Review: AutoBlogging Decoded

I was fortunate to receive a review copy of Autoblogging Decoded, the popular new guide from successful Internet entrepreneur and blogger Marian Krajcovic.

Autoblogging Decoded is a PDF manual which shows how you can automate the process of updating your blog by importing content via other websites' RSS feeds. There are certain legal and moral issues around this, which I'll discuss later, but if you can live with these, Autoblogging Decoded actually makes the process of setting up an 'autoblog' very quick and easy.

The main manual starts by looking at how you can set up autoblogging on Blogger blogs. As a Blogger user myself, I was pleased to see this free service from Google getting a mention. Blogger is still a very popular blogging platform, although these days many people prefer the greater flexibility of the open source WordPress.

In his manual, Marian starts by explaining how to set up a Blogger blog if you don't have one already. He then reveals how to configure your blog for autoblogging, how to find suitable RSS feeds, and how to set up Blogger to publish these feeds (using another free service that converts RSS feeds to email). It's all very clever, and every step is well illustrated with large, easy-to-read screengrabs. You really don't need any technical expertise to be able to do this. I tried it myself on an old Blogger blog I hadn't updated for over a year, and the method worked perfectly straight away.

The second section of the main manual explains how to adapt this technique using a WordPress blog. Again, this is very clearly set out. In addition, Marian explains how you can set up a WordPress blog to autopublish a series of posts from PLR (private label rights) articles you may have in your possession. This requires other software, not all of which is free, but again it's all very straightforward, and avoids any problems with copyright and so on.

Of course, the reason for doing this is to earn a sideline income, and Marian recommends using AdSense ads for this purpose, as they are very easy to set up (on Blogger blogs especially). I would just add a tip of my own here, which is that if you hope to earn decent sums from Adsense, choose a topic for your blog which is in demand among advertisers, e.g. insurance or credit cards. On no account create a blog about writing ;-)

You could also use other ways to monetize your blog, of course, including ads from relevant affiliate networks (e.g. my publishers, The WCCL Network), ClickBank, and so on.

Along with the main manual you also get a number of bonus manuals, some of them (surprisingly, in my view) unadvertised. These include advanced tips on how, for example, to autoblog YouTube videos or Yahoo Answers. There are also guides to driving more traffic to your blog, another very important requirement for making money from it. A regularly updated blog will automatically attract attention from the search engines, but you need to prime the pump as well, and these guides reveal how to do this.

Finally, with Autoblogging Decoded, you get Auto Blog Feeder, a tool for automatically drip-feeding content such as PLR articles into WordPress blogs. This is sold elsewhere for $47.

I mentioned earlier that there may be some legal or moral issues about using content from RSS feeds to populate your blog, and I need to say a word about this now. The republishing of website content from RSS feeds is a gray area in law, and some publishers take a dim view of it, arguing that their feeds are intended for use in personal feed readers only. This blog post has a useful discussion on the issue. In addition, a blog composed entirely of material taken from other people's sites could be regarded as a form of spamming. A Blogger site found to be doing this could be banned by Google.

My own view is that autoblogging is best used in combination with original posts. In addition, you can edit the autoblogged posts to include your own commentary on them; this is then likely to constitute Fair Use under copyright law. Of course, this will reduce the amount of time and effort you save by autoblogging.

Overall, I thought AutoBlogging Decoded provided very clear and detailed explanations for a range of techniques which I can see would have many possible uses - some more widely acceptable than others. If you are looking for ideas for a money-making sideline, or simply a method to update your blog/s more often, I recommend checking it out. If nothing else, it will open your eyes to what is possible.

Free Stuff for Writers From WCCL!

Regular readers will know that this blog is sponsored by my publishers, The WCCL Network.

WCCL publish my courses such as Write Any Book in Under 28 Days and The Wealthy Writer, along with a wide range of other training courses, software, CDs, and so on.

You might not know, however, that WCCL also offers a number of free websites, resources and services for writers.

First among these is my forum at www.mywriterscircle.com. This is an open-access forum with nearly 9000 members all over the world. My role is to manage MWC, and I am particularly pleased by the reputation that it has built up as the Internet's friendliest writers' forum. Much of the credit for this must go to my dedicated team of volunteer moderators, of course.

If you want to get feedback on your writing, ask (and answer) questions, discover new writers' markets, or just shoot the breeze with your fellow authors, My Writers Circle should be high on your Favorites list. You can browse the forum without logging in, but to get the most from it you should really register (free) and become a member. It's easy and it's fun, although admittedly many of us do find it rather addictive!

Another free service sponsored by WCCL is WritersFM, the Internet's first online radio station by and for writers. WritersFM features a mixture of music, writing tips and in-depth interviews with successful authors, conducted by your irrepressible host, Karl Moore. There are some big names among them, including historial novelist Bernard Cornwell, British politician turned author Edwina Currie, world famous screenwriting guru Syd Field, top copywriter Joe Vitale, and many others (including yours truly).

WritersFM broadcasts continually on a regularly updated loop, or you can stream or download most of the interviews from their podcasts page. Note that you will need a broadband/DSL connection to listen to WritersFM, however.

Yet another WCCL giveaway is the bi-weekly Smart Writers newsletter. This has some great articles about writing, along with tips and advice, inspirational quotations, and much more. Yes, it also includes promotions for WCCL's writing-related products, but these are almost invariably offered at a discount - and, naturally, there is never any obligation to buy anything.

You can subscribe to Smart Writers via their Writers Giveaway site. Essentially, you get a huge selection of writing-related software, e-books, MP3s, and so on, just for signing up. You can unsubscribe any time you like, of course, so why not join the newsletter's existing 300,000+ subscribers and sign up today?

Finally, they're not aimed at writers, but WCCL also sponsors two other giveaway sites which operate in a similar way to the writers' site. The Self Growth Giveaway offers personal development guides, software, even free hypnosis downloads, just for signing up to a newsletter. And the Software Giveaway provides a vast range of free Windows software and utilities, including programs that will boost your creativity, protect your privacy online, and help you work more efficiently. I strongly recommend checking both of these excellent offers out!

Photo credit: Rileyroxx on Flickr.com

Review: Blog Carnival Submitter

Regular readers will know that recently I've become a fan of blog carnivals as a way of generating more traffic to a blog. I blogged about the subject earlier this year in this post.

So when I heard about a new piece of software called Blog Carnival Submitter that promised to automate the process of finding blog carnivals and submitting links to them, I had to get a copy to check it out.

