Roll up laptop March 11, 2010

Ever since the typewriter came on the scene, it’s been more of a struggle for writers to travel with their writing instruments in their purse/murse (man purse). All that will change in the next few years because a roll up laptop is in its design stage right now.

“With the right electronics in place, the potential applications of morphing materials are huge. Download a document to your phone and then view it on this A5-sized screen you can fit in your pocket, pull out a full-sized keyboard from your PDA or view your songs on a larger but roll-up ipod screen.” ~Gemma Simpson

The product can be used as a monitor, laptop, or tablet. The central piece contains the speakers, USB ports, and power cable.

No one has given an exact date as to when this gorgeous piece of technology will be available for consumers, but I’ve been seeing four to five years as the general consensus on that.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

How to accent words from your US keyboard March 4, 2010

Most of the English-typing world uses the QWERTY keyboard, but a problem with this is that foreign words that have been adopted into the English language can’t be accented properly, or can they?

“The QWERTY design is based on a layout designed by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1874 for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in the same year, when it first appeared in typewriters.” ~ Wikipedia

The QWERTY design has helped out typists a lot, but little things that mattered like umlauts and soft c’s (diacritical marks) weren’t easily reproducible. Since the US international layout came into being, though, this hasn’t been a problem.
                                                                                                                                        
To figure out how to add diacritical marks to your words, take a look at Microsoft Office’s list of keyboard shortcuts.

And for those of you who love to know banal words that you will never use unless you are trying to impress, here’s some stuff to add to your arsenal of pride.

Acute accent: á
Cedilla: ç
Circumflex: â
Diaeresis: ü
Grave accent: à
Tilde: ñ

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Add a WordPress app. to your smartphone January 31, 2010

“Write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog using WordPress for iPhone, WordPress for Blackberry, and m.wordpress.com.”

Automattic have upgraded their app. for WordPress. The iPhone or iPod Touch application lets you see and manage WordPress.com blogs. You can delete a post or a page, edit a post, see commentators’ e-mails, and moderate comments.

“Introducing the only iPhone app that lets you write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your iPhone or iPod touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.7 or higher), users of all experience levels can get going in seconds.”

The app is rated 4/5 by users, so if you are fortunate enough to own an iPhone and a WordPress.com blog, I’d recommend downloading this handy-dandy tool.

For those of you without a WordPress blog, sorry, I know nothing outside of WordPress. For those of you without an iPhone (myself included), by the time you’ve saved up for half the cost of one, I hope it’s come down to half the original price.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Make your blog more impressive January 21, 2010

We’ve nearly completed the second bloggiesta list of mini challenges, an idea of great genius that helps blogging writers everywhere.

.Get rid of the dead links
“For your challenge, click on this link, and follow the directions in order to make a better blog for your readers.” ~Karin from Karin’s Book Nook

A blog looks much more professional when all the links work. OK, so you didn’t know and you wrote that post two years ago. The thing is, though, people can still find that post, and you don’t want them to leave your site disappointed.
                                     
Encourage yourself
“Find a post or two–or however many–and mentally buff them up. Then? Put them up on a pedestal.” ~ Tempting Persephone

Chelle from Tempting Persephone likes the idea of making your best/favorite work stand out on your site. Hopefully it will encourage you to know what you are capable of on those grouchy days.

Find and give more blogging help
“The Bloggie Cult is a discussion board where bloggers can discuss blogging issues, tips and tricks, and get general information.” ~ Kristen from Bookworming in the 21st Century

Kristen (see below) and Kate from Neverending Shelf encourage bloggers to join The Bloggie Cult to maximize the help bloggers can give each other.

Only one more mini challenge to go!

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Tag your blog posts and back up your files January 18, 2010

And on we go with the bloggiesta mini challenges.

Beth from Beth Fish Reads tells us the benefits of making a short tag list. After looking at her tag list, I can see why she wants to make it shorter!

Some suggestions for this list would be:
Book reviews
Marketing help
Wordpress help
Blog post help
Grammar and punctuation
Sally’s writing
News for writers
Authors
Agents/publishing houses

But how do you add a tag list to your homepage?
Beth has a list of suggestions for Blogger and WordPress.org. Making a list for WordPress.com is pretty easy—Wordpress has two choices:

A tag cloud tracks all the tags you place on each post.
A category cloud tracks the categories you have put each post into.

You can find both on the widgets page of your dashboard.

