All Things Writing

The Craft of Writing

Tag Archives: iPad

The RIGHT stylus

by Leave a comment

image


by 4 Comments

Apps to the Rescue

I’ve been running like a fool, trying to keep track of too many things between too many devices.  The result?  An exhausted, frazzled me.  And a hot mess of note, notecards, notebooks, pads, scraps of paper…

Today I decided it was time to tackle it all and find a way to get my iPad, iPhone, and Mac to play nice with the software I use most often.  The result — SUCCESS!

I use Scrivener for my nonfiction projects. I’ve also started to use if for organizing other projects.  For instance, I’m using it to keep track of everything associated with the redesign of my website and the associated considerations for the type of business I’d like to pursue this year.  If I were in my office all day, I would just work in Scrivener on my computer but most days I have at least an hour or two of accumulated time when I could be doing something work-related but I’m not in my office.  Don’t get me wrong!  If I’m caught up with my work, I actually read or catch up with friends.  But sometimes that’s just not possible.

I’d read somewhere that I can use simplenote to synch with Scrivener!  The Scrivener program is on my desktop, with the data file in Dropbox so I can access it from my laptop if I want.  The simple note app is on my iPad2 and my iPhone4.  The data file is in the cloud.  I watched a video about synching the notes I make or the changes I make to existing content and voila, I can do work on my iPad and synch it back to Scrivener.  It really works!

I also have started using Evernote to keep track of my ideas.  There is an app for my desktop or laptop as well as for my iPad2 and my iPhone.  The data is stored in the cloud so all I need to do is log in and add a note or make a change.  It’s available to all my devices whenever I want to plan or work.  It’s simple to use and I have the notes categorized with tabs to I can see by market, stage of progress, overall topic, etc.  For me at least, it’s far more useful than a simple reminder or ToDo list.

So as long as the cloud and Dropbox and Evernote are available, I’m good to go …

What software and/or apps do you use to keep track of your ideas and work in progress?  Please share your experience!


by Leave a comment

Free Kindle App – Gutsiest Move of the Decade?

Remember back when Jeff Bezos said he was going to make Amazon.com a gateway – or maybe a portal – to the web and the world said, “What’s that?” Bezos’ point was that in the future, all anyone would need to know — from a hot chick in LA to a grandma where ever grandmas hang out these days — to do any sort of shopping on the web would be — www.Amazon.com

Since we purchase pretty much everything from diapers to lawn mowers and computers at Amazon these days, you’ve got to hand it to the guy. He’s a visionary. Seems he never was worried all that much about making money selling books. And he’s done it again with the Kindle.

It’s the sort of device every book-addicted early -adopter had to have the second it came out. The thought of carrying around hundreds of books, with more for the asking at the speed of bandwidth and the price of jelly beans was just too much to resist. Did they do right by those customers as they upgraded and improved the Kindle? Of course not. No one ever does. It’s the bane of the early adopter.

What Amazon did do is create an incredible inventory of ebooks on Amazon – currently outselling physical books – as well as in the accounts of every Kindle owner. Enter Apple and the iPad or Barnes & Noble and the Nook. Talk about non-starters. If my books are already on Amazon, for my Kindle, why am I going to diddle with those?

To close the deal, Bezos and Amazon gave away the Kindle App for free, thus allowing their avid reader customers to read their Amazon-purchased Kindle books on any device!

Analysts predict there will soon come a time when 90% of the ebooks read on any device will be read through the Kindle app.

What can I say except …

Bezos calls it again!