Blog Carnival Submitter works in conjunction with the BlogCarnival website, which opens by default in the lower panel of the software (see screengrab below). The BlogCarnival site acts as a kind of central clearing house for blog carnivals, although there is of course no obligation for carnivals to register with them.


Most of the things you can do with Blog Carnival Submitter you can also do on the BlogCarnival website, but Blog Carnival Submitter makes the process quicker and simpler, especially for multiple submissions.

You start using Blog Carnival Submitter by clicking on Find Blogs in the upper left-hand panel. This enables you to search the BlogCarnival site by keywords. You can search for a number of different keywords to produce a longer list (using the keyword 'writing' produced fewer carnivals than I expected, so I added other terms such as 'author' and 'work from home').

Once you have a list of suitable blog carnivals, the software will check if they are valid or not. You can delete any that aren't, and save the list for future use if you want.

You can then choose any posts you want to submit to these carnivals from your own blog/s, using the panel at the top right. It takes only a moment to add the necessary details, and you can then set the software to automatically submit all your chosen posts to all your selected blog carnivals (or select what to submit where manually if you prefer).

Blog Carnival Submitter also has a range of additional features. In particular, as the BlogCarnival website for some reason blocks users from certain countries, Blog Carnival Submitter lets you submit your blog posts using an anonymous proxy server. This is a very useful feature if it applies to you, although thankfully for me in Britain it isn't an issue.

Overall, I think Blog Carnival Submitter is a neat, if not earth-shattering, piece of software. It will be most relevant if you regularly submit links to a range of blog carnivals, or you plan to. If you just want to test the water with a single post, you may as well use the BlogCarnival website itself. But if you get serious about this method of traffic generation, in my view it's well worth paying the modest fee for Blog Carnival Submitter. I shall definitely be using it myself from now on.

Site Build It! Two-For-One Offer

Some of you might be interested to know that the people behind Site Build It! are currently holding a Buy-One-Get-One-Free Christmas Sale.

That means you can buy a copy of Site Build It! (SBI! for short) and give one to a friend or relative as a gift. Or two of you could get together and split the cost. Or you could keep both copies for yourself, of course.

For those who don't know, SBI! (the exclamation mark is part of its name) is a complete website building course and hosting product rolled into one. It's a very well established product, but one that is constantly being refined and developed by SBI! supremo Ken Evoy and his team.

SBI! makes website building about as easy as it can be. There is no need to know anything about HTML, FTP or anything technical (though, of course, it never hurts to have a grasp of the basics).

SBI! takes you through every step of the website research, building and marketing process, providing in-depth advice and tools to help you at every stage. You can also get as much help as you need from the SBI! support team and a thriving community of fellow SBI! site-builders.

There is no way I can go through all the features of SBI! here, as there are just too many of them! Click on this link for all the relevant info. Alternatively, if you'd like to see a video tour of SBI!, which takes you through how the product works step by step, just click here.

The current offer closes at midnight on December 25th, and from past experience it's unlikely to be repeated until this time next year. So if you're at all interested in starting an SBI! site, I strongly recommend taking action now.

LATE NEWS! I've just heard that the SBI! Two-for-One offer has been extended till Monday 5 January.

The Benefits of Twitter for Writers

I've been on Twitter for over seven months now, and have just reached 100 followers. So I thought this would be a good time to update you on my progress, and share my thoughts on the pros and cons of Twitter for writers.

For those still unfamiliar with Twitter, I should explain that it's a free social networking and micro-blogging service.

As a Twitter member, you can post short messages or 'tweets' of up to 140 characters. These are displayed on your Twitter homepage and instantly delivered to any other Twitter users who have signed up to receive them (your 'followers').

Looking at this blog post I wrote shortly after joining Twitter, I see that I originally anticipated using it as a method for notifying people when I made a post on this blog. I still use it for that, but actually I have found it useful in many other respects as well.

One is that being on Twitter has significantly boosted the readership of this blog. This typically happens due to the 'viral' qualities of Twitter. Here's how this can work. You post an interesting article on your blog and share it with your followers via Twitter. Some of them find it interesting enough to re-tweet to their followers as well, and some of these people in turn re-tweet it to others. In this way, word of a good post (or website) can reach hundreds or even thousands of other people in an ever-widening circle.

Through Twitter, also, I have got to hear about other useful resources, markets, opportunities, and so on. I've discovered some great websites and online tools that I wouldn't otherwise have heard about from other users. I also try to spread this information to my own followers, of course.

And Twitter also generates a surprising sense of community. Even though messages have a maximum of 140 characters, this is still enough to interact with other members, ask and answer questions, and so on. Through my circle of Twitter followers, I've obtained advice on buying a new netbook computer, feedback on my blog posts, invitations to write guest posts for other blogs, and offers to write guest posts for mine.

I know that other writers on Twitter have actually received job offers and joint-venture proposals as a direct result of their membership. This hasn't happened to me yet, but I can certainly see how it might.

Are there any downsides to Twitter? Only one as far as I can see, which is that it can start consuming large amounts of your time, especially if you follow a lot of people and want to read all their updates. I try to get around this in two ways.

One is to confine most of my Twittering to short bursts, when (for example) I'm going through my email and RSS feeds and find things I want to share. And second, I have been quite cautious about the number of people I follow. I know some people automatically follow anyone who follows them, but I don't feel able to do this for fear of being swamped - even though I know I would probably get more followers if I did. I'm still trying to work out the best way of dealing with this issue.

To any writer considering whether or not to join Twitter, I would strongly advise giving it a go, especially if you already have a website and/or blog. I would also highly recommend using a Twitter client to get the most from the service. You can just operate via your Twitter homepage, but then the only time you will see incoming messages is when you visit that page.

Personally I use Twitterfox, a Firefox add-on that sits at the bottom of the screen when I am online and flashes up any incoming messages as they arrive. Twitterfox lets me view all recent messages at any time, and also has other useful features, e.g. a facility to quickly add the URL of any page I am viewing to an update, so that I can share it with my followers.

You can also get dedicated desktop clients for Twitter like Twhirl and Tweetdeck. I can see myself graduating to one of these at some point, but for now Twitterfox meets my needs. I also use several other add-on services, including Twitterfeed, which automatically tweets my blog updates; Twitthat, which is handy for quickly recommending a web page on Twitter; and TwitWall, a service that lets you post longer messages, pictures and videos, and automatically tweets them to your followers.

To sum up, since joining I've become a big Twitter fan. I now see it not just as an 'announcement service', but as a means of sharing useful info and building a community of fellow writers. In addition, it provides a method for me to publicise my blog and broaden my base of (potential) readers, publishers, clients and collaborators. If I've persuaded you of the benefits of joining, please visit my Twitter homepage at www.twitter.com/nickdaws and, if you like what you see, do sign up to follow me.

