don’t show in program.

• Make sure you installed a supported font format.
• Exit all programs before installing new fonts.
• Restart programs after installing new fonts.
• If restarting the program fails, reboot operating system.
• Were the fonts installed into the correct folders?

Issues with displaying or printing text.

• Mac: To properly view and print PostScritp type 1 fonts, ATM is required.
• PostScript type 1 fonts consist of two files: PFB (printer font binary) and PFM (printer font metrics). Both need to be installed in order for these fonts to display correctly both on screen and in print.

Fonts not available to applications running in Classic mode (Mac).

• Install fonts in Macintosh TrueType or Macintosh PostScript into the fonts folder inside classic system folder.

Font only available to user who installed it (Mac, Linux).

• Mac: Make sure fonts were installed into the system library font folder, instead of /Users/username/Library/Fonts.
• Linux: Make sure fonts were installed into system folder. See instructions for details, eventually repeat the process.

Now that you know how to install new fonts, are you asking yourself where to find them? Mark has written a post about 5 Excellent Sources To Download Free Text Fonts. If you’re creative you can even create your own fonts. Saikat has a post about How To Create Your Own Fonts & Characters on Windows and Kabir wrote about 2 Free Tools To Make Your Own Text Fonts, which will also work for Linux and Mac.

What’s your favorite font or typeface?

Image credits: nookiez

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“Wow, self published, eh? That’s got to be expensive. I looked into it a while back.”

“No, not really. I found a publishing house that published it for free, and just takes a portion of the sales.”

“Really? That’s awesome! Who does that?”

“PublishAmerica.com. Here’s my card with the address on it.”

So I bought the book. It was awesome! Best pirate book I’ve read since Treasure Island. Okay, it’s the only pirate book I’ve read since Treasure Island, but I still recommend it.

I walked away with dreams of publishing that one book that someone said resides in all of us. PublishAmerica, you must be too good to be true. How can it be possible to publish your own book for free? But then I went to the site.

Here’s what I found…

You write your book. You e-mail or mail it in to PublishAmerica. They review it for quality and grammar and see if it will garner some sort of market. If that’s all good, they’ll talk to you about a contract. You sign the contract. They design a cover for the book. They market the book on their website and to different booksellers such as Barnes and Noble, Ingram, Borders.com and others. They also give you some advice on promoting the book yourself.

Your book sells and they send you royalty payments. No, really, that’s it! All of that and more for free,  while you retain complete control over their intellectual property and rights to it, for say, movie deals or what have you.

“But Guy, I can get my book vanity published or hire an agent to take care of that? Isn’t that easier?” you ask with smugness dripping from your disdainful face.

Well, vanity publishing costs a lot of money and unless you are a superstar marketer with a genuine bestseller on your hands, your odds of recouping what you paid to self-publish are pretty slim indeed. You have to take care of getting your own ISBN, or copyrighting the book as well as the cover design and art work. Or you can pay the vanity publisher more to do that for you.

If you choose the literary agent route, then you’re looking at trying to find an agent who will take on an unknown author, and will actually work hard to get you published. Then they take a slice of what you make on the book, on top of everyone else traditionally involved in publishing taking their slice. That might work out if you sell 4 million books, yet the odds are slim on that as well.

“Okay, Guy,” you inquire with some trepidation and eagerness, “so what’s the downside?”

Well, I don’t know exactly what the percentage is for royalties. They also do not accept manuscripts from outside Canada or the United States of America. Oh, and they don’t accept books in the genres of coffee table books, screenplays/scripts/movies, theses, text-books, gift books, or books of quotes.

While they don’t publish every manuscript that comes to them, they do take more risks than other traditional publishing houses. They have published over 40,000 authors since 1996. Some of those authors have gone on to make writing their career, have movie deals and receive some pretty significant critical praise.

Really, in the years that I’ve spent trying to find a way to publish that great Canadian novel I have in my desk drawer, this is by far the simplest and least expensive route that I have found.

Have you self-published a book? Do you know of any other publishing houses like PublishAmerica? I’d love to read about it in the comments. Put your literary skills to good use and leave us a note.

Don’t think your writing is good enough? Then check out 7 Online Resources To Help Improve Your Writing.

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Many writers prefer a simple text editor sans the frills. Something like a Notepad or writing tools which are generically called ‘minimalist text editors’. I relate them to a horse’s blinker. They serve their utility in that they cut off all distraction between the writer’s eye and his words on the screen.

I wrote my first sentences on MS Word and have always liked its power. Even with all its options, maybe one could make it ape a ‘minimalist text editor’.

The idea…

The idea then, is to simulate a minimalist text editor like Darkroom with a black background, a contrasting font color and an ‘easy on the eyes’ font face. To get the complete real estate for writing and to do away with the distractions, its full-screen view minus MS Word 2007’s ribbon and the Windows Taskbar. But, with the spellchecker and the mini-formatting toolbar remaining in action.

The hack…

1. Start up MS Word 2007. Create a blank document from Office button – New – Blank Document.
2. Change the layout of the page to Web Layout. This can be done from View – Web Layout. Alternatively, from the layout buttons located on the bottom right of Word’s status bar.
3. Set the page color to black for one part of the high contrast effect. Click on Page Layout – Page Color.
4. The other part involves setting up a high contrast font. On the Home tab select the Normal style. Right click and choose Modify…
5. In the Modify Style box, change the font face to Lucida Console and the font color to green (or any other cool color you are comfortable with). You can also set other options like spacing and indents.
6. Save as a Word Template from the Office button – Save As – Word Template.

