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This lightweight and portable program is similar to other focus-driven programs like Dark Room or Q10. Still in beta, WriteMonkey can be run in a window, but the intent of these one-hit writing tools is to be used at full screen, eliminating distractions.
WriteMonkey can be minimized to a window, maximized to full screen, and comes with a handy jumplist for paragraphs and in-document bookmarks.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)There are a couple of things that WriteMonkey does very well. First off, all the major program commands are accessible from the right-click context menu. When the program loads in full-screen mode, you can easily minimize it into a window by right-clicking and choosing the first option, "Toggle fullscreen/window." Once in window mode, WriteMonkey's menubar appears, and in the menubar options are listed with their respective hot keys. So, with little effort, it's possible to acclimate to WriteMonkey's environment and learn how to manipulate it without always going to the menus.
WriteMonkey offers some useful tools for writers, too. You can automatically import text from your clipboard, and a Markup Export option makes it a slick Notepad replacement, if that's where you do your coding. Wiki-style tools are used to bold, italicize, and underline and text. *Asterisks* are for bolding, _single underscores_ are for italics, and __double underscores__ activate underlining. Using the standard hot keys for those tasks will work, too.
Unfortunately, once you've exported the text, you'll need to use your Replace tool to convert the marks to proper bold, italics, and underline, but at least there's a familiar implementation of these basic features. WriteMonkey supports symbols, too, so you don't have to worry about going back to put in your accent aigus or accent circonflexes after you've finished your document.
A jump feature makes for quick and multicolored access to your paragraphs, without having to mouse or arrow-key your way through. You can also bookmark various points in your document for faster jumping. Left-click in the top or bottom margins to jump a page up, or click and hold down the mouse button in the left or right margins to quickly scroll through your document.
You can customize the color of the document as well, or set WriteMonkey to choose colors at random when you start the program. Occasionally fun, randomizing the colors is also a fast way to induce a migraine.
There's also a "repository" feature that functions as an alternative document. Conceptually, you could argue that it kind of breaks the idea of a uniform workspace, but at the same time it's nice to have a hot-key accessible, long-form clipboard to handle notes and other text without having to open a new window. Essentially, it works like a tab without being a tab.
A customizable progress bar can be activated, showing word or character counts, and comes with an optional timer if you want to write without stopping. These features only serve to reiterate the writing focus of the program, and are easily toggled via F12.
Besides the obvious limitations in a program that's designed to encourage a laser-like focus in your writing, WriteMonkey could strongly benefit from having a basic installer. The program is portable, taking up about 3MB total, but comes in a ZIP and needs to be extracted into its own folder. A self-extracting EXE would give WriteMonkey a much easier installation process. A lock feature that would prevent you from switching out of it would truly eliminate distractions.
These are quibbles, though. WriteMonkey won't make an ape of your desire to focus on writing, as long as you bring the drive and the talent.
Recent developments in the global economy have sent shockwaves through industries and companies around the world. Whether or not the economic downturn has hurt your employer or your job, it's a good time to take a look at your professional resume and update it or polish it as necessary. These six applications offer resume templates, styling advice, and helpful guidelines to help you develop a resume that impresses your next interviewer.
ResumeMaker Professional Ultimate
This jam-packed resume software is loaded with thousands of samples and templates from a wide range of industries. It also allows users to browse or search millions of available career opportunities. View sample cover letters and create and manage your own quickly and easily. A Virtual Interview feature puts you through the paces before the actual big event.
A nice, compact interface lets you create, edit, and manage your resume, while also searching job listings and creating job-search agents. More of job-search assistant than a resume builder, JobTabs uses a tree-style navigation with Search Agents for various industries and online career resources. Advanced search features let you narrow down your searches, while other tabs provide resume guidance and industry information about necessary training.
More than 25,000 resume and cover-letter templates provide a wide range of styles and formats for nearly any sort of job application. A clean navigation lets you manage your career history and goals and your resumes quickly and easily. A "Get Started" wizard may help reluctant job searchers to get the process rolling, and the career resources section includes an resume knowledgebase for reference.