Anonymeister Review

In this post I'm reviewing The Anonymeister, the latest software release from my publishers, The WCCL Network.

The Anonymeister is an anonymous web browser. In other words, it lets you browse the web anonymously, without leaving any trace behind you. It's part of WCCL's range of computer privacy software, of which you can read more on their Privacy Central website.

Why might a writer want to use an anonymous browser? I can think of a number of reasons...

* You are researching the website of a competitor, either on your own behalf or on behalf of a client, and don't want them to know you have visited.

* You are a well-known author or celebrity, and don't wish your web browsing history to become public knowledge.

* You are researching a sensitive subject, and don't wish to alert the authorities to your interest.

* You want to visit a website that is normally barred to people in your country.

The Anonymeister (and the very similar Best Anonymous Browser, also available from WCCL) provides a straightforward, non-techy method for anyone to browse the web anonymously, without the need for any programming or configuration.

You can read more about how The Anonymeister works on the website, but briefly it routes all of your web traffic through two servers in the Tor anonymity network. This ensures that your IP address is completely hidden from the outside world. According to WCCL, it can't even be traced by law enforcement agencies.

I found the software easy to install, and just like any other browser to use. The Anonymeister uses a customized version of the popular Firefox browser. If you currently use Firefox you can still use your normal version as well, but you can't have it running at the same time as The Anonymeister. You can, however, have Internet Explorer running simultaneously if you like.

As well as letting you surf anonymously via the Tor network, The Anonymeister also ensures that any trace of your browsing history is erased as soon as you close it. In this way, your privacy is preserved both on the web and on your own machine.

The Anonymeister also has some extra Firefox plug-ins preinstalled, e.g. AdBlock Plus, which automatically blocks most adverts from showing on the pages you browse. Of course, you can uninstall or deactivate these plug-ins if you wish.

I found that The Anonymeister appeared to work well at preserving my privacy. There are various sites you can visit (e.g. this one) which will show you the IP number and location of your computer. A good test is to visit one of these sites using The Anonymeister and see what location and IP number it shows for you, and then visit again via your normal browser for comparison purposes.

I did find The Anonymeister slower than my usual browser, so I wouldn't personally use it all the time. From time to time, too, it produces some unexpected results. For example, this morning I tried to visit www.google.com via The Anonymeister. I must have shown up to Google as being in Germany, because www.google.de opened instead! Still, this does illustrate the efficiency of the software.

Overall, I was impressed with how well The Anonymeister worked for me. If you need a quick, simple way of browsing the web anonymously, it's worth a look.

Brain Evolution System Review

I have mentioned the new Brain Evolution System from my colleagues Karl Moore and Lee Benson a few times in this blog recently.

I have been trying this system out for the last three weeks, and am now in a position to provide a review of the product. But first, for the benefit of new readers especially, I thought I should start with some background information.

The Brain Evolution System is a six-CD self-development program. It uses advanced scientific methods for 'entraining' your brain, with the aim of helping you control stress, become more productive, sleep better, increase your creativity, and so on.

This has nothing to do with self-hypnosis, 'positive thinking', or any mystical mumbo-jumbo. The Brain Evolution System applies scientific techniques to help you control your brainwaves to achieve peak performance. It uses audio CDs, which you have to listen to via headphones to get the full benefit from.

The Brain Evolution System uses a mixture of technologies to achieve its goals, but probably the most important is binaural beats. To explain this, I need to start with a bit of theory.

If you've studied psychology (which I have - a long time ago!), you'll know that scientists can measure the electrical activity in our brains using a device called an electroencephalogram (EEG). It has been known for a long time that different mental states are associated with different patterns of electrical activity.

Someone who is fully awake and alert will exhibit relatively high frequency, low amplitude, electrical activity patterns (15-40Hz), known as beta waves. Someone resting or meditating will produce lower frequency alpha waves of 9 to 14Hz. This state is often associated with creativity, and is the frequency that WCCL's Writers Block CD (which also uses binaural beats) aims to entrain. Below that are theta waves (5-8Hz), associated with daydreaming and free-flowing thoughts - this is also a highly 'creative' frequency. And finally, there are delta waves (1.5 to 4Hz), the lowest frequency waves that occur in sleep.

For people such as writers who want to increase their creativity, there is clearly a lot to be said for any system that can help get brainwaves into the alpha and theta ranges. Unfortunately, you can't achieve this simply by playing sounds at these frequencies, as they are below most people's hearing thresholds.

However, it has been discovered that if you play sounds of slightly different frequencies to each ear, they combine within the brain to create a low frequency resonance. If you play a tone of 320Hz in one ear and 330Hz in the other, for example, it will create a resonance at a frequency of 10Hz - the difference between them. 10Hz is an alpha wave frequency; so by using this method, your brain can be entrained into a high alpha state.

The Brain Evolution System uses binaural beats, and two additional, complementary methods, to entrain the brain to a variety of mental states. The company calls this the 3P DEAP Method, for reasons you can read about on their background info site if you want to.

The six CDs in the set will take your brain through its entire range of 'operating frequencies', from beta through to delta, though with a particular emphasis on the alpha and theta ranges. For greater effect several layers of entrainment are applied simultaneously. The diagram below shows, in simplified form, the frequencies targeted by each of the six CDs. As you will see, CD5 - titled Neptune's Cave - takes you down very low indeed!


So much for the theory - how does it work in practice? Well, the CDs come in a handy carrying case, and you simply load them into your PC or music center to play them (you can also get MP3 versions for iPods and such like if you prefer, though CDs are recommended to get the best results). As mentioned earlier, it's best to listen through a pair of headphones rather than loudspeakers. The CDs work by producing slightly different frequencies in each ear, and if you listen through speakers, inevitably the sounds from the left and the right side will get mixed up.

To use the system properly, you are meant to listen to each CD six days a week for a month, then move on to the next. For the purpose of reviewing the system I didn't want to have to wait six months, however, so I tried all the CDs over a three-week period, including some 'days off' so that I could compare the effects.

I found listening to the CDs quite pleasant. The sound of running water is used on all of them, but in addition there are other sounds, including birdsong, bells and musical chimes. Thankfully, unlike WCCL's Writer's Block CD (which I do otherwise recommend), there is no irritating 'introduction' on these CDs - in each case, you get straight into the main track, which is half an hour long.

So what benefits did I derive from listening to the CDs? The effects I experienced even after my first few uses were actually quite noticeable. In particular, after listening, I felt an immediate sharpening of my mental processes.

