STORYIST

Joel Friedlander has posted a very important review of Storyist, a word processor for the Mac [$59.00], aimed at novelists and script writers — but with an important new feature:  saving one’s work in ePub format.  That’s a really big deal, as Joel explains.  Read his post — one of the more important ones for writers I’ve read lately.  After reading the review, then head over the the Storyist homepage.  Then, while you are at it, look at a post on The Bookwright:  Do iPad or Do I Kindle, which is an excellent overview of all the options writers should keep in mind as they look to the future.

JOTPRESS – THE EASY WAY TO BLOG

New to the internet is JotPress.  Posting messages on the web has never been easier.  Just write your post in your email program and send it to post@jotpress.com.  Done!  No software maintenance, no fuss, no cost.  But, of course, first you’ve got to sign up, which is simple to do.

This service is so new that it is difficult now to foresee just how it will shape up.  Take a look at the KillerStartups description.  The JotPress website is currently so spare that it doesn’t give you much information to go on.  But it looks like it may have to potential of becoming an interesting open community where one can attract new people to one’s work.

DOCS PORTAL

If you use Google Docs and own an iPad, you may wish to look into DocsPortal for iPad, by Kabukivision.  This $4.00 application allows one to find, view and import/export documents from a Goggle Docs account.  While one cannot edit documents within the application, one can export them to iWorks for editing.  The applica;tion is available in the iTunes Store.

READ ANY BOOK

I don’t know how this website has managed to do it, but Read Any Book  is making a lot of books, even contemporary best sellers by Dan Brown and Dean Koontz, available for free online reading.  There are limitations.  Books cannot be downloaded.  They must be read in the site’s online reader, which is certainly not quite up to standard.

RUMBLEFISH & FRIENDLY MUSIC

Have you ever wanted to create a YouTube video but have been worried about access to “legal” background music?  Rumblefish can help.  This website has been around for a couple of years, specializing in music licensing aimed at productions for businesses, TV and other commercial enterprises.  It has a huge library of pre-cleared music, along with a handy “rate calculator” to indicate cost for one’s projected useage.  If you are a big-time writer with a major advertising campaign, Rumblefish can save time and money with your music licensing.  Just visit its Music Licensing Store.

  But what about a “personal” video, rather than a major advertising piece, something you intend to self-produce and throw up on YouTube?   You can now turn to the new Friendly Music service, which already offers over 35,000 selectionsc available  for $1.99 a pop.  With careful writing — hey, you’re a writer, right? — you can bring attention to your books, your characters, your writing projects as your personal creations, not as blatant advertisements, accompanied by licensed music.  No more worries about potential copyright infringement.

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This week Bits du Jour offers two programs of genuine interest to writers — one new to me, the other a mainstay on my computer over several years now.

AskSam 7 is an amazing free-form database.  I personally don’t like those databases where everything must fit into forms containing just so many characters — much too limited for a free-wheeling writer and researcher.  In AskSam, I have built a major database of monuments and statues from all over the Philippines.  On screen, it looks rather like a book, with separate pages for each monument, individual sculptors, scans of news clippins and more.  But, like a true database, I can pull out a report about all of the statues in the province on Cebu, for example — or all of the work of Tolentino.  I can also put it all on a CD, with an AskSam reader [if my memory is correct], for distribution to libraries all over the Philippines [which I plan to do when I feel I've completed my work].

I’ve used the standard version of AskSam for years now, updating to every new version, which has certainly filled me needs.  But with the Pro Version, one gets full-text indexing, making this product immensely powerful, especially when one learns that almost anything can be placed into AskSam, such as all of your emails, all of your research douments, and so on.

The standard version costs $149.95, expensive enough already.  The Pro Version costs a whopping $395.00, way beyond my pocketbook.  But Bits du Jour is offering a one-day deal on the Professional Version for only $99.95 — a 75-percent discount.  Gosh, I may grab a copy for myself.  The discount is available this WEDNESDAY only — but you can download the trial version now from Bits du Jour to test it out.

Check out the AskSam website for a fuller explanation of just what the application can handle.

Then on FRIDAY, Bits du Jour offers Compare It at a 67-percent discount — $9.60.  This software presents two versions of a document side-by-side, with the differences highlighted.  That’s really helpful when editing.  Yes, there are quite a number of similar products.  But at less than $10, I think this discount offer is a no-brainer deal.  Check the software website for more insight into its workings.  For example, it handles Microsoft Word and Excel, plus PDF and RTF documents — and there’s an add-in for OpenOffice documents.

By the way, I am NOT affiliated with Bits du Jour in any way, other than being one of its best full-paying customers.