To view our template in full screen now, we have to follow two steps:

1. Click the Office Button – Word Options – Customize. Select Commands Not in the Ribbon from the drop-down on the left. Scroll down the alphabetical list to select Toggle Full Screen View, and click the Add button to include it in the Customize Quick Access Toolbar column on the right.

   The Quick Access Toolbar is the small set of icons you see just above the Office ribbon next to the Office Button.

   

2. The Windows taskbar is now the only leftover against a full screen view. Right click on the Windows taskbar – click Properties – select Auto-hide the taskbar. The Windows taskbar remains offscreen unless we move the mouse near the bottom edge of the screen.

That’s it! When you want to write in your own ‘darkroom’, just click on the template, switch on the full screen view from the Quick Access toolbar and tap into your creativity. [To exit full screen view, press the Esc key on your keyboard.]

There are simple ways to do some things for which we often rely on additional downloads. I hope this is one of them. Put on your writer’s cap and try out your new writing canvas. And of course, type in your comments or suggestions.

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Here are ten amongst the many we can turn to for quick reading.

Thinkexist

I have met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you’re twenty minutes – Oscar Wilde

A compilation of 300,000 quotations by over 20,000 authors should be enough to last a lifetime. The quotations are arranged around tabbed Quotations (which give the top user rated quotations), Authors, Topics, Keywords (an alphabetical index) and a Contributors listing. Thinkexist has a search box which lets the user search by a word. Though a user needs to do a free registration to go beyond the first four pages.

You can suggest a revision, send a quote as an e-card, comment on a quotation or bookmark it. Thinkexist quotations can also be added to a website/blog through a copy-pasted HTML code. Get a daily quote in your email for free or get one printed on your T-shirt at a cost at the online store. Thinkexist takes the power of sayings quite seriously.

Quotes.net

I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse – from The Godfather

Could a website on quotations be named anything else? The site lists thousands of quotations which can be browsed, searched, heard and translated to several languages. A user can search quotes by Author, by Subject or from Movies.

A small pointer at the end of each quote takes it to its individual page where one can click the voice icon to hear it aloud, translate it through a dropdown, rate it or add it to your bibliography. Even though not all the translations are word perfect, this is a nice feature.

Quotations Book

Keep true to the dreams of your youth – Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

A very neat website with a community feel. Search for a quotation or pick it up by People or Tags. You can send it across to friends or discuss it at the website forum (quaintly called the Village Inn).

QOTD (Quotes of The Day) can be added at numerous places – websites, blogs, Facebook, Windows Vista Sidebar, Pageflakes, iGoogle, Netvibes and even as a plug-in on Skype. And of course, you can get it by daily email and feeds too.

Famous Quotes and Authors

The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow – H. G. Wells

25,000 quotations from 6,700 sages is a large resource and all that is neatly arranged around the usual Topic, Author and Most Popular. If a website only has to be about the sayings of the wise and famous then this is it. But I wish they had a QOTD mailing list.

Litquotes

All things are ready, if our minds be so – William Shakespeare

Quotations gleaned from the great works of literature. Although Litquotes does not have a huge collection yet (about 1,900), its focus on literary quotations arranged around Topics, Book Titles and Authors gives us some gems.

The website also has a gift shop though for now it seems a bit limited in range.

Quotes Daddy

If you can’t convince them, confuse them – Harry S Truman

Another Web 2.0 site with a warm interface, it features over 1,000,000 quotations. It lets you add, share and even create your own quotes. The service is enhanced by customizable widgets and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) which can be added to blogs and websites.

The one feature you might like to try out immediately is the random Gmail signature quote which inserts a quote as a Gmail signature using the Quotes Daddy feed.

Quotiki

Ah, beer. So many choices, and it makes so little difference – Bender Bending Rodriguez

Quotiki is a Wiki for quotations. And just like any Wiki you can submit, edit, rate and collate quotes.

As of date, the Wiki shows a collection of 1,300+ quotes and rising. The site is typically simplistic with a search box and tabs which allows you to find quotes by Sources, People, Tag and Users.

Quotes4all

When women go wrong, men go right after them – Mae West

Surprisingly, this site does not announce itself by its name on the landing page. There’s just a random quote and the author photo. Quotations can be narrowed down by Authors, Topics, Voting or a Random choice. There is an Animation section which simply are Java applets displaying scrolling quotes.

The one feature I find handy is in the Preferences section – I can filter the quotes by size (small, medium or large). You can opt for a mailing list to get a QOTD and also use the Tools section to integrate quotations with your site, iMac dashboard or the iGoogle page.

Quotegasm

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead – Benjamin Franklin

A user-powered quotations site with a very simple but easygoing interface. Still at a nascent stage, it is advertised as the YouTube for quotes as it lets users put in new quote, edit existing quotes as well as rate, review, share, categorize, and bookmark quotes. That means you have to register which is a five second process.