To give an example, recently I had to review some quite complex software for a client, all within a three-day period. It was a challenging assignment, as not only did I have to master three pieces of unfamiliar software in a short time, I then had to produce a 4000-word comparative review for a knowledgeable readership. I was pleased to discover that focusing on the task after listening to the CDs was much easier than I expected. I quickly got to grips with the software, and the writing flowed really well. The article was finished in two days, and I got some great feedback on it too. I really don't think I could have done the job, or at least not nearly as well, without the Brain Evolution System.

The other benefits I experienced were more surprising. One was that I actually seemed to have a lot more energy. In some cases this could be slightly counter-productive, as I found myself wanting to get up and do something physical rather than sit and work at my computer. Still, I guess I can live with that!

I also found myself sleeping better. I've not been sleeping any longer than usual - the reverse, actually - but somehow the quality of sleep I've been getting has been better since I started using the system. I dare say this has contributed to the higher energy levels and better concentration I am noticing as well.

In any event, I am very pleased with the benefits I have been getting from the Brain Evolution System so far, and definitely intend to go on using it over the coming months. I will keep readers of this blog informed of how I get on.

There is one other thing I should mention: as well as the CDs, you also get a month's supply of Acuity capsules. Acuity is a supplement designed to complement the Brain Evolution System CDs. To quote from the website, 'Its powerful ingredients help enhance clarity of thought, mind power, and provide instantly-noticeable focus.' Each capsule includes energy-boosting Guarana and Kola Nut, memory-enhancing Huperzine A, brain-building DHA, and so on. To be honest, I haven't tried Acuity yet, for two reasons. One is that I wanted to test the CDs reasonably scientifically without changing any other variables as well; and secondly, I find the CDs stimulating enough on their own anyway!

The Brain Evolution System is currently on offer at a special launch discount price. In addition, you can test it out free and without obligation for 21 days, to assess exactly how it works for you. There is also a seven-months' money-back guarantee if you are in any way dissatisfied with the results you get. In my view there is nothing to lose - and a lot potentially to gain - by giving it a try.

For more information about the Brain Evolution System and to request your free trial, click through any of the links in this blog post, or on the banner below.

Great Christmas Gifts for Writers

Speak it softly, but Christmas is just a month from today...

Assuming you celebrate the festival, or at any rate the gift-giving and receiving aspect, you may well have some writer friends or relatives you'll be buying for.

In this post, then, I thought I'd set out some suggested Christmas gifts for writers. These are all things I'd like myself, if I didn't in most cases have them already! Note that to save time, and avoid this post running on too long, where possible I've linked to earlier posts when I first mentioned the items in question.

Thinking of books first of all, one top recommendation for anyone who doesn't have it already is Stephen King's On Writing. It doesn't matter whether the potential recipient is or is not a horror fan. On Writing is an entertaining and informative read, written in King's usual highly accessible style (though without any corpses).

The book is a mixture of autobiographical material - some of it very amusing - and tips and advice for writers. The latter is useful if not earth-shattering. I would see this book as primarily an entertaining read rather than a writing manual, but none the worse for that. Image links to the book on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com can be found below. As usual, if you are receiving this post by email, you will need to visit my blog to see them.





A good introductory guide for new writers is The Greatest Freelance Writing Tips in the World by my near-neighbour Linda Jones. It is primarily written for UK authors, though much of Linda's advice would apply equally across the world. Linda comes from a journalistic background, and her advice on 'pitching' to newspaper editors especially is well worth reading. At its modest asking price, this beautifully produced book is a steal.

For any aspiring TV scriptwriters, especially if they happen to be science fiction fans as well, the newly published Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale by Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook would be an ideal present. In this fascinating (and beautifully illustrated) book you get to see how the popular BBC TV series is written and edited. It's also well worth visiting the book's dedicated website, where you can read more reviews and background info, and download six free scripts from the show.

And speaking of scriptwriting, if your friend or relative is an aspiring movie writer, don't forget that my sponsors, WCCL, produce a popular guide on CD-ROM called Write a Movie in a Month. If you order now it should arrive in plenty of time for Christmas. And if you order via my blog review, you can get a $20 discount AND my two extra bonus reports!

Another gift any writer would be delighted to receive is one of the annual market directories. For US publications, you can't beat Writer's Market, published by the all-conquering Writer's Digest organization. For UK markets, there are now three annual market guides battling it out: The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, The Writer's Handbook, and the latest arrival, Writer's Market UK. When I reviewed all three earlier this year, Writer's Market UK came out slightly ahead of the other two. But read my blog review of UK market guides and see what you think.

Leaving books aside now, an idea suggested to me by my colleague Suzie Harris is a digital pen. These clever devices let you take notes anywhere - in a meeting, watching TV, on vacation, in bed, and so on. Then, when you get to your office or study, you can plug the pen into your PC, and everything you wrote will be transferred into it.

A popular digital pen (and the one Suzie wants) is the Dane-Elec Zpen. This pen also has OCR software that will read your handwriting (assuming it's legible) and save it as text. For writers, I could see this modestly priced tool having a whole host of uses.

I've put links to the Zpen at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk below. As mentioned earlier, if you are receiving this post by email, you may need to visit my blog to see the image links.





A final possibility is an e-book reader. I believe that 2009 will be the year that e-books finally take off in the mass market, as the latest e-book readers really do make this a comfortable and enjoyable way of reading a book (the old argument about not being able to read them in bed definitely no longer applies).

In the US, Amazon's Kindle Reader has been sweeping all before it. For technical reasons the Kindle is not yet available in the UK and Europe, though it is expected to be launched in the new year. In the mean time, however, the Sony Reader has been getting good reviews.

Whichever reader you get, there are thousands of ebooks you can download free of charge, both classics and newly published books whose authors have chosen to distribute them in this way (see this one, for example). Other ebooks you will have to pay for, but they are cheaper than the equivalent printed volume and won't take up any space on your shelves after you have read them. Again, I've put links to both leading ebook readers below.

Happy Christmas shopping!

100 Fun and Useful Search Engines for Writers

That's the title of another very useful article I came across online the other day.

100 Fun and Useful Search Engines for Writers lists search engines under a number of different category headings. They include image searches, blog searches, specialty searches, medical & technical searches, foreign-language searches, and meta-search engines (which aggregate results from several search engines).

As they say in the introduction to the article, 'Our list of 100 different search tools can help you manage your business, become a better biz tech or web writer, find primary sources, look up translations, and find the more authoritative information out there with minimal effort. Bookmark your favorites to take full advantage of everything they have to offer.'