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The new online resource 750 Words offers a great challenge to help writers get their daily juices flowing.  It is based on the notion that writing 750 words every single morning is an effective conditioning exercise for writers.  As an incentive, users earn badges when they meet certain writing goals.  There’s even a “One Month Challenge,” with rewards and punishments to spur you on — and an option to create your own reward at the end of the month.  One’s ramblings are strictly private, unless one chooses to share selected entries.  One can even tie into Facebook, where one’s friends can offer encouragement.  I think many writers will find this online application to be very valuable, especially those that are in a rut or face writer’s block.  Be sure to read the site’s FAQ page to understandthe site’s concepts.

Penzu is another secure and private online journaling site.  The developers include a test-drive option, allowing visitors to try out the application without signing up for it.  If you like it, one can sign up for a free account.  Those who really like the service can upgrade to the Pro version and its additional features for $19.00 a year.

The interface is supremely clean and uncluttered.  It’s just a virtual lined sheet of paper, which includes the day’s date, a line for Subject Title and the rest for one’s journal entry.  In the free version, users can lock it down to protect it from intruders.  In the pro version, one can go the extra step and invoke military-grade encryption.  The service also provides options to make selected pages public.  This app is for those serious about journaling.

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Along with the release this week of Microsoft Office 2010 comes word of a powerful plug-in that brings a huge collection of free and low-cost photographs right into Word and Powerpoint, ready to be searched and pasted into one’s documents.  The plug-in is tied to the Fotolia website, and it works with both Word 2010 and 2007.

The plug-in, which is available as a free download at its website, requires membership in the Fotolia community, but it’s free to join as well.  One can join as a user of stock photos, a photographer willing to contribute stock to the million-plus image library, or both.  Many of the available photos are free.  Others carry a reasonable charge based on the size of the image.

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For you novelists out there, here’s a great chance to help create the software of your own dreams.  Pass on your ideas.  And if you haven’t already done so, download the current version 1.70 for a test run.

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SOME YEARS BACK, I needed a simple, straight-forward outliner program.  I finally found one that matched my needs – and I paid $100 for it.  TODAY — Sunday, 21 February — Bits du Jour offers a brand new, one-month-old outliner program at half price, for a whopping $9.95.  It’s called UV Outliner.

This program is very basic, but it does have some nice features.  And for old-fashioned writers like me, who grew up learning outlining skills in high school, it’s very handy and familiar.

The software developer says this about the software:

I tried almost every outliner for Windows. Unfortunately, they all look like they were developed 10 years ago with same Windows 98 style.  Personally, I think one of the best outliners ever is OmniOutliner.  Unfortunately, there is no version for Windows.

Being a developer, I decided to create my own outliner with focus on usability.

Outliners — and there are quite a number on the market — can be much more powerful than this one.  In fact, there’s a website forum devoted exclusively to discussing outlining programs:  Outliner Software.  OV Outliner is a :single-pane” outliner, similar to the Mac’s OmniOutliner, which many think is the best outlining program on any computer platform.  Most are “double-pane,” or even “triple-pane” programs.  For an explanation about the differences among these types of outliners, check out my post Better Than A Shoebox, one of the very first posts to this blog.  In fact, if you enter “outliner” in the search box above, you’ll uncover a number of posts relevant to the subject.

If you catch this post in time, check out the Bits du Jour website for today’s discount.  You can download and try out the program first, but you have to purchase the program before the end of the day to avail of the discount.

For more about various outliners, including OmniOutliner for the Mac [pictured above], check the links below.

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If you don’t have an iPhone, don’t despair. There’s a desktop version [still in beta, but quite workable] for Windows, Mac and Linux. I’ve used it myself and like it, especially the resizeable window and font size features.   Both iPhone and desktop versions are available for FREE.

The application is so powerful that Apple, sadly, last week demanded that a portion of the application’s functionality be dropped.  Read about that development in the links below.

The video demo amazes me with this application’s power.

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One of the joys of blogging is the unexpected email and blog comments that come my way, leading me to enriching new discoveries.  The other day I became acquainted with Gabrielle David and a provocative array of initiatives flowing from the Intercultural Alliance of Artists and Scholars [IAAS].  Looking through the various activities associated with IAAS, I was reminded about the role and power of literature in our communities, something I fear we often forget in the tumult of modern-day life.

While based in New York, Gabrielle and the IAAS initiatives reach far beyond the city.  There’s a website called phati’tude [just relaunched], literary magazine, TV programming, book reviews, lots of poetry and more.  All of it with a strong community and multi-cultural thrust.  Here’s how this group descibes itself:

“While phati’tude has mutated into a myriad of initiatives, our goal remains the same: to reach the broadest audience possible by collaborating with artists, scholars and community organizations to advance the art of writing as essential to a good education and to promote literary talent and achievement through all media, old and new.”

I think that’s a rather inspiring statement.  And, from my trip around the website and its links, it is backed up by substance.  In fact, it may be a model for other communities to emulate.

