Writers Tools

July 13, 2010

Technology, we just assume things are going to work that, and when it doesn’t it is that much more frustrating.
I’ve had my dose of the day and honestly it was enough of a dose that I just walked away.
I had been dealing with trying to get a site to work, one that you connect your blog to, they crawl it and you are added to a blog directory.

All the sites, said it was an “easy process” you include a word in a post, the site see’s it and you’re done.
It should be that easy, I’ve done it once before on another site.

But when you actually check their support forums, it doesn’t seem its as easy as they claim.
I’ve had my site tested in chrome, explorer, and Firefox and it works.. I’ve had myself and others kick the crap outta it to make sure that it was still standing and its still here. (Yet they claim it doesn’t load.)
So the issue is not between the chair and keyboard.
More like the people at the website that won’t be named have no idea wtf they’re doing.

However..
On a great note.

I will say that I have found some good stuff.. FREE stuff..
An add-on for Firefox.. Feedly!
OH MY! How I love this little add-on!!

It’s exactly what it sounds like, a feed reader but it lets you customize what you want to see and how you want to see it.
Categories are your friend. Especially later, when you are trying to find something specific.
I’ve never been a fan of Google reader, that was why. Whenever I wanted to find something later it could take hours.

Heidi Allen has made a “How to use Feedly” video. Very clear, and informative. I just love it. It’s what got me into looking at feedly to begin with.
I love being able to mark some as “favourites” and have them on my digest.

Simply clicking the title of the article you want to read brings up the share menu, Digg, facebook, Diigo etc. You also have twitter on the side bar allowing you to tweet something you’re reading. Especially helpful as you can read the article in preview mode and never have to leave your feed page.
It’s faster then copying a link, adding it to Twitter or tweet deck which ever you use, letting it shrink the link and then adding your tweet blurb to let people know what it is, you are linking to.

Try it trust me, you will love it, as much as I do.

My other new “toy” that I love.. “Diigo”
It allows you to leave posted notes, highlight and bookmark pages to your library.
For anyone with an android phone, Ipad or Iphone you can download pages to read offline.
Unfortunately, there is nothing for blackberries yet. Hopefully that will soon change.

One feature that I will admit they could add – the ability to download pages, to read them offline, on your computer.
You can “capture” the page as am image file, so its not really that much of a stretch.

I found another bit of software I have been playing with – Writer’s Cafe, I am still on the fence with this one.
So far I find it awkward and clunky. Its like switching from an automatic to standard you take one inch forward and then a wrong move and you stall.

One its features is similar to Diggo, it lets you highlight stuff from the web and take snippets etc – however, its very basic – and does not have multi tabs.
For a Firefox user who has tons of tabs open daily, that just does not work. When you Google something you don’t want to have to open one result get your info and then hit back to find the next one,and so on.

The also have pin board function which I thought might have been pretty good however, any pins on the same board are saved as one file, so you can only use one board for one topic.

Their Storylines section could be useful, if the view was different but it would seem they haven’t quite caught on to letting a user alter settings to their viewing preference.
It’s definitely one I think I will by pass and see if I can find something better.
I know of two but there is just no way i can afford either lol.

Whats your favourite writers tools.. be it a browser Add-on, website or software?

1 Comment

Vince Montgomery says:

July 13, 2010 at 4:34 pm

Thanks so much for your post.. Such useful information is always welcome on the net, and often hard to find. Thanks for taking the test drive for the rest of us.

V.