I found some useful resources in this article that I hadn't known about before. They include the fast image search tool Picsearch and a range of non-traditional search engines such as Mooter, which presents your search results in mind-map-style clusters.

I can see myself using some of the sites listed in 100 Fun and Useful Search Engines for Writers quite regularly in future.

* Don't forget that readers of this blog can also obtain the premium research tool Research Wizard Pro for half price. See this blog post for more details.

Brain Evolution System is Launched!

My colleague Karl Moore, in collaboration with brainwave pioneers Michael Kelley and Lee Benson, has recently launched a new personal development program called the Brain Evolution System (or BrainEv for short).

This is a massive six-CD program that has been almost a year in the making. I'll be reviewing it fully once I've had a chance to evaluate it properly myself, but briefly it uses advanced scientific methods for 'entraining' your brain, helping you to control stress, become more productive, sleep better, increase your creativity, and so on.

Just to emphasise, this is nothing to do with self-hypnosis, 'positive thinking', or anything like that. The Brain Evolution System uses sonic technology to help you control your brainwaves to achieve peak performance. It uses audio CDs, which you have to listen to via headphones to get the full benefit from.

The Brain Evolution System employs some of the same technologies as WCCL's popular Writer's Block CD, e.g. binaural beats. The new program is designed to be much more wide-ranging, however, and it's not only for writers. Users should experience benefits across almost every aspect of their lives.

The Brain Evolution System is currently on offer at a special launch discount price. In addition, you can test it out for free for 21 days, to assess exactly how it works and how it may be able to help you. There is also an unprecedented seven-months' money-back guarantee if you are in any way dissatisfied with the results you get.

For more information about The Brain Evolution System, click through any of the links in this blog post, or on the banner below. As mentioned above, I'm currently trying out the program myself, and will publish a full review here soon. See also this post: Brain Evolution System Videos.

NEW! My full review of the Brain Evolution System is now up. Click on the link in this paragraph to read it!

Writing Tips Contest Results

Yes, judging of my Writing Tips Contest is now complete, and I am happy to announce the winners!

To remind you, the rules required a writing tip of 250 words or less, including the title. I had two prizes of a year's subscription to SpellCheckPlus Pro to give away. One I have chosen myself (with a little bit of help from Jayne). The other has been randomly selected by my cat Reggie.

I've reproduced all the competition entries at the end of this post, lightly edited and with titles supplied by me if the author didn't provide one. I thought all of the entries had merit, and another judge might well have come up with a different winner (I'm pleased to say that Jayne agreed with my choice, however!).

So, without further ado, I'm delighted to reveal that the winner of the contest was Suzie, with her entry 'Keep Accurate Submission Records'.

I liked this for a number of reasons: it is well-written and succinct; it presents a specific, useful piece of advice that is germane to every writer; it is illustrated with an amusing anecdote; and it concludes by stating its key message clearly at the end. It didn't hurt, either, that Suzie followed all the rules of the contest to the letter. You can read her winning entry by scrolling down (it's the first in the list).

The other prize was awarded randomly by Reggie. If you want to know the mechanics of this, there were six entries left after taking away Suzie's, so I put a dice on the table with Reggie, and waited until he batted it onto the floor. He 'threw' a 4, so I picked the fourth entry, not including Suzie's. Congratulations then to Jo, who wins the other prize for her entry 'Use the Resources Around You'.

Jo, I will need your email address to notify the people at SpellCheckPlus Pro so that they can arrange for your free subscription. Suzie, I already have your GMail address, so I will give them that unless you tell me otherwise. Click here to contact me.

Congratulations to the winners, and many thanks to everyone who took part. Many thanks also to the sponsors, SpellCheckPlus - see the main page of their website for details of their free online spelling and grammar checker, and SpellCheckPlus Pro for their premium service. And, of course, thank you to Reggie, whose morning nap I interrupted for this important task!

All the tips are reproduced below, with Suzie's winning tip first.

1. KEEP ACCURATE SUBMISSION RECORDS - Suzie

When you send off an email or written piece, make sure you keep a diary or computer record of where you sent it, to whom, and the date - along with the details of the submission.

You can use a spreadsheet or, like me, if you prefer paper and pen, then buy a small notebook from a stationery shop and keep accurate hard copy records.

This can save embarrassing situations, such as the one I recently found myself in.

I used a web page submission form to fire off a query letter to a publisher. I didn't even think of making a note at the time, as I assumed they would reply before I forgot. What a mistake that was!

A few months later the publisher contacted me to thank me for my query and requested a full proposal. I could not remember what I had suggested to them so I had the embarrassing task of writing back to say that my PC had died and I had lost all my records. It wasn't true of course, and needless to say I never heard from them again.

So no matter how mundane it may seem, make sure you keep records of everything so that you don't miss the chance of being published.

2. IMAGINE YOU'RE AN ARTIST - Heather

As I write, and particularly when I edit my work, I imagine I'm an artist painting a landscape scene.

When you first put pen to paper (or, more likely, fingers to keyboard) you are using a wide brush, blocking out the background with bold strokes. You're aiming for the correct scale and proportions at this point, giving yourself a framework to work to. Perhaps, in some scenes, your eye will be drawn to one section of the canvas and you'll add in a little more detail with a narrower brush, but generally your main aim is to cover the canvas with paint.

Remember Rolf Harris...can you tell what it is yet? No, it won't be ready for anyone to read at this point, and if it's a longer story you might be some way from your ideal word count, but it doesn't matter at this stage.

Once your background, or story, is complete you'll pick up your thinner brushes and start building up layers of colour to add depth, light and shadow - giving your characters personality and emotion. Finally, you can choose a really fine brush and go over the canvas yet again, adding in those finishing touches, perfecting your word choices and bringing the picture to life.

3. DREAM UP YOUR STORY - Leah

I'm sure you're familiar with the advice to have little notebooks and pens in every room of your house. In the bathroom, on your bedside table. And here I'm going to tell you to not use them. Not with this technique, which I've been using successfully ever since I first started writing as a child.

When you go to bed, don't count sheep. Think about your story. Dream about your main character while you're still awake. Dream while you're in that twilight zone between wakefulness and sleep - but don't reach for your pen and paper; it will disrupt the flow of your dream. Dream about what's going to happen until you fall asleep.

When you wake up, still half asleep, pick up your dream where you left it last night and allow yourself to dream for just a little while longer. Then, when you're finally fully awake, grab pen and paper and write it all down.

You can also use this technique when you're taking a nice long hot bath, or in the car on a two-hour drive to your grandparents up North... Just make sure you're in the passenger seat.

