Have you tried Google Scribe?

Google Scribe is a text-predicting plug-in for Chrome. If you type with one hand (like during lunch when you have a sandwich in the other, or after a bad fall when your dominant hand is in a sling) this will save you hours of hunting and pecking. I normally type at 120 wpm, but during meals this slows a lot, and I hate getting food goo on  my keyboard.

My recommended settings:




 Automatically enable Google Scribe on active text field 
While editing, use Ctrl+J (Command+J on Mac) to enable/disable Google Scribe. More keyboard shortcuts 

 Show suggestions as I type ("Always")
 Show suggestions on Tab ("On demand") 
While editing, use Ctrl+Shift+J (Command+Shift+J on Mac) to switch between "Always" and "On demand". More keyboard shortcuts 

Sort suggestions by:  Alphabetical Google Scribe score Relevance Savings  

 Enable Enter for choosing suggestion 
 Enable Tab for choosing suggestion 
 Enable Space for choosing suggestion 

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

yWriter5 - Free novel writing software to help you write a book

yWriter5 - Free novel writing software to help you write a book

Thanks to mediabistro.com's Galley Cat newsletter, which led to to yWriter. This is a novel-writing application created by a programmer who also writes fiction. Mea culpa--I started this post over a year ago and have been using yWriter since then. I cannot recommend it too highly. It provides the organizational tools necessary to write long-form fiction (and nonfiction) without intruding upon the creative process with a lot of silly mythomadness suggestions. It also provides frequent stable back-ups so you won't lose your data. I use this program every day. I hope you will, too.

Click here to give it a try.

Your Brain Away from Technology

Today's NYT had a long, anecdotal article about a group of neuroscientists going rafting to see if being away from electronic communication would benefit their thought processes. Interesting but without any definite conclusions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html

Inside Google Books: Books of the world, stand up and be counted! All 129,864,880 of you.

Inside Google Books: Books of the world, stand up and be counted! All 129,864,880 of you.

Google announced, yesterday, that by their count there are about 130 million books in the world. Interestingly, they found many metadata errors, such as multple books assigned the same ISBN, and even a thousand t-shirts with ISBNs. Their post is worth reading for anyone interested in books and cataloging.

Booktorrent! The Bookmobile as Rural Filesharing Network - The Awl

Booktorrent! The Bookmobile as Rural Filesharing Network - The Awl

Certainly on point for today's world when bookmobiles provide "file sharing" to elders who are totally analog and off-line.

New E-reading Device, the Kno, Targets Textbook Market : Page 1 of 1 : Book Business

New E-reading Device, the Kno, Targets Textbook Market : Page 1 of 1 : Book Business

This may be it, the ebook reader that will work for textbooks. It has two 14" touch screens so it displays textbooks as they look when printed on paper. The five minute video explains more.

Seven Days with the iPad: An Accessibility Evaluation - AccessWorld� - July 2010

Seven Days with the iPad: An Accessibility Evaluation - AccessWorld� - July 2010

"...this app knocks the Kindle and the Sony Reader devices out of the ring as far as accessibility and usability."

--Darren Burton, Access World