Quotag

At Google, we have a saying: launch early and iterate – Google

This web service is not a straight out quotations site. It is in fact a service which allows us to ‘save, manage and share the most remarkable quotes people find while browsing the net.’ A simple bookmarklet allows us to mark the text in the browser, add tags and include it in our Quotag account for sharing. All user harvested quotes can be read by the tags. One can login to the site using a Google account. iPhone users have it good as they can import the quotations and read them on the device.

These 10 websites should be more than enough to give us a glut of great quotes.  Or do you know of any other good quotation websites? If so then speak out in the comments below.

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I, for one, used to put my words down in Microsoft Word, although I never quite thought it to be the ultimate tool for the job.

These days, where programs can be found for every thinkable task, a dedicated creative writing application ought to exist, whether for writing out a script for the local play, or your next novel.

When I went looking for these applications, several candidates popped up, but there’s only one that I still use today.

yWriter

yWriter is one of those applications and perhaps the most fitted tool for the job if you aim to write a story. Besides throwing down the words, yWriter also assists in other creative writing necessities, such as keeping a close eye on basic plot – and character development, amongst others.

As you can view in the above screenshot, every Project is defined by several Chapters. These chapters are then divided into several Scenes.

Extra information can be added to both Chapters and Scenes, as notations, and some information is generated automatically, such as a basic character and location overview.

The application features a rich text editor to write down the scenes. Though it might not have the looks of say, Office 2007, it features all the tools needed and more.

The interface offers options for easy highlighting and annotating your text, and lets you define your scene more specifically by choosing characters and viewpoints, scene importance, location, pictures, and even time and duration.

Note that the character viewpoints are specified per scene.

Adding a character, and filling out the details is pretty easy. Extended as well, as they can be divided into major and minor characters, and provided with a biography, notes, goals and a picture or concept drawing.

StoryBoard

In StoryBoard mode, you can view and arrange the different chapters and their meanings, to shine some light on the overall plot development and to keep a clear view of where you’re going.

The interface is pretty simple, and thus also somewhat limited. A short note can be assigned to each scene, which are arranged according to the different viewpoints. To quickly change your story outline, you can drag and drop these scenes, and hereby alter their order and viewpoint.

Note that these StoryBoards don’t take on the whole story, but only separate scenes.

Daily Word Count

There are several other tools integrated in yWriter, but the one I probably like most is Daily Word Count.

This nifty tool allows you to set yourself a word count objective, and a set date to reach it. Word Count Target will then keep an eye on the progress, showing you how much you’ve achieved at the moment, and what lies ahead still.

Do you see the little Update button in the screenshot above? If you aim to write say, 800 words each time, you can use that button to reset your word count.

I certainly hope this application will prove as useful to some of you as it did to me. Feel free to share your opinion on this program or possible alternatives in the comments below, and don’t be afraid to show off with what you’re writing!

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Listen to the podcast for some more information and insight than what’s available in our quick reviews.

This podcast is available through iTunes so don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast if you have an iPod, or in another podcatcher if you have a different MP3 player.

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One way to get your message across in a more effective manner is just to simplify what you’re trying to say. Cut the jargon, use simpler words, and you’ll be surprised how much more receptive your audience or readers may be. This is often simpler said than done, and for that reason I introduce to you… one of my favorite pieces of writing freeware – Bullfighter.

Bullfighter was released in 2003 by Deloitte Consulting, to help with better writing but has since been released for free to the public. What it is really, is a Microsoft Office add-in for Word and Powerpoint which will analyze your work, tell you how complex it is, and potentially help you simplify and make it better.

For example, after I had recently finished a report, I ran the Bullfighter add-in which then analyzed my work and confirmed that my document had no jargon (bull-free).  In case you’re wondering – yes you can add your own jargon to the list of words Bullfighter will mark down as ‘bull’, so its really quite flexible in that respect.

Bullfighter also analyses sentence length, and syllables per word to help ensure waffling is minimized.  On top of that, it also gives you something called the Flesch score. This famous test was designed in the 1960’s and is still relevant today, and is used to indicate comprehension difficulty when reading a passage of English. Higher scores indicate material that is easier to read; lower numbers mark “more difficult to read” passages.

• Where a score of 90–100 means that it is easily understandable by an average 11-year old student
• 60–70 would easily be understandable by 13- to 15-year old students
• and 0–30 would be best understood by college graduates

To give you an idea of what that means, according to Wikipedia:

Reader’s Digest magazine has a readability index of about 65, Time magazine scores about 52, and the Harvard Law Review has a general readability score in the low 30’s.

So as you can see, a low score doesn’t necessarily mean a bad score – it just means that it’s better understood by a wider audience, which in most cases – is a good thing.

Finally, Bullfighter also comes with a nifty online tool called the ‘Mystery Matador’ which helps you to analyze and anonymously send scores by email to some of your friends or colleagues who just love to ramble on and on. All you need to do is copy and paste their letter or any other document text in the mystery matador. Bullfighter will measure the jargon and verbosity, and send an email with a link to their score for free.

Do you use other cool writing tools? Would love to hear your thoughts!

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For those who have come in late, Google Alerts is nothing but ‘email updates’ (and now RSS feeds too!) of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. It distills the results from the first 20 or so pages of its search engine results and sends you the alert. It simply allows us to automate our search, setting it just once instead of doing it every day.

