Comments on: Saturday Matinee: What Are Your Favorite Tools?

By: Dwayne Phillips

Dwayne Phillips — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:35:19 +0000

I use vim — a revision of the UNIX vi editor. I have written half a dozen books with it. Simple, efficient, and keeps me concentrating on the content instead of everything else.

Recently, I am using Google Docs more and more to keep my writing synchronized among various computers.

By: Dustin

Dustin — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:07:03 +0000

I love Evernote, although I'm still working out how best to integrate it with my overall system. Phrase Express looks interesting -- I might have to give it a try. I've been using something similar called Texter, which allows phrases and snippets of text to be called up with a keystroke. I'm finding that a lot of the time, I type faster than it does it's work, so I trigger the command and type on and the text pops into the middle of whatever I was typing several words later. Maybe Phrase Express is a better way to solve the same problem.

By: Leisureguy

Leisureguy — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:54:54 +0000

I find Phrase Express invaluable. I use it in several ways: to remember URLs, for example, and to correct spelling---I can't stand spelling (for example) Guantánamo as "Guantanamo" or jalapeño as "jalapeno." Word does those corrections, but only in Word---Phrase Express does them everywhere. Another great tool for collecting notes is Evernote, and the new Evernote 3 is especially powerful. A great tool from yesteryear is Symantec's GrandView, a highly capable (DOS) outliner. I'm now checking out several Windows outliners to see which works best for me. Both of the above tools are free, BTW.