At the website’s relaunching on 27 January, the site led off with a re-intoduction of itself, giving us the history of the site and its related activities.  It all started in 1997 with the launch of a new literary magazine:

“…phati’tude, a literary magazine that challenged a canon based on a European white male model that excluded works by women, gays and lesbians, Native American, and of African, Hispanic/Latino and Asian descent. Expansion continued on the internet and with other TV programs – VISIONARY VOICES and phati’tude Language & Literary Arts Curriculum, among others.”

Gabrielle, in her email to me, pointed directly to the magazine, which is also being relaunched and is currently searching for submissions.  Deadline for submissions is 1 March.  You can check the submission guidelines to see if you have material appropriate for the journal.

This whole enterprise seems richly vibrant.  It’s certainly worth looking into.

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TimeGT

I’m most intrigued by the brand new FREE software TimeGT.  Anyone who has tried the Getting Things Done method and failed to keep the system going [hey, that's me!] will be very intrigued with the software.

There’s a clear and fairly thorough review of the software, with screenshots, just posted yesterday at Make Use Of.

To fully appreciate the power, yet simplicity of the program, one really needs to have some understanding of the GTD method.  Essentially all tasks fall into three categories:  Next Actions, Waiting For or Someday/Maybe.  Then one must consider just where these tasks are to be done, or better phrased, in what context:  office, home, computer, telephone, shopping, church are some examples — others might be when energy is high, or energy is low.  TimeGT makes it easy to dump your tasks into the program, to categorize them — and most important, to find them all neatly organized, like all the tasks to be completed at the computer, in one place.

But the program goes beyond that, allowing organization by project, or by area of life, such as romance [never forget to buy that little gift that occurred to you].  And if you need access to the program and data on different computers, TimeGT has a low-cost way to back up and syncronize it among any number of computers.

As a brand new program, it still has some limitations.  I especially look forward to a smartphone app, so that I can dump new tasks into the program even when away from the computer.  Currently, the product lacks good documentation.  BUT there is a brief tutorial video, which you’ll find in this blog’s sidebar for the next few days.  The video is also at my VIDEO FOR WRITERS site and at the TimeGT site as well.  I found that I had to view the video several times to learn how to properly enter data.

TOM’S PLANNER

You may wish to supplement TimeGT with another brand new program, still in beta development.  Tom’s Planner is a facility that I have actually wanted for over three decades!  I learned about GANTT CHARTS way back then, a system developed by people managing huge projects.  I loved the visual simplicity of the charts, but most implementations were way too complicated for the simple projects I was handling.  Moreover, I wanted something that would be able to show several on-going projects simultaneously.

That’s exactly what Tom’s Planner does.  Look at the video in the sidebar — or at my VIDEO FOR WRITERS site if it has already scrolled out of the box.  It’s also available on the application website.  For me, it’s simple to manage, and it makes my multiple projects so visual.

This application is web-based and is still in beta.  To use it, you must set up a beta online account.  There’s no indication yet of the eventual cost of this service.  Usually, those who participate get free use for an extended period or, at the minimum, a nice price discount.

I see this new application as a perfect companion to TimeGT.

LEADER TASK

This suggestion is time sensitive.  Bits du Jour has arranged for a deep one-day-only 75-percent discount on the powerful time and project manager Leader Task Home Edition.  This software takes a much more traditional approach:  calendar, contacts, tasks organizer.  But it adds additional functionality, perhaps too much for a writer — but one doesn’t have to make use of all the features, and at the price, it’s a great deal.  You can check out the deal and download the program for evaluation right away — but purchase must be on Thursday, January 14.  To understand the program, go take a look at all the self-explanatory screenshots.

While somewhat out of date, there is a very, very thorough review at dotTech.  In fact, this is perhaps the best review I’ve ever read about a time and task management software — it’s more like a tutorial about how to organize your life.  I highly recommend that you read it, even if you do not decide to buy the program.

EssemtialPIM

I purchased Leader Task in an earlier Bits du Jour deal and like it.  But I have stuck with a similar though less powerful program EssentialPIM.  There’s a FREE version, which I used for several years.  I eventually upgraded to the PRO version, which adds some useful functionality in tracking Projects.  EssentialPIM is now on version 3, which adds email management.  You can see my review of the free version 2, which is still an accurate description of the program and its capabilities.  In an update review of the PRO version, I include screenshots of how I use the program to manage my projects.

LIQUID STORY BINDER

Bits du Jour has yet another deal for you this week:  a one-day half price discount on Liquid Story Binder.  This is a breathtakingly different program designed just for creative writers.  In fact, it offers more of a “total writer’s environment,” rather than just another word processor.  Again, I’ll rely on my previous review to give you an introduction to the program.  There are a few new, significant features to mention:  mind mapping, full screen editing and a distraction-free typewriter mode.  You can get it on Wednesday only, January 13 for $22.98.

DISCLAIMER:

I have no affiliation with any of these companies.  In fact, I have evaluated either their free version — OR purchased the program at previous discount opportunities.  I personally think highly of all four programs, all of which offer great help in getting organized for 2010.