For a freelancer, Google Alerts can become a homing missile in his or her arsenal. So here are some ways I use the service to save me lots of time and the dimes on my caffeine.

(1) Walk around the writer’s block – Get fresh ideas to write on.

The obvious…but for us keyboard tappers, Google Alerts are a fountain of fresh topics to write on. Simply, set up an alert on your area of interest and let the breaking news trickle (sometimes it’s a deluge) into your mail box.



(2) Be in step with your niche – Get the news delivered to your inbox.

A fine-tuned alert updates us on what’s happening where. New beta announcements, new software launches, new posts get indexed by the search spider and Google sends out the alert. For instance, set up a Google news alert with this – Windows source:cnet (delivers Windows related news from CNET.com).

(3) Become a cyber paparazzi – Become an ardent follower.

We all have our favorite blogrolls, our favorite authors or we just want to slaver over Brangelina. A specific keyword in the search query box allows us to note when and where any relevant snippet gets published. Follow them around on blogs, news websites and even on Twitter. For instance I follow some of my favourite blog authors through the blogosphere with this simple query – inpostauthor:Seth Godin [Alert Type: Blogs]

(4) Use it as a job scout – Go where ‘no freelancer has gone before’.

Life for a freelancer often means a 24×7 job hunt.  Jump ahead of the queue with just-in-time alerts. It could easily be on an obscure site not on your feed list. Sometimes major events in a company could signal an opportunity for the freelancer. Especially during a recession when a company looks to retrench its rolls with outsourced work. Seek, prepare and apply. Google Alerts is a powerful tool if set up with your skills matched to your niche.

(5) Proof the future – Prepare a job directory.

I try to take my job hunt a bit further by using the job postings as a future source of reference. Keeping a list of sites where jobs usually crop up means I have a prepared database to bank on when my well runs dry. Bookmark them, tag them, or put them on an Excel file or just a notebook. A ready list saves time and hassle.

(6) Climb up the SERP – Do your own SEO.

Page rankings revolve around keywords. Bring out your own list of keywords and see which sites rank near the top for those phrases. A look at the content of those websites will help you not only give you knowledge but also a bunch of other keywords to use. This is a precursor to the next activity.

(7) Be with the crowd – Take your work to the community.

A visit for information is just so casual. We can increase the interactivity with our niche by using the power of comments. A well thought out (polite, please!) comment with a backlink/trackback/linkback to your own article/blog helps to build a community on the web. Using something like Trailfire helps to find relevant forums where you can contribute. Make sure they allow linking. Such peer to peer communication not only brings in additional information to a post but also helps to generate traffic.

(8) Spot the spotter – Know when Google finds you.

When you are delivering content like there’s no tomorrow and like to know when Google indexes the page (and how popular you just became), Google Alert notifications enable instantaneous tracking. Use a unique line of text from a page as a Google Alert search term.

(9) Do some ego-googling – Manage your reputation.

On the web everything is permanent. Both positive feedback and acerbic comments. Use Google Alerts to see where your name crops up or if someone links to your blog. Somethings deserve a thank you…but I wouldn’t tell you what to do with an acidic barb. It also helps to keep tabs on your profile by removing long forgotten mentions on other websites. And just for fun see if there’s a personality clash with Googlegangers (namesakes)!



(10) Catch the copycats – Defeating plagiarism.

Copyscape is good but add Google Alerts to it. Make up some unique phrase or keyword combination. Put it somewhere in the article (preferably, towards the end)…and wait for the fly to catch.

Some Tips to Manage Google Alerts –

* Get friendly with Google search queries. There are specialized search queries for news and blogs too. For instance, Blog search has specialized queries like – [inblogtitle:], [inposttitle:], [inpostauthor:], [blogurl:]

* Alternatively, you can use the Advanced Search in Google Search to create a search parameter and copy it to your alert.

* Google has introduced RSS Feeds option to deliver alert results. It is a more compact option to the earlier email only option.

* If email is the choice choose HTML mails. You are always a click away from the source.

* Get accurate results by putting quotes around your search terms.

* Choose ‘Comprehensive’ as Google Alert Type for getting results across the web, news, blogs and groups.

* Choosing ‘once a week’ in the ‘How Often’ dropdown prevents clutter in your mailbox or feed reader.

Old world searching is passé`. It’s time to sit back and let the results come in on their own.

How do you use Google Alerts? Maybe a tip from you could add another to those mentioned.

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First of all, remember that like any job, blogging requires your time and talent. It can be really tough and it can also be really rewarding. There are a few prerequisites you need to have in place before beginning even a small freelance writing job on the blogosphere:

• Do you enjoy writing? Can you say what you want to say in a reasonable number of words?
• Do you have a voice? Do you have a distinctive writing style? If your writing sounds like a press-release, you might want to experiment with new types of writing.
• Can you get yourself to write regularly? If you’re not sure, try making a blog on Blogger or Wordpress and play around with regular posting.

In fact, this last point outlines how I started out in the freelancing world. The best resume is experience and a personal blog can be a testament to that experience. Long ago, I ran a personal blog that was more or less commentary on the things I did in my everyday life. Exactly 5 people in the world actually read that blog. If you want your own blog to have a little wider reach and even serve you in getting a future job, you’ll need to make the content a little more compelling.