4. LISTEN TO YOUR WORDS - Hughdunit

When you read, you subconsciously hear the words in your mind, so when you have written something, it makes sense to read it aloud, to make sure it conveys what you want it to. If it sounds right, it probably is. But beware. It might still need revising.

Driving too fast along the jungle track an elephant suddenly appeared in front of her.

The reader will know what you mean, but not before getting a bizarre mental image of an elephant behind the wheel of a speeding car. Your story, and your credibility as a writer, is ruined.

Reading your work aloud will not only show whether the writing makes sense, it will also help with the punctuation. Try saying out loud the following sentence:

She hurried past the cake shop she had already eaten and didn't want to be tempted, she was trying to lose weight.

As it is written, without proper punctuation, it's nonsense. What, she'd already eaten the cake shop? Reading it aloud immediately shows that it should be three separate sentences.

She hurried past the cake shop. She had already eaten, and didn't want to be tempted. She was trying to lose weight.

The comma after eaten is not essential, but the slight pause makes it sound better.

Whatever you write, whether a postcard or novel, reading it aloud will make it better.

5. USE THE RESOURCES AROUND YOU - Jo

If you are struggling to create characters you can use the resources around you.

Spend some time sitting in a cafe or pub and use other people to help mould your character or create a new one.

Listen to other people's conversations, are they telling any funny stories? Are they discussing any burning issues or talking about something that has actually happened?

Look at what they are wearing, how they have their hair, how they greet each other.

Ask yourself how they respond when they are laughing, how they look when they are confused and body language and non-verbal signs.

Alternatively look at old photos of schoolfriends or people you were on holiday with and try and remember their personality traits and mannerisms and use these in your characters.

As time has elapsed and you have fitted them to your story they won't be able to be identified but will be very believable.

I hope this helps either form an existing character or inspire a new one, perhaps even a whole new tale just from eavesdropping someone else's conversation.

6. STAY ON A ROLL - Margarett

My best tip is when you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, maybe paint to canvas and when you are on a roll keep going!

If inspiration hits in the middle of the night get up and put it on the page. We lose so much by not putting it down for safe keeping.

I know I had a big inspiration for this and then went to sleep and lost it. Seriously, get that first draft down, no matter if it does not play well.

That is what tweaking is for, and second drafts and third. Just keep writing till it's done and then worry about editing and touching it up. Get inspiration from anyone, anywhere and from anything.

Paint the picture you want seen with your words.

7. HOW TO CATCH ONE ERROR EVERY TIME YOU WRITE - Casey Quinn

In Microsoft we trust is a rule many writers come to follow. In doing so we leave ourselves open to sneaky writing errors that slip by Microsoft's editing. As a result, your writing looks, well, unedited. These simple mistakes happen to everyone and are the reason why you cannot trust your word processing software to do what only human eyes can. Next time you finish your writing and smile from clearing all underlined errors the editing gods determined are your only issues, comb over your writing in search of the following errors.

Right spelling, wrong form: While 'there' is spelled correctly, did you mean 'their'? 'See' instead of 'sea'? 'Write' instead of 'Right'? Make sure the correct forms of the words are being used.

Right spelling, wrong word: It happens. We meant to say 'he had bent down to pick something up' and instead we typed 'he had been down to pick something up.' Why did we do it? Who knows, but it is up to you to catch it!

Tenses: If only! If only they were smart enough to tell you that in one sentence your character took actions in the past but was currently in the present.

While the editing list is endless (plot, structure, dialogue, etc), if you run through your writing at the end look for these three things. I bet you make at least one more change just when you thought you were done!

Review: Research Wizard Pro

I was lucky enough recently to be offered a free review copy of Research Wizard Pro, also known as Search Accelerator Pro. So, now I've been using it for a little while, here are my thoughts on this premium research tool.

The first thing to say is that Research Wizard Pro is NOT a search engine or search engine aggregator (a tool that combines the results of a number of search engines in a single list). Rather, it is a software tool that aims to help you use the wealth of research resources on the Internet as quickly and effectively as possible.

The first thing you notice when you launch RWP (as I'll call it from now on) is that it offers a wide array of icons, buttons and boxes. Here's a screen grab of just one set of controls, the search categories toolbar.


Fortunately, RWP comes with a highly professional, 73-page user's manual in PDF form. And for those who learn better visually, you also get a series of instructional videos, including a Quick Start Video to get you up and running as soon as possible.

You start searching on RWP by entering any keyword or words in the box at the top left of the screen. The results of this search in Google (or whatever default search engine you choose) will then appear in the results panel in the middle of the screen.

So far, so unexciting, but with RWP this is just the start. You can refine your search in all sorts of ways. For example, you will see a list of other suggested search terms in the panel down the left of the screen. The terms listed include tutorials, websites, articles, blogs, newsletters, reviews, top tens, and so on. Clicking on any of these then launches a new search for your original keyword/s plus the term in question, helping you to narrow down your search.

Of course, you could do this yourself without RWP, but using the software makes the process much quicker, and it also suggests other search terms you might not otherwise have thought of. You can also set it to show only PDFs or images if you prefer.

Even this, however, is only the beginning. Using the search categories toolbar pictured above, for example, you can access a huge range of search tools.

The way this works is that the top row represents a particular category of search, e.g. the camera represents image search and the film icon is video search, while the RSS icon represents RSS feeds, blogs, blog articles, and so on. The lower row changes according to which item in the top row you have selected, and includes links to specific search tools in the category concerned.

Finally - although this by no means exhausts the options offered by RWP - the Related Searches toolbar features a number of links that will suggest related searches you might also want to try. For example, there is a link to the Overture search term suggestion tool, which will suggest other search terms related to your original one, with stats showing how often these terms have been searched for recently. If you are researching a how-to guide or article, this could be useful for discovering what people most want to know about the subject concerned.

I have been using Research Wizard Pro for about a month now. Although initially I found the huge range of options a bit daunting, it didn't take me long to get the hang of it, and I wouldn't want to be without it now. Although RWP does save me time, even more important to me is the way it suggests search options and resources I would never have thought of myself. I'm sure the quality of my work has improved as a result.

Do I have any reservations about RWP? Well, only a couple of minor ones. One is that when I first downloaded it I got an 'Access Denied' message when I tried to launch it - no other explanation given! After some research, I found out that this was caused by the User Account Control in my Windows Vista operating system. Setting the program always to Run as Administrator solved the problem. I blame Microsoft for this rather than RWP, but it's something to be aware of if you use Vista.

Second, I was a bit surprised to discover that to access some of the bonus videos, I had to provide my name and email address over again. I couldn't see the point of this, since the publishers obviously had my contact details already. I hope they will scrap this requirement soon. You can watch the main instructional videos without having to do this, by the way.

