The Writer’s Technology Companion

PDF, the Portable Document Format, is a standard created by Adobe for circulating formatted documents over the web. Using Acrobat Reader or some other PDF reader (I like Foxit Reader, which opens much faster than Acrobat Reader and seems to work just as well), the recipient views your document exactly as it appeared on your screen and as it would appear if you had printed it out. In fact, PDF is essentially a digital representation of the file your computer sends your printer.

Several free programs have appeared in the last couple years that take advantage of the relationship between the PDF format and printing. [Read the rest of this entry…]

I’m playing around with Social|Median, an as-yet-not-public social network that allows you to create and administer topic channels. Like other social networks such as Digg or Reddit, Social|Median lets you vote stories up and share them with your network (they call it “clipping”). They also send you a daily round-up of thetop stories in the channels you choose.

I’ll be honest, I’m still getting a feel for what Social|Median does and how it works. It’s still in private “alpha” release, which means they’re still adding features and testing things out — it’s far from a finished product. That said, I was able to easily set up a channel of writing news, which Social|Median populated automatically with a bunch of good sites (to which I was able to add a few of my own choosing), and the email alerts I’m getting from that channel have had pretty consistently good stuff.

If you’d like to check out Social|Median for yourself, I have 5 invites to the private alpha to give away. Email me via the contact page and I’ll email an invite code to the first 5 people who ask.

One of the great features of the WordPress blogging platform is the ease with which you can extend its functionality using plugins. Wordpress maintains it’s own directory of plugins, and you can easily find others that aren’t in the official directory by Googling “Wordpress plugin [some function you want to enable]” (without the quotes).

Installing a plugin couldn’t be easier. [Read the rest of this entry…]

Here’s a quick blogging tip for anyone who writes online (which includes you, if you’ve taken my advice and started a blog to promote your writing). Stockpile posts ahead of time and use WordPress’ post scheduler to automatically post in the future.

I try to do all my web writing for the week in two blocks of uninterrupted time. That way I can relax and focus on other things the rest of the week. In WordPress, you can schedule posts days, weeks, even months and years ahead of time, and they’ll go live automatically when that time comes. [Read the rest of this entry…]

Job Profiles has a huge list of 50 open source programs, from word processors and spell checkers to weblog editing software and submission trackers, that online writers can download and use free of charge. Open source software is created by volunteers ranging from employees at huge corporations (like Sun Microsystems, which directs the development of the MS Office replacement OpenOffice.org) to lone hobbyists who want to “give something back” to the computing community. Since the source code is public and licensed with very liberal terms, anyone can use, analyze, and modify the software — which is why it’s often referred to as “free as in freedom”.

Job Profiles’ list contains several pieces of software I use on a daily basis, quite a few I’ve written about or plan to write about here, and more than a couple I’d never heard of before like the WordIt word processor and the Graviax Grammar Checker. Definitely worth checking out.

Whether you’re creating content for your own site or seeking work writing on another site, you need to learn how to write for the web. Reading on a computer screen is a different experience that melting into a favorite chair with a book or lounging with a magazine, and demands different conventions.

As a general rule, web writing should be short and easily digestible. Paragraphs should be more like those used by journalists — one- or two sentences that quickly make a point and move on. Transitions aren’t as important, because web readers tend to skim for important points rather than leisurely scan through an article. Important points can be highlighted by using bold text, allowing readers to quickly grasp important points. Using bulleted or numbered lists is also useful, allowing readers to skip easily to directly relevant information. [Read the rest of this entry…]

It would be sort of hypocritical if I were to write a 5-part series on writing ebooks if I didn’t put my money where my mouth is and pony up an actual ebook. So I’ve decided to put the five posts together, reformat a little, add some nice images, and release the whole thing as a small ebook (12 pages, plus front matter). I’m releasing this under a Creative Commons license that allows you to share and circulate it freely, and use any part of it for any non-commercial purposes, so long as you credit me as the author.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Unless you’re Stephen King, your e-book isn’t going to sell itself. You’re going to need to get out there and market it a little.

First of all, make sure it’s featured prominently on your site. Write a post about it, making sure to use all the important keywords you think people doing a Google search might use to find information like yours. For a while, at least, it’s a good idea to put a blurb about your e-book at the bottom of every post you write, too — make sure our existing readers know about, and keep telling them about it! [Read the rest of this entry…]

OK, you’ve written an e-book, fixed all the typos, formatted it nicely, and are ready to go. Now what? How do you get it to an audience?

Well, that depends on your ultimate goal. Are you planning to give your e-book away, or do you want to sell it? Let’s look at both options separately. [Read the rest of this entry…]

I had originally scheduled this post for later in May, but the folks at Daily Blog Tips declared May 1 RSS Appreciation Day and I decided to join in the fun. So you lucky readers get not one but two posts this Thursday — a day when I normally don’t post at all!

Depending who you ask, RSS stands for either “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary”; either way, what it amounts to is a feed of content generated by your site (or some other source) in a standardized format. This means that content can be read, aggregated, republished, automatically downloaded, and otherwise manipulated in a variety of different kinds of formats.

Some more common kinds of feeds are: [Read the rest of this entry…]