The change came for me well over a year ago when I began to blog in earnest about technology news. At the time, I was doing it in collaboration with my university’s news website and I even had an editor to nag me. Contrary to what you might think, editors can be wonderful people. While some of them can be penny-pinching blog owners, most just want to help you produce the best content you possibly can. Anyway, after a year of forcing myself to go out and find new and interesting things to write about, I had a pretty stable blog.

Regardless of whether you do this last bit, once you have the prerequisites, you’re ready to start job hunting. Where should you go? Well now I’m going to share with you my top four favorite places to find blogger jobs (keep them in your RSS reader). 80% of the blogging opportunities I have had came from these sources:

(1) Simply Hired: Blogger Jobs – A general job aggregator that probably won’t get you many decent opportunities, but sometimes wacky stuff pops up.

(2) ProBlogger Job Board – Slightly better than Simply Hired, but often they have the same kinds of opportunities. Even so, the clientele is usually slightly more blog-oriented.

(3) Freelance Switch – Often has a number of good opportunities but the site is pay-oriented. To get the contact info you usually need to pay. Fortunately many employers list their link in the ad and you can simply use the contact form.

(4) BloggerJobs.biz – The cream of the crop in my opinion. Not only are some great jobs listed on this site, but if you request it, they’ll put up your bio so others can contact you directly (definitely worth the time it takes to write up a personal bio).

Another great place to look for jobs is right on your very own feed or list of favorite blogs. Don’t underestimate yourself. Most low to medium level blogs are more likely to risk a few articles on you than potentially miss out on a great new addition to their team. Unlike the “real world,” the internet really levels the playing field. As long as you have a decent writing sample or two (especially if those pages have gotten popular anywhere), you have enough to get in with a lot of great blogs.

Case in point, MakeUseOf is almost ALWAYS looking for talented new bloggers to fill the ranks of our contributors. I can tell you for a fact that this is one of the best sites I’ve ever blogged for in my short but varied career as a freelance writer. If you feel you’re already up to speed with some of the points in the first part of this article, I strongly encourage you to apply.

Next week I’ll go over the important aspects of picking which blogs to write for and how to avoid some common blogger downfalls. In the meantime, why don’t you share some of the sources where you’ve managed to find your blogging opportunities? How did YOU get started?

[Cartoon from Blaugh]

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Certainly this is not art and it contains a considerable amount of redundant and superficial information. However, its creation did require imagination. The thing is, whether you’re writing a diary, a blog or a column for a magazine, writing remains a creative process.

Now creativity can be an issue. Among writers a complete lack of ideas is called writers block. But most often it is not that bad and all that is missing are the delicate details. The internet actually is a valuable source for ideas. On the other hand, people who are creative are not necessarily great writers. They may be lacking the basic knowledge of how to properly construct and present a story. The following tools should prove very helpful in releasing mental breaks and becoming a better writer
.

1. StumbleUpon

Stumble Upon is a great place to start in case you have no idea what to write about, since you can randomly stumble recommended websites. When you need cues for an existing story idea though, you can filter for a specific topic by searching for keywords. Extensions for both IE and Firefox are available.

2. 911 Writers Block

This tool is provided by the WEbook publishing company. It is intended to overcome blocks in fiction writing. There are nine different dials ranging from settings, characters, entrances, over verbs or how to kill a character to endings. You can browse through all suggestions and save the ones you like best. Later you can view all your saved cues and delete ones you are not going to use.

3. one word

If you cannot get your head around a story or a topic, give it a break. But rather than switching on the TV or taking a nap, you should give your brain a refreshing workout. At ‘one word’ you will be given a word and sixty seconds to write about it. If you’re bold enough, you can submit your thoughts or read what others had to say.

Unfortunately, the words are not random, new ones are added every couple of days, and the purpose of the site in fact is to collect spontaneous thoughts on various topics. Nevertheless, the 60 seconds timer in combination with a book to select a random word will work just as well. Just don’t submit it. But keep writing!

4. Cliché Finder

A source for overused metaphors and as such nothing that you would want to overuse. However, you may discover just the right expression to get a message across.

5.Language is a Virus

When required to complete a piece, don’t ever waste time not writing. Instead, try to find more and more random inspiration. One great resource is “Language is a Virus” which provides some interesting tools, for example the “Haiku-a-Tron” pictured on the left, a “Slice-n-Dice” text cutter, the “word by word (nonsense)” translator, a character name generator, and a number of articles and further resources.

Whatever you do, if you absolutely cannot continue writing, at least read or try to gather inspiration in the lively world.

6. Better writing

Critical ingredients to good writing are spelling, grammar, and correct use of words. Oxford Dictionaries’ website AskOxford has a very valuable section dedicated to better writing.

7. UsingEnglish

While it is difficult to get everything right even for native speakers, it is a huge challenge to master the English language as a writer when it is your second language. Sometimes it is necessary to go back, recapture, and simply study the language. UsingEnglish can provide great assistance in finding English idioms, understand phrasal verbs or studying irregular verbs.

For more resources regarding the English language I will refer you to a post from earlier this year by Shankar: 30+ Online Resources to Expand your English Vocabulary. You may also check out other writing related websites we have profiled earlier.

What do you do to overcome a block to your flow of writing? Do you have any online gems to share?