Overall, I am happy to recommend Research Wizard Pro to anyone who does a lot of online research - it WILL save you time and it WILL improve the quality of your research. It's not the cheapest tool you'll ever find, but it is produced to a very high standard, and the instructional manual and videos are exemplary. I also found the company quick and helpful in responding to my queries.

LATE ADDITION: Good news for My Writing Blog readers! Because I like this software, I've managed to persuade the publishers of Research Wizard Pro to give a HUGE discount to readers of my blog. When ordering, just enter WRITER2008 in the coupon code box and click on 'Apply'. The cost will then be cut by a whole FIFTY PERCENT! I'm honestly not sure how long this offer will go on, however; so if you are interested in taking advantage of this discount, please don't delay too long.

Free Report for WAHMs

What's a WAHM, I hear you ask. It's an acronym for Work At Home Mother - a group whose numbers are growing rapidly at the present time.

And the free report I'm talking about is called WAHM-IT! - A Work-at-Home Mother's Guide to Successfully Building a Real Business on the Net.

WAHM-IT! is written by four work-at-home mothers, who have all built their own thriving online businesses. It's a highly professional 85-page PDF produced by the SiteSell organization, publishers of the popular Site Build It website research and building tool.

As you might expect, part of the purpose of WAHM-IT! is to promote Site Build It, but there is plenty of useful information here for anyone, work-at-home mom or not, who is considering setting up an online business. In particular, the four-step C-T-P-M System provides a good framework for setting up a website and making money from it.

The report also includes several case studies of successful, money-making sites created by WAHMs. They show how the women concerned got the ideas for their sites, how long it took them to achieve success, and how they manage to fit the work in among their other domestic responsibilities. Once you've read each case study, it's fascinating to visit the site in question.

Anyway, if you're at all interested in earning money online, in my view WAHM-IT! is well worth a read - and the best thing is, you don't even have to provide your email address to get it!

* One other point I should mention - there is currently a special deal at Site Build It, where you can get a second website for just $100 more than the basic single site licence. You can give the second SBI site to anyone you like, or keep it for yourself. This offer expires at midnight on 31 October. For more info, visit the main Site Build It site and click on the Halloween Special banner.

Two Useful Websites for Online Writers

As a working professional writer, I find that I am increasingly writing and editing content for publication on the web. And that often means adapting content originally written for another medium.

A common scenario involves converting material originally written in Microsoft Word, either by me or someone else, into a 'web-friendly' format. That typically involves stripping out the special characters inserted by Word that make written documents look good but often don't reproduce properly online.

The classic example is Word's 'smart quotes'. If you try to reproduce these in website text, you simply get a string of nonsense characters where the quotation marks should be. Other characters that typically fail to display correctly include dashes and ellipses (...).

Going through a long document stripping out the Word special characters can be a real pain. However, I recently found a useful (and free) online tool that does 90% of the job for you. It's the Replace Smart Quotes tool on the Hochman Consultants website. You simply copy and paste your word document into their online form and click on the 'Remove Funky Punctuation' button. A version of the text with smart quotes turned to straight ones and dashes turned to hyphens then appears, ready for you to copy and paste into your chosen application.

The Replace Smart Quotes tool doesn't replace all of Word's special characters - ellipses are removed, for example, but not replaced by a single full stop, which would be my preferred solution. But I still find this tool a big time-saver, and you can't beat the price, clearly.

Another free online tool I find useful is this HTML Stripper from Zubrag.com (which also offers a range of other free scripts/tools). It works in a similar way to the Replace Smart Quotes tool. You can paste any text with HTML into it, and the HTML characters will automatically be stripped out, leaving you with plain text.

I don't use the HTML Stripper as often as Replace Smart Quotes, but that's simply because stripping out HTML isn't a task I have to do so often. But when these occasions do come round, again, this application saves me an awful lot of time and effort.

Thanks very much to the developers of both of these free tools for making my working life a little easier. Both now have places of honour on my Favorites list!

Writing Tips Competition

Recently my friends at SpellCheckPlus wrote to me offering two more annual subscriptions to their premium service, SpellCheckPlus Pro, for use as competition prizes.

For those who don't know, SpellCheckPlus is a free online spelling and grammar checker. I wrote about it a while ago in this blog post, though since then it has been considerably enhanced.

SpellCheckPlus Pro, as mentioned above, is the premium (paid-for) service. It offers a number of advantages over the free version, including unlimited text length (the free version has a limit of 500 words), no ads, and an 'enrichment' tool that allows users to find alternatives to common, often over-used, words such as nice, good, bad, happy, and so on. The winners of my competition will get a year's free subscription to this service.

So what does the competition involve? Well, I thought I'd ask readers to submit their best writing tips of under 250 words including the title. Tips must be original (I will check this online), and they must be posted as comments on this blog. Only one tip per person, please. I'd also be grateful if you would give your tip a title so that I can identify it.

Tips can cover anything related to writing. Some possibilities might include beating writer's block, generating ideas, creating believable characters, making dialogue life-like, boosting your writing income, improving your grammar/spelling/punctuation, and so on.

As an example, here's a tip I submitted recently to the WeBook blog:

Write With All The Senses
by Nick Daws

The art of writing is bringing your words to life on the page. And one of the best ways to do this is to write with all the senses. In other words, don't just write about what your characters see. Describe what they hear, smell, touch and even taste as well. This is a guaranteed way to make your writing more vivid and exciting.

Here's a quick example:

Tony offered Malcolm one of his roll-ups. Malcolm had previously refused, but because he felt guilty about dropping Tony's paintbrush, this time he accepted. He didn't enjoy it at all though.

Now here's the same scene again, with the senses of taste and touch added. By the way, this paragraph comes from the published novel Painter Man by UK author Jeff Phelps:

Malcolm had already refused one of Tony's roll-ups, but now felt so bad about the brush that he accepted. Between his lips it had the texture of toilet paper. It tasted disgustingly of Tony's Old Spice aftershave.

No prizes for identifying which of these descriptions brings the scene more vividly to life! Writers are always taught to show, not tell, and writing with all the senses is one of the very best ways you can do this.

The closing date for this contest is Friday 31 October, so you have plenty of time to come up with your tip. I will announce the winners on the blog on Wednesday 5 November, so be sure to check back here on or after that date to see if you are a winner. One prize will go to the tip I consider best, while the other will be allocated at random by my cats ;-)

Naturally, contributors will retain the copyright in their tips and are free to offer them elsewhere after the competition closing date. They will, of course, remain on this page of my blog, however.