The software name has strong educational connotations, but the program works for many industries and lets users capture job offers directly through the application. A form-based approach lets users enter all of their work history, personal information, experience, and skills, transforming all of your data into a polished one-page paper. Keyword shortcuts make composing cover letters a breeze.
For users who learn visually, this shareware app uses a multimedia approach to creating and editing your resume. Start out by simply copying and pasting your career information and personal data, decide what sort of jobs you are interested in pursuing, and before you know it, you've got a formatted Word document that should work for many professional job applications.
This online tool lacks some of the fancy features of its downloadable counterparts, but for speed and ease of use, it's hard to beat. Pick from several templates, enter your contact info, experience, qualifications, and skills, and you can quickly print or save a digital copy of a simple, stylish resume. The site is supported by the now ubiquitous Ads by Google and an occasional pop-behind, but there's no upsell, and the site also lets you create six different styles of cover letters.
The free productivity app WritingPad quietly and neatly eliminates the problem of stabbing the iPhone's keyboard in order to type an e-mail or note. Instead of entering letters one by one and waiting for the predictive text to kick in, you use your finger to trace a line from one letter to the next, so it will essentially looks like a squiggle on the keyboard, but it renders as a letter.
You don't have to concern yourself with avoiding letters you don't need, or with double letters like o's or n's. You don't even have to worry about manually entering a space between letters because WritingPad will do that, too. In the event your word isn't in the predictive list, it helpfully lets you add one to the library by entering it letter by letter and then pressing the Space key.
WritingPad struggles with "I'm" and makes it hard to easily access common symbols like the exclamation mark. It also won't work in landscape mode at this point. You may not use WritingPad to replace your e-mail in-box when composing e-mails, but these are minor problems when you consider you gain the convenience of being able to to mail notes to your contacts.
As someone who types all day, I'd like to compose all the notes and e-mails I want in iPhone without ever lifting a finger. Until telepathic inputting catches on, WritingPad for iPhone (and iPod touch) is the next best thing. You still have to lift your finger, but only when you've finished tracing a word onto the virtual keyboard. Check out this First Look video to see what I mean.
>>See all iPhone apps on Download.com
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Are you ever at a loss for words? Whether you're writing an essay, a letter, a business proposal, or even a novel, there are inevitably times when the right word is just out of your mind's reach. In the old days, you might pick up a dictionary or thesaurus to find a specific word, but now most people know that resources on the Internet are only a couple of clicks away. There's one program I like to use, however, that's even easier than opening your Web browser.
Get all the information you need about your word by hitting a hot key
(Credit: CNET Networks)WordWeb is a free program that lets you highlight a word and then hit either Control and right-click or Control-Alt-W to quickly scour a database of more than 150,000 root words and 120,000 synonym sets. From there you'll be able to look at common word usages, synonyms, and antonyms all with an easy-to-navigate tabbed interface. Clicking the speaker icon lets you hear the word spoken aloud using the Windows speech engine. You can even search for words that sound like the word you're looking for by clicking the Nearest tab to check similar spellings. Once you've found the perfect word, simply hit the replace button and Wordweb will replace your originally highlighted word. Once you get used to using it, you'll wonder why anyone bothers going online to look for definitions or word ideas.
WordWeb just got a recent update so it's even more useful, now offering several thousand new entries. It works with almost any program so all you'll need to know when you're looking for the right word are the hot keys to bring up WordWeb. Even if WordWeb doesn't have the word you want it offers other resources to continue your search.
Are you a writer? Do you dream about writing the next great novel? Whether you're an accomplished novelist or just want to get an idea for what it takes to pull elaborate settings, characters, and plot lines together for a book, I came across a program for Mac you should definitely check out.
Style sheets are fully customizable, letting you add as much information as you need.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Storyist for Mac ($59) attempts to take some of the confusion out of writing by offering a Web browser-like interface that's easy to navigate and organizes the many parts that go into writing a novel. While your creativity is still the key to success, Storyist helps you stay focused on the piece you're writing. Like a Web browser, you use the forward and back buttons to move from page to page or you can use the bookmark panel on the left to quickly get anywhere in the story. With the program's storyboard tools and story sheets, you get fully customizable forms for laying out the plot of your story, character descriptions, setting details, and any other relevant information--all accessible through the left navigation panel.