What I think I’ll do over the next few days is increase my category cloud (down at the very end of the right column). Rather than have all my posts divided up into three categories, I believe it will be more efficient to have them split into the tag labels I suggested above. While my tag cloud is helpful, it is too random for those who want to be efficient with their time, and, because I am such a helpful blogger, I will fix that.

Jackie from Farm Lane Books wants to help us never cry over a lost blog, and she tells us how to back up everything with two clicks. (I’d say “with two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” but not many of us have one of those lying around, or do we . . ?)
                                                                 

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Copyright your blog posts and speed things up January 17, 2010

Maw Books’ second Bloggiesta challenge has passed, but I approve wholeheartedly of the slow and steady method of starting/finishing the race (mostly because I forgot about it). I encourage you all to complete everything on the challenge list because it just makes sense.

Danielle from There’s a Book challenges us to create a blogging cheat sheet.
This list could include:
URLs you use repeatedly,
blog post templates,
links to royalty-free photos,
author interview templates,
book review templates.
                                                                                                                   
A great idea, posted by some of Pam’s readers, was to put the completed cheat sheet into Google documents so it could be accessed it from anywhere. Danielle has posted her mock sheet here.

Pam from Bookalicio.us helps everyone to keep ahead of copyright issues by giving advice in how to:
update the homepage,
pay the fee for copyright registration,
check to see if people are posting your work as their own,
add an automatic copyright to your feeds.

Pam also suggests a WordPress plugin to help your SEO.

I used a different widget that works with WordPress.com. I’ve added it to my cheat template, and you can check it out at the bottom of this post.

Comment here when you have completed both mini-challenges so I can give you a high five.

Sally

P.S. Don’t forget to keep posting your five comments a day on other blogs.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Make a simple flyer with Word. December 8, 2009

There comes a time for most writers when they wish they could do simple design work. A simple flyer, a brochure—couldn’t be too hard . . . could it?

If you want to do graphic work, you must have graphic software, and most writers only have Microsoft Word 2003. So what can you do? Use Microsoft Word.

Directions for making a simple flyer
Open a new Word page.
Write the text you would like for your flyer.
Block your text from beginning to end with the mouse.
Click on “Format” in the top line of buttons on your screen.
Click on “Borders and Shading.”

Those tabs
Borders is for a border around the text you block.
Page border puts a border around the entire Word page.
Shading shades in the space you have blocked.

Borders and page border
The left column helps you decide on the type of border you’d like.
The middle/style column helps you to pick out the border width, color, line thickness.
The right column asks you if you want a border around all of the text or just one side of it.

Shading
Click on the color you would like your box to be filled with. There are more than the colors you see to choose from—click on “More colors.”
The “style” button is for choosing how solid or see-through you’d like the color to be.

You can use your new image in your documents. So far, I have not been able to save it as a useable image with any other program, but I know it has something to do with saving the image as a PDF first.

Keep in mind that this flyer will only be a low-quality printed work, but knowing how to do this can give you the confidence to break into higher-tech learning in the future.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Publish your e-book with Smashwords November 16, 2009

Smashwords is a great idea Mark Coker thought up. Why not set up a site on which writers can upload their e-books for free and then sell them to the public? Mark’s beta site went public on May 6, 2008. Since then, the company has added support services, tagging, coupon generators, publishers’ pages, a marketing guide, writing contests, affiliate marketing, and distribution agreements with Barnes & Noble and Sony.

“Over one billion of the world’s roughly 6.5 billion inhabitants subsist on less than $1 a day. Paper books are simply too expensive for most of the world.” ~ Mark Coker, Smashwords

Here are some of the pros and cons of publishing an e-book with Smashwords:

PROS
—The moment your book is ready and formatted (according to the Smashwords formatting guide), you can upload your Word file and let the world read it.
—Smashwords converts the Word file into many optional reading formats to make your book compatible with most of the book-reading devices available these days. Formats available: HTML, JavaScript, Kindle, Epub, PDF, RTF, LRF, Palm doc, plain text download, plain text Web view,
—You retain all rights to your book.
—You get to decide how much of the book you want readers to preview.
—Smashwords continues to negotiate with various online retail outlets to ensure the best possible distribution potential for your book.
—Smashwords only takes a 15% fee and you get to keep the rest (and you can change the price as often as you want to).
—Writers from all over the world can publish their books with Smashwords.