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But what about writers? What options do they have? Mac’s word processors are always identical to the low profile TextEdit or the heavy duty MS Word or Open Office. There’s also previously mentioned Lyx, but neither of these are built specifically for writers.

As a self-proclaimed writer myself, I constantly looking for the ultimate ‘creative writing’ tool. These four are the best free options that I’ve found so far. And with NaNoWriMo closing in, you definitely could need some help in the writing department.

Babbling With Bean

Along comes the Bean (not the British comedy movie) – a simple yet comfortable writing environment. Bean is a little bit more powerful than TextEdit while a lot more uncluttered than those ‘powerhouse’ word processors.

At the beginning, Bean was built to accommodate the creative writing hobby of the app creator. But it is not limited only to that. Just like TextEdit, Bean also could be used for general text editing purposes from quick jot of phone number and to do list to creating web page and writing programming code.

To taste the Bean, just download the latest version of this app. It’s free.

Everything that you need to write a standard document is here, and more. To make your writing life easier, open the Inspector window. Bean also supports a full screen writing environment and alternative background and font colors.

Beside the default RTF (Rich Text Format), you can save the file as RTFD, TXT, DOC, XML, and also Webarchive. There’s another option of exporting the document as HTML, PDF, RTF and DOC.

The Jer is in the Hut

There’s Jabba and there’s pizza, but this time the Hut belongs to Jer. If you’re into writing more than other common word processor users, maybe you should take a look at Jer’s Novel Writer. This ‘free for personal use’ application – with a little ‘donating reminder’ every now and then – will help any creative writer organize their disorganized ideas.

The app will give you a two-pane display – the main writing area and a small area on the left where you could put some tiny notes related to your writing. There’s also a collapsible right sidebar drawer with three tabs to make your writing life even easier: Outline, Database, and Notes.

The how-tos of Jer’s Novel Writer can be a little confusing for first time users, but there’s a quick tutorial to help you which will start the first time this application is opened. Be sure to check it out.

CopyWrite your Copies

The third candidate is CopyWrite. This one is the first creative writing application I stumbled upon and – to me – the easiest to use. This one could be used and downloaded for free but with limitations: five documents per project maximum, and without an exporting capability.

The two-pane mail-style display will give any Mac users a familiar environment to work with. The upper pane will show you the documents of your project (this could be chapters, character data, description of the settings, plots, anything) and below is the content of your selected document.

Just like Jer’s Novel Writer, CopyWrite also has a collapsible right sidebar Notes drawer with two tabs: Document and Project. Any note you write in the ‘Document’ tab will only relate specifically to one document, hence it will only open while that particular document is selected; while any note you write in the ‘Project’ tab can be opened no matter what document is being selected.

Scribbling with Scrivener

Finally, writers with a big writing project – academic writing included – could freely try Scrivener for 30 days. Tiny-project writers (doing one page reports, really short stories, that kind of things), please step back slow and easy. I’m not saying that this app could not be used to write shorties, but looking at the features Scrivener has, it’s like killing an ant with a bazooka.

There’s too much to describe about Scrivener’s features in the writing space I have here, but for a quick introduction, you might as well watch the introduction video. One feature that I like the most is the Corkboard where you could put every bit of your writing and (re)arrange them as needed.

I’ve barely scratched the surface here. To find out the details about each app, please try them out yourself. If you want to have a longer list of writing tools available to find out which one suits you best – because every writer has their own unique working style – “Literature and Latte” has already made a list available here. Or search on Make Use Of in our Mac section, our writing section, or use our search engine.

Now, the only thing left to do is start writing those best sellers. Good luck!

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It may look like your average textpad or notepad, but it’s far from it. You can type the old fashioned way by tapping on individual keys, or you can type the new fashioned way, by sliding your finger across the soft keyboard.

Instead of tapping, you slide or drag your finger across your iPhone’s soft keyboard, making a continuous line from one letter to another. It’s shape writing technology from ShapeWriter.

It certainly makes writing on your device much easier. It’s so easy in fact, I’m using it right now to write this, while in a car on my way to visit the in-laws in another province (no I’m not doing the driving at the moment).

At first, it may appear a little daunting, but you get used to it pretty quickly. After a little practice, I find I can type faster this way, than by tapping. It’s surprisingly accurate, even with long, difficult words like “surprisingly” and “accurate.”

It has a lexicon of almost 60,000 words but sometimes you’ll come across one that it doesn’t recognize. For example, it may have trouble with strange names. Mayoff and Slartibartfast aren’t there, but Beeblebrox and Trillian are.

But even so, it’s no problem really. Just tap them in and Writing Pad will ask you if you want it to remember them. From then on they’ll be available for sliding.

Often the same sliding motion can produce more than one word. For example, “paranoid” can also produce “patented”, “parenthood” and “piebald.” When that happens, the most common one is displayed in your document and a list of the other possibilities are displayed in a bar below the document window. Just tap the one you’re looking for to insert it into the document.

Double letters? No problem. Ignore them. Type cool as c-o-l and Writing Pad just knows what you’re trying to say.

Capitalization? Writing Pad will usually know, but if not, hit the Case button and it will cycle through the various possibilities, like Iphone, iPhone, iphone and IPHONE.

Sounds great, but wouldn’t it be even better if you could use it for something useful? Sending mail, perhaps? Well you can. Slide out your email using Writing Pad and then click Done. Now you’ll see three buttons at the bottom of your screen: Delete, Email and New.

