A Blog About Accessibility, Digital, Marketing, and AI
Reading Shrunk's Elements of Style will quickly showcase how concise writing leads to easier reading. This Plain English Campaign link has a list of words to avoid, including:
And remember, 2nd Draft=1st Draft - 10%!
Read full list at Plain English Campaign: How to write in plain English
Full screen text editing seems to be all the rage for NaNoWriMo writers.
In preparation for NaNoWriMo, as well as connected to my recent explorations of emacs and general Terminal goodness, I’ve done some investigating of what options are available for creating a full screen writing environment.
The author reviews the freeware options, then moves on to newer solutions:
So much for the free options. The rest of the candidates are newer writing programs such as MacJournal, CopyWrite, Jer’s Novel Writer, and Ulysses. These are $29.95, $29.99, free (until version 1.x), and ~$120 respectively. Their full-screen presentations vary but are relatively equivalent. The real question is how much you wish to pay. Or if you do.
He doesn't mention my current favorite though, Scrivener.
Read full article: Full Screen Text Editing
Google moved up to over 60% of the search market share:
...the top engines combined account for over 94% of all search volume in the US. Since we last released these numbers in June 2006, Google (www.google.com) has increased its share from 59.3% to 60.2%, Yahoo! Search (search.yahoo.com) has increased from 22.0% to 22.5% and MSN Search (search.msn.com) has decreased slightly from 12.1% to 11.8%.
Full article: Bill Tancer - Hitwise US: Google Breaks 60%
In ages past, I've always recommended pMachine's Expression Engine for article-driven web site. WordPress has evolved its feature set considerably, and can now handle magazine oriented sites due to its expanded API:
The ease by which sites can be created and run through blogging software like WordPress allow writers previously without publishers to print their works online. The problem with using a blogging software to manage your website, however, is that the tool defines the character of your site.
Once in a while, I see blogs that seem better off presented as online magazines or news websites rather than as blogs.
WordPress, however, is an extensible website content management system that can be used to run magazine-type websites. Here are steps I took to turn this online magazine on Cebu from a blog into its current presentation. I’m still working on it, though, so you might encounter issues.
Read full article: How to use WordPress to run a magazine, news website
In ages past, I've always recommended pMachine's Expression Engine for article-driven web site. WordPress has evolved its feature set considerably, and can now handle magazine oriented sites due to its expanded API:
The ease by which sites can be created and run through blogging software like WordPress allow writers previously without publishers to print their works online. The problem with using a blogging software to manage your website, however, is that the tool defines the character of your site.
Once in a while, I see blogs that seem better off presented as online magazines or news websites rather than as blogs.
WordPress, however, is an extensible website content management system that can be used to run magazine-type websites. Here are steps I took to turn this online magazine on Cebu from a blog into its current presentation. I’m still working on it, though, so you might encounter issues.
Read full article: How to use WordPress to run a magazine, news website
Don't throw out that sluggish PC. Give it a tune-up!
A fine-tuned Windows XP PC can run quite fast even it's seriously lacking in the memory and CPU department. Before you chuck out your PC to buy a new one, try stripping some of the rust that's built-up over the years; the results may surprise you.
It's probably your operating system that's slow, not the PC. It's software, not hardware - you know, invisible 1s and 0s held in an electric field representing your data. Your computer is still fast, but there's a ton of stuff slowing it down.
Read full article on how to speed up your PC: Tweak3D.net - Windows XP 15 Minute Tune-Up
Don't throw out that sluggish PC. Give it a tune-up!
A fine-tuned Windows XP PC can run quite fast even it's seriously lacking in the memory and CPU department. Before you chuck out your PC to buy a new one, try stripping some of the rust that's built-up over the years; the results may surprise you.
It's probably your operating system that's slow, not the PC. It's software, not hardware - you know, invisible 1s and 0s held in an electric field representing your data. Your computer is still fast, but there's a ton of stuff slowing it down.