“By moving books into the digital realm, we can start to change the economics of book publishing, while at the same time making great independent books available to people of all economic backgrounds from around the world.” ~ Mark Coker, Smashwords
                                                                 

CONS
—You tend to post it too quickly, before you are positive there are no formatting mistakes or before you give it the final read through.
—Most writers practically give their books away so it’s still hard to make a decent profit.
—You cannot post other people’s reviews of your book, only the reviewers can. It’s already a blessing to have someone read and review your book, so it feels even greedier to ask them to then go to the site to post the review again.
                                                                 

I began the process of uploading my flash fiction collection, Joy in a Box, a few months back, thinking it would lessen the pain of not having the printed version for a while. It’s great to have a place where readers can preview the first three stories, and, because of Smashwords’ free coupon generator, it has been extremely useful to be able to link reviewers to it.
                                                                                                                                  

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

Litmatch—agent search and submission tracking September 28, 2009

LitMatch is a free service that helps writers find and secure an agent. Apart from the necessary ads in the right-hand column, the site is beautifully designed—crisp and clean looking. It’s dead easy to use, too. [Since writing this post, LitMatch has changed its name to Author Advance]

Tracking
For each novel, record the submissions you’ve made to agents. (You would not believe how easy it is to forget.)
Records: Day, agent, agency
Follow up info
End result

Agent search
Find an agent who represents your genre—LitMatch’s search feature could not be any easier.

Literary agencies and agents
LitMatch lists 1757 agents in 821 agencies. You can pull up any agency and find:
The list of agents
What they prefer to represent
All their contact info
Personal info/publishing experience
If they are currently open to submissions
If they accept e-mail submissions
If they accept postal submissions
A pie chart of the percentage of offers, requests, and rejections
Responses
Response times
Submission guidelines
Clients and projects represented
Comments

Agent blogs
Lists and links to all of the blogs agents have

Hotlist
When you find an agent or agency you like the look of, you can hotlist it, grading it out of five flames.

LitMatch blog
Talks about what LitMatch hopes to offer in the near future

I’ve just registered so I can track who I’ve sent my queries to. Hopefully you guys will find it just as helpful as I have.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM

 

 

6 Tips for Integrating Your Blog with Facebook and Twitter July 13, 2009

I’ve discovered a few things of late that I’d like to share with you—practical things that computer geeks don’t even bother telling us because it is assumed that we would know such basic stuff. . . .

1) To create a fan page on Facebook, visit Facebook’s section that leads you through this.

2) If you would like to invite readers of your WordPress.com blog to follow your fan page on Facebook:
Go to your fan page.
Click on Add fan box to your site (under your photo).
Copy the code.
Paste it into a text widget.
Add it to your blog column.

The first time I did this, the only thing that showed up were some numbers and letters that looked like this: FB.init(“d7ed0dab25240bf5b8856fa3d408f2d9″);. I went back to the widget’s text box and deleted those. Now, even though I don’t have the photo or the fancy widget that appears on other people’s sites, at least there is a link there that says Inksnatcher on Facebook.

3) To get more readers for your blog, join Networked Blogs on Facebook:
Go to their home page on Facebook.
Add your blog via the button on the top-right corner.
Fill in your profile information.

To learn how to:
–import your feed to your fan page
–add the Networked Blogs tab to your profile wall
–add your blog list to your profile and info wall
visit their information page.

(The Networked Blogs widget won’t work on your WordPress.com blog because JavaScript is not supported.)

4) To get Facebook fans to follow your blog (that is now listed on Networked Blogs):
Visit your blog profile page on Facebook .
Click on invite friends (under the photo of your blog page). Follow NWB’s instructions on how to invite friends to follow your blog. (You are only allowed to invite twenty people a day.)

5) If you want to add a button to WordPress.com for people to follow you on Twitter, you have many sites to choose from. I googled Twitter buttons follow me and found this site. I entered my Twitter name and then had multiple choices of text to copy and paste into a widget’s text box.
Enter your Twitter name.
Choose your picture.
Copy the code.
Paste it into a text widget box.
Add to your blog column.

6) IMHO, The best way to follow Twitter is with Tweetdeck, only once you have it set up, be sure to have settings open all information searches in a new tab—Twitter will freeze your account for clicking on too many names within Tweetdeck. Yes, I sure do have an opinion about this, but today is going to stay happy.
Read more about Tweetdeck here.
Download the Tweetdeck service here.

And an extra tip that has saved me from the Irritated-Facebook-Users Society:
When scrolling down the list of Facebook posts, right-click any links that you want to read later. Pick open in new tab and Facebook will open each page in a new window. You can read these later at your leisure.

 

Every piece of writing needs to be clear and precise. With microscope in hand, Inksnatcher’s writing and editing service will hone any work until it glitters in the light of a 1,000 watt bulb. INKSNATCHER.COM