Storyist supports different types of writing styles so you can work on your project in the way you're most comfortable. Those who start with outlines to keep track of their work will like how Storyist makes it easy to consult your outline as you write. Simply bring up your outline in the pane above your work so it's easy to check back on pertinent information. The program also offers story templates to get you started right away, and if you have your own template in mind, you can add your own for future reference.
Keep track of and navigate through characters using your own images.
(Credit: CNET Networks)What sets Storyist apart from other writing programs is the amount of available tools to keep everything organized. You can organize and navigate through characters using uploaded images so you have a face for every name. You can create Wiki-like links in your story to keep track of the relationship between your story notes, characters, and planned plot points. Moving sections of your story around is simple with the Project Organizer, letting you add, remove, or change plot and story elements. In a pinch, you can also use the projectwide search function to find exactly what you want to work on.
The Style Editor lets you customize your project to your specifications.
(Credit: CNET Networks)When you're finished, Storyist provides common manuscript and screenplay formatting so you know your work is ready for publishers. If you want to shake things up a bit, a style editor and page layout tools let you add a personal touch to your project.
Though writing is not as much about the tools as it is the elbow grease you put into it, it certainly doesn't hurt to have a tool that keeps track of the details so you don't have to. Storyist gives you a method by which you can get to the business of writing with an enormous amount of flexibility so you can do things the way you want. If you're a writer or someone who has been thinking about writing a book, this affordable program offers up several useful tools to make the job easier.
Power Downloader knows one of the most difficult things about studying and writing papers is staying focused. When he received a stressed out e-mail from Kitty Kilobyte recently saying she was trying to write a paper for school, but kept getting distracted, Power knew all too well what she was talking about. Even when Power Downloader needs to get to work, he will sometimes find himself surfing the Web or checking e-mail, so he knows how easy it is to get distracted. Over time, Power is sure Kitty will develop the skills necessary to focus on her work, but for now he decided would try to find her the perfect tool to stay focused.
Dark Room only gives users the essentials so they can focus on writing
(Credit: CNET Networks)After some searching at Download.com, Power Downloader came upon a little textpad application called Dark Room. While the program is not particularly strong on features, it does one thing very well: it eliminates distraction. With Dark Room on her computer, Kitty would be able to write her paper without the usual distractions of her computer's desktop. Dark Room would let Kitty write in full screen with a black background so all the chat notifications, e-mail alerts, and other distractions are conveniently hidden out of view. If she didn't like the default black background, she could switch the background color, the text color, and the font, all in the Dark Room options. Playing with some of the options, Power couldn't help but think this application would be extremely useful for writers as well if they knew all the hot keys. A helpful readme file comes with the download and Power Downloader made sure to point out in his e-mail to Kitty she should read it for all of Dark Room's features and hot keys before she gets started.
After sending the e-mail with a link to Dark Room to Kitty, Power Downloader decides some of his old criminal case summaries could use a little work. With Dark Room, Power Downloader won't have to worry about being distracted while he remembers past pursuits of Internet bad guys.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Power Downloader has been around long enough to know that young people tend to go through phases in their lives. Particularly in college, when young people are trying to figure out what path they want to take and what kind of individual they want to be, a certain degree of experimentation is expected. When Power's niece, Kitty Kilobyte, recently stated in an e-mail that she would no longer use any software from a huge corporation, Power smiled knowingly to himself and continued to read on. Kitty said one of the programs she needed was a full-featured word processor for her next year at school, but it had to be unique like she is--a program unlike what everybody uses at school.
In Power Downloader's many trips through the Download.com software library, he's found plenty of unique software apps; from the strange and wonderful to the just plain weird. But it wasn't enough to just grab the weirdest word processor available for Kitty; he had to find one that was both unique and useful.... Read more
(Credit:
Dark Room Team)
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
OK, not really, but the freeware Windows app Dark Room (based off the Mac OS X 10.4 software WriteRoom) looks a heck of a lot like the classic text-adventure game Zork.
The idea behind Dark Room and WriteRoom is simple: offer a distraction-free application for writing text. Both apps throw out the bells and whistles and provide a lightweight text editor without buttons, menus, or anything else that might disturb your concentration. ... Read more
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