Read full article on how to speed up your PC: Tweak3D.net - Windows XP 15 Minute Tune-Up
Some interesting stats on the effects of live chat:
Roughly 10 percent of customers who use a "click to chat" button on a product page go on to buy something, he said, and more than 20 percent of people who are solicited for a chat go on to make a purchase.
And on the troubleshooting end, LoCascio said, fewer than 15 percent of people who click on the chat button while in the midst of checkout problems complete their purchases, compared with more than 25 percent of those whom the retailer has approached.
LivePerson, based in New York, has benefited from the trend. Largely from the sales of its chat service, Timpani, the company's revenue will most likely surpass $30 million this year, LoCascio said, up from about $22 million last year.
Full article: 'Live chat' gives push to buying
Wouldn’t it be great if you could somehow automatically take a snapshot of your Scrivener novel's content and automate daily or weekly back-ups from your Mac to another location? Using Automator, it’s actually really easy.
Preparation
The following example assumes you have Panic's Transmit ftp software, which integrates well with Automator, to do backups to an FTP server. You can actually use Automator to backup files anywhere you want though -- another directory, your iDisk, you name it.
Open Automator
Launch Automator (find it in your Applications folder), scroll down the left column (Library) to find and select Transmit, grab the “Synchronize Files” action from the middle column (Actions) and drag it over to the workflow area on the right. Drag in other automator actions as appropriate. Following are some screenshots (click on the thumbnail to enlarge) to show you how I set up my backup workflow.
Here are the workflow steps you will need by the time you are done.
Add a 'Get Specified Finder Items' step. Here select your working Scrivener file. You can backup other files at this step as well.
Feed these files into a 'Create Archive' step. This will archive your files into a .zip folder.
You will want to have a separate copy of the backup each time you save. This gives you a version control system where you can always find versions of the file from days or weeks ago should you ever delete something and then not discover it till some time later! Add a 'Rename Finder Items' step and configure it to add the date to the filename.
Add another 'Rename Finder Items' step and configure it to add the time to the filename (this allows us to have multiple backups in one day).
Add the Transmit option to 'Upload Files' and configure it to the FTP server of your choice (or use Stronghold, cf. ...). Here you could instead copy the files to another disk attached to your Mac if you prefer.
Run a test to see if things work. You hit the play button near the top right corner of the Automator window, watch Transmit open up, connect to your FTP server, change to the correct directory, change the local path to the correct directory, then start uploading the Scrivener file. Once it’s done, it disconnects and closes Transmit. Perfect!
Running Backup On Demand
Save this Automater script to your Desktop (or wherever you like) choosing the “Application” file format, saving the file as BackupScrivener.app This creates a clickable application on your desktop that will launch the back-up whenever you like. You can also add this script as a plugin to your scripts menu so that you can backup right from your Mac's main menu.
Scheduling
Let’s say you want to schedule BackupScrivener.app to run automatically daily.
Open up iCal (yes, iCal!), and for the sake of clarity, create a new calendar (File > New Calendar) called “Scheduled Tasks”. Create a new event for this coming Friday "Scrivener Backup" with the following details:
Here’s a screen shot of the event:
Every Friday at 11am (a time my computer is usually on, and I’m probably looking for a second cup of coffee) iCal will trigger the backup, backing up my novel to the server from my local disk.
Other Features
Thanks to Stronghold
I’m not sure I would have ever thought of combining Transmit, Automator and iCal like this – the credit goes to the Strongspace blog. Check out their article on backing up files to Strongspace if you don't have an FTP server.
Looking at submission guidelines from a variety of CBA publishers at the Faith, Hope & Love website, it looks like 90,000 words is a good all-around target for a novel length. But you have to write more than 90k words to get 90k words.
I like Steven King's axiom for 1st draft versus 2nd draft word counts:
2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%
So, to target 90,000 final draft words, write 100,000 words!