Tap ‘Email’ and your note opens as an email, read for sending. Unfortunately, you can’t easily reply to your messages using the system.

The only negative about Writing Pad is that the shape writing technology is only available when you’re in the app itself and not throughout the entire system. Once you try it, you won’t want to ever go back to the old fashioned way of typing again.

Writing pad from the iTunes app store is well worth the price (free).

(By) Jason Mayoff is a radio newscaster, tech geek and the Make Use Of Podcast Editor. If you’re ever in Montreal, Canada you can hear him on CJAD 800. You can also find Jason at Podcasters4Hire.com and pleasantnights.com, where he talks about keeping an organized and clutter-free home.

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The basics behind Penzu is that it aims to merge all the goodness of a real life diary, and all the usefulness an online format can offer. The first thing you’ll notice for example is that you are writing on “real paper”, a ruled, margined notepad, which resembles a real notebook, so you have the feel of writing in real life. At first I thought this would be a bit obtrusive, but I felt right at home after the first line and it looks quite cool too.

Writing with Penzu

Right now Penzu doesn’t offer all that much in customization and settings, but it’s on the way. In the settings section you will be able to change the font, the size and so on. It would be nice if you could even change paper type in the future, since the application’s main visual feature is this. I’m guessing it may be implemented soon.

The writing experience the application offers however is very rewarding, creating your first online diary page is just like doing it in real life. Of course you don’t have the freedom you would on a real piece of paper, but the ability to add images spices things up a bit. These images are inserted in thumbnail format on the margin and when you hover over them with the mouse you can see the large image and the caption. Again, this takes away from the freedom, but is a very unique approach and one that fits the format very nicely I think. It allows you to create highly organized pages.

Sharing is again implemented very well and goes very well with the notebook theme. Rather than inviting people to view your page or pages, you can send them the page via email. This means that the recipient gets a link to a page on Penzu’s site where they can view that page and that page only, without any connection to your other pages. I think this seems a bad move in today’s sharing web 2.0 world, but is a great solution for an application like Penzu. If you want to show someone a page in your diary you either show it personally or photocopy the page, you don’t send them your whole diary and tell them the page they should look at do you?

Managing your pages

You can manage all your pages by going to the ‘my entries’ tab. There are basic options available for renaming, selecting and deleting, but the main feature here is the search option. It is a ’search as you type’ box, so as you type something your results will pop up automatically. This is a great way to search through all your pages, especially if you actively use Penzu, which means 365 pages a year if you follow strict “diary guidelines”.

These basic features suffice, the only thing I would add is tags and categories. This is a feature which helps you categorize and group pages, it would be nice to be able to list pages where your mood was sad, or happy, or neutral, where you talk about books, movies or your love life.

Should you use Penzu?

My overall impression of it was very good. The application is obviously at its early stages of development so I wouldn’t necessarily say that lack of features is a huge problem. For the target audience the already implemented features are 70% enough I would say. The only things I would need badly are tags, categories and some design change options. I am confident these will happen, since the framework is actually very good. There is an option to save a note, but they are saved about every 10 seconds seamlessly as you type. The search function is awesome too and the site design is just as it should be, a great job in all respects.

There are limitations however, as this application is not meant (and never will be) for people to share their stuff widely. If you need a personal diary application though you will find Penzu very helpful and easy to use, but if you need collaborative power and awesome arrays of advanced features you should look elsewhere. I have only seen a few other diary applications so if you know a different cool one please let us know and I’ll take a look at them.

“Daniel changes his signature lines all the time because although he has a blog about organization, Hack Your Day, he can be a bit all over the place at times. He also has a Blog management service called Blogtastique which helps newbie and pro bloggers in anything they need.”

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Over the past few years a new breed of text editors have flourished – so called ‘minimalist’ text editors – which can be used to block out all other distractions and let you focus on the task at hand – crafting words into sentences. These “no-frills editors” don’t offer formatting or many of the other features you see in modern word processors, what they offer is the ability to concentrate solely on your writing.

For the purposes of this article, we are limiting our minimalist text editors to Windows programs, and also a constraint is that they must do full screen with no other programs present. If the second parameter does not bother you as much, please continue on to the bottom of this article to see some other recommended editors.

Darkroom

Darkroom is a clone of Writeroom for Mac. Nothing like Writeroom (for OSX) existed for the Windows platform, so the author wrote it using the .NET framework.

When you open Darkroom, you will see what we mean when we say “minimalist text editors”. The application presents you with a full black screen, a green cursor, and a few up/down arrows.

Features are pretty sparse, and I don’t mean this in a negative way. Ctrl-S gets you a save menu, and there are several other keyboard shortcuts. If you unmaximize the program, it allows you to see a menu with a few other options – such as statistics on the text you wrote (number of characters and words).

jDarkRoom

jDarkRoom is a java clone of Darkroom. However the similarity begins and ends with black screen and green text. jDarkRoom has many more features, and a full list of them is available from the Help menu (F3). Mark actually did a writeup on jDarkRoom already so you should look there for an in depth review.

The features I think are very handy: automatic saving of your file, ability to change the color and size of text and the ability to search text are all nice.

Also since jDarkRoom is written in Java it is a cross platform product that works great on many other operating systems.

