writer

Businesses need affordable PDF solutions that don't require budgeted training time to learn. Soda PDF Professional 2011 with OCR offers itself as the "Smart & Simple" enterprise PDF solution. It proved to be capable, flexible, easy to use, and affordable enough for individuals and organizations that need more than what free tools offer yet can't afford the big-box bundles.

During the installation process, Soda PDF gave us the option to designate it as the default application for PDF files. The program opened with a Getting Started page inside a well-executed interface with attractive, businesslike graphics and … Read more

Writer's Cafe from Anthemion Software is designed to help writers of fiction organize their thoughts and their projects. It provides a journal, notebook, research tools, exercises, tips, and more. Designed in cooperation with novelist Harriet Smart, Writer's Cafe is suitable for professional and aspiring novelists alike. It's optimized for novels and screenplays but suitable for a wide range of writings. Writer's Cafe is free to try, but some features aren't available in the trial version. However, it's enough to give you a feel for whether it's right for you.

Writer's Cafe opens … Read more

I love that you can now write full, rich, graphical applications for the Web--even for core tools like word processors. As Stephen Shankland recently noted, Google Docs has evolved into something surprisingly useful, even for a professional writer. I second that opinion, and add that competitors like Zoho Writer are similarly powerful, usable, and useful--as are other "Office 2.0" apps for spreadsheets, presentations, project management, and other tasks. Cloud apps have come a long way, baby!

Online editors let you move your work easily to just about any connected computer, and they enormously facilitate live, real-time collaboration. … Read more

Contrary to popular belief, the creation of PDF files doesn't require expensive, complex software. There are plenty of utilities out there now that make PDF creation as simple as printing. Solid PDF Creator is one such program. This basic piece of software lets users create PDFs with little effort or expertise.

Solid PDF Creator is attractive and easy to navigate. Once the program is installed it appears as a printer in the Print menu of every program that has printing capabilities. Users simply select Solid PDF Creator instead of their default printer, and the program opens a dialog allowing … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft said today that it is scrapping its aging Windows Live Spaces blogging technology and will instead make WordPress the default blogging option for Windows Live.

It's the latest move by Microsoft to use Windows Live to connect to other leading Web services, rather than rely on its own, less popular options. For example, Microsoft has shuttered its not-so-widely-used Soapbox video-sharing site and now gives users of Windows Live Movie Maker the option of posting to Facebook or YouTube. Within Windows Live Photo Gallery, people can post to Windows Live, but can also share photos directly to Facebook … Read more

Practical Scriptwriter is a word processor optimized for scriptwriting. It includes a wide range of script formats as well as tools designed to make it easy to start writing with little or no experience. It can produce results good enough to submit for consideration in TV, movies, and other media, although you must provide the content; it doesn't create characters, plots, or action. What it does do is take on the formatting and housekeeping chores so that you can concentrate on writing.

The program's interface differs from most other word processors, or applications in general, for that matter, … Read more

Scrivener is an excellent, idiosyncratic app for creating and managing complex writing projects, whether you're trying to write a novel, play, TV show, or magazine feature. No simple word processor, Scrivener is a full authoring tool, using a metaphorical "three-ring binder" interface that helps you organize draft text and research documents into a simple system for writing, revising, and rearranging text.

While the basics of Scrivener's interface are intuitive--the system of folders, documents, and index cards on a virtual corkboard--you'll need to invest some time and effort to fully understand all of its features, including … Read more

Book Writer provides some interesting tools aimed at helping writers organize themselves. Its helpful features and smooth flow make for an interesting way to write.

The program's interface appeared cluttered, but it was surprisingly simple to grasp. It reminded us of a mix of word processing software and database managers. With a brief look at the Help file's tutorial, we were able to start building a book. One unfortunate aspect was that we couldn't start fresh and had to build our work off of the example book due to the software's trial limitations. Regardless, we got … Read more

yWriter 5 is an unusual but interesting bit of freeware that takes a coder's approach to writing a novel. Simon Haynes, a bestselling novelist and programmer, developed it to help the aspiring author by automating many of the tasks common to fiction writing. It's basically a specialized word processor that breaks down the elements of a writing project into discrete pieces that can be refined individually and then strung together, much the way a coder approaches a large programming job. Chapters, scenes, characters, and plot elements can be defined, developed, edited, and automatically integrated into the project. You … Read more