Word 5.5 for DOS
Surprised to see this one on the list? So am I. What is old is new again!

Microsoft patched Word 5.5 for the Y2K bug and decided to release it for free instead of trying to sell it again (and really, who would buy it?) Well, what do you know, some writers still use this program to write their books. It has a simple layout and takes up the whole screen. All of the options are there to help you write. Although the formatting options may be a distraction, you can easily forgo them if you choose.

The kick ass thing about Word 5.5 is that it also includes a spell check and thesaurus. This can really help out those budding writers in a pinch. There are some fancier options for footnotes, head notes and the like, but I don’t believe most web writers will use these. For the intrepid, there are also macros – so if there is a process that you find yourself repeatedly doing you can really cut out some time.

The default blue, gray and teal color scheme is ugly (think DOS in 1990 or so) but this is totally customizable through the options. Also, in case you are wondering, your mouse does work to open the menus and place the cursor, so using it is not a keyboard-only affair.

q10
If DarkRoom and WriteRoom would have a big brother, his name would be q10. q10 offers the same dark screen and minimalist functionality of the other writers, while adding handy features which do not distract from your task at hand.

The colors are totally adjustable and by default there is a bar at the bottom which uses very dark text to blend into the background. This bar displays the file name, a count of words, pages and characters, the file name and a clock. There is also audio feedback which I did find a bit annoying but it is possible to turn this off.

Using Ctrl-P brings up a menu with all of the available options. This menu is much more user-friendly than Darkroom or jDarkRoom and lets you tweak just about any setting in the program.

Some features I really like in q10:

• Auto saving based on time or paragraphs written,
• Built in spell checking, auto correction and ‘quick text’,
• Setting a word ‘target’,
• Setting an alarm for X minutes and
• A find/replace system.

Summary
Of all of the above programs, I found q10 to be the ‘most qualified’ to take over my writing tasks. In fact, I wrote this article using q10 and it really helped me reduce the time it took to write it. Depending on your needs, you might find any one of the above better suited for your task, so make sure to try them all.

Other Text Editors
There are some other popular text editors for writers. Of course, one of the most simple ones is Notepad, which comes with Windows. A step up from that is a Notepad replacement. There are a plethora of them, some of my favorites are PSPad and Textpad. See here for a pretty comprehensive list.

There is also the school of thought that favors vi or emacs. These programs, while not easy to pick up for a beginner, can also be very powerful especially if you learn the special keyboard shortcuts or are able to create regular expressions to manipulate the text. They aren’t for the timid but give it a shot if you are interested.

Do you have a favorite text editor that I have left out? Please let me know in the comments so our other readers might benefit from your knowledge!

Dave is an IT Manager by day and technology consultant by night. He is interested in all things internet but is specifically interested in system administration, network security, history, and backpacking. He lives near Philadelphia with his family. See his blog @ systembash.com.

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Normally in a Make Use Of review, we focus on the unique features of each app. But in this case, the best features are that there are basically NO unique features. JDarkRoom is a word processing program which consists solely of a black screen with a green writing font. Using it makes you feel like Nero in the Matrix.

How is this good you ask? Precisely that if you’re looking for a way to get a document typed out in record time without being distracted, this is the thing to use. There’s no fancy toolbars to arrange, no irritating paperclips in the corner asking you if you need help, no flashy graphics. Just a black screen to type away on. In fact I typed this article using JDarkRoom and I was able to type faster than I have ever typed before.

This type of program would be useful for say students trying to get a thesis typed out or a business-person assigned to make a presentation with a short deadline.

As well as the plain screen, JDarkRoom also banishes all distractions by filling up the entire screen. So you don’t even see your Windows task bar at the bottom. Other programs are relegated to the background. If you need to view another screen for any reason, you can toggle between JDarkRoom and the other screen by using the ALT + TAB key.

The program has quite a few useful options to make this a worthwhile contender in the word processing field.

* If you don’t like the way it currently looks, you can change the font and the background color.

* You can copy text to the Windows clipboard, auto-save your work and get a word count.

* When the file is finished, you can press F3 to save the file to your computer. You will then be asked to choose your file format such as a text file or a MS Word file (if you choose MS Word, you will need your MS Office disk to download and install a converter tool).

*Once you have the text exported to a file format, you can then print it out.

Sometimes the best programs are the simplest ones – and JDarkRoom is as simple as they come.

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QWERTY Wariors
fun 2D shooter game, where in order to shoot the bad guy you have to type the word appearing underneath him.

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TyperShark
same story here, stay safe by typing right word for each shark

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Alphattack
save NY city from falling bombs by typing letters displayed on each of them

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FlowWords 2
type words formed by eggs before they fall off the conveyor bolt

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Axis of Evil
Action-packed typing game for die hard American patriots

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Barracuda
type words as they float through the river. More words you miss darker the river gets.
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TypingMasterBubbles
type letters shown on the falling bubbles.
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Maximum Typing
punch, kick or knee flying cubes by typing right letters.

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FreeTypingGame.net
6 more typing games; Keyboard Triathlon, Spacebar Invaders, Save the Sailboat Race, Outerspace Fleet Commander, The Frogs are Off Their Diet! and Meteor Typing Blast

E N J O Y

Technorati Tags: typing, touch typing, flash games

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