Good luck, and I look forward to reading some great tips posted as comments below!

* Just a quick reminder - when posting your competition entries here, try to avoid using 'smart quotes' and other special characters from Word, as they won't display properly online. It's best really to compose your tips in the Blogger comments box, or alternatively use a text editor such as Notepad and copy and paste from that.

The contest is now closed. Results will be posted shortly!

New Products From WCCL

Many of you will know that this blog is sponsored by the electronic publishing house WCCL. They also sponsor my forum and the online radio station WritersFM.

Anyway, I thought you might be interested to hear about a couple of new products that have just been released by WCCL, even though neither is aimed directly at writers.

The first is called Internet History Cleaner. WCCL describe this as the world's most powerful privacy tool. With just a single keystroke, this software will automatically erase Internet history for Internet Explorer or Firefox, wipe clean all Windows history, and erase all popular program histories.

Internet History Cleaner is one of WCCL's growing range of Internet security and privacy products. Visit their Privacy Central website to see the whole set.

The other new product is of particular relevance to UK citizens. It's a new guide all about the British medical environment called NHS Secrets.

NHS Secrets is packed with tips on how to get healthcare from the NHS on a par with private health, including how to access shorter waiting lists, how to get free dentistry, and even how to get free cosmetic surgery. The author is an expert on how to get maximum value for money from the NHS - which, remember, YOU pay for via your taxes.

As with all WCCL products, 100% satisfaction guarantees apply, and 24/7 support is available from their customer support website at www.myhelphub.com.

If you've bought any WCCL products in the past, you'll know that the quality is uniformly excellent and the customer service first rate. If you could benefit from either of these products, in my view it's well worth checking them out now while the launch discounts still apply.

Best Firefox Add-ons for Writers

In this recent post I talked about the new Firefox 3 web browser, and why I have been a Firefox fan for some time.

In that post I mentioned that one of the main reasons I like Firefox is the ability you have to customize it using add-ons (also known as plug-ins and extensions). In this post, then, I thought I'd share with you the add-ons I use myself, and then invite you to share yours via the blog's Comments facility.

As I mentioned before, one of my favourite add-ons is Morning Coffee. This creates a coffee cup icon on the main Navigation toolbar. When you click on this it opens your favourite websites (as entered by yourself) simultaneously in different tabs. I use this feature every day to quickly check my blog, forum and a few other sites I like to monitor regularly.

You can customize Morning Coffee to work in various ways, e.g. you can set some sites (perhaps work-related) not to appear at the weekend, or have some only open on certain days. Personally, though, I have all my sites open every day. Work and leisure tend to blend into one for us full-time freelances!

Another add-on I use a lot is Tinyurl Creator. As you may know, Tinyurl is a free service that converts long URLs into much shorter ones. I use it all the time when writing newsletters and articles that refer to specific web pages. The Tinyurl add-on gives you an icon you can click on any time; and it will then automatically create a Tiny URL for the page you are on and save it to your clipboard. It's a simple tool, but one that saves me constantly going back and forth to the Tiny URL website.

My next add-on is equally useful to me, though I don't use it quite as much. This is IE Tab, and what it does is allow you to convert any tab in Firefox into the equivalent in Internet Explorer. This is great with those (few) sites that don't work or display properly in Firefox.

In my case, I find that my Internet banking service doesn't work properly in a Firefox tab - I get error messages when I try to perform certain actions. So I just switch to Internet Explorer mode, and all runs smoothly. A small icon appears in the status bar at the foot of the page, and you click on this to toggle from one mode to the other.

Colorful Tabs is an indulgence, but I like it anyway. It gives all the tabs you are using in Firefox a pretty pastel background. All the colours are different, so it makes it a bit easier to distinguish one from another - but really, I just like it because it livens up my desktop!

TwitterFox is an add-on for users of the micro-blogging and social networking service Twitter. It allows me to see incoming 'tweets' any time I am browsing the web. It also lets me create my own updates, including (if I wish) the URL of the web page I am currently viewing. This makes it easy for me to fit 'Twittering' around my work. If I come across something I think would interest my followers, with Twitterfox it takes only a moment to circulate a quick note about it.

...Do feel free to follow me on Twitter, by the way!

My final add-on is the Text Formatting Toolbar. As the name indicates, this gives you an extra toolbar on your browser, but you can of course switch it off via the View menu when you don't need it. This toolbar lets you quickly format text in bulletin-board code, HTML or Wiki code. I use it mainly for formatting forum messages, but it's also useful for creating hyperlinks in blog comments, and in other cases where you need to create a quick bit of HTML on the fly.

So those are my favourite Firefox add-ons, but I'm sure there are many other good ones I haven't tried. If you're a keen Firefox user like me, why not post details of your favourite add-ons here? And if you're not yet a Firefox fan, perhaps I may have given you another reason to give it a try. Here's the download link for Firefox 3 once again.

Happy browsing!

Firefox 3: First Impressions

I've been using the latest Firefox 3 web browser for a few weeks now, so I thought in this post I'd share my impressions so far...

There's a lot to like about the new Firefox 3, but one of the best things in my view is the 'intelligent' Location bar. This isn't just a bar to display the URL of the site you are visiting any more. It also serves as a search tool for finding bookmarks or pages stored in your browsing history.

What this means is that you only have to enter two or three letters in the Location bar and Firefox will display up to six sites including that sequence of letters in either the URL OR the page title. The sites listed come from your bookmarks and your recent browsing history, with the sites you visit most often shown at the top.

I must admit I now find this feature indispensable. If I want to visit my forum, for example, I simply type the letters 'my' into the Location bar, and Mywriterscircle.com pops up at the top of the list (along with Mywritingblog, of course). All I then have to do is click on the site I want in order to go there.

Another change is the addition of a neat, all-in-one page-back/page-forward icon. It's also now possible to search your browsing history in more ways than you ever believed possible, using tags, date and time of visit, fragments from the page title/URL, and so on. Other changes 'behind the scenes' make sites faster to load, and the whole program seems very stable (it's only crashed once since I installed it).

Are there any minuses? Well, I was a bit disappointed that a lot of my Firefox extensions didn't work any more when I first upgraded. I believe this is to do with the higher security standards applied in Firefox 3. By searching online I was able to find upgrades for most of my favorite extensions (e.g. Morning Coffee), however, and others have been found by Firefox itself and installed over the last few weeks. So it hasn't been as big a problem as I first thought.

The other thing I'm not sure about is the way Firefox 3 handles downloads. It works perfectly well, and the downloads window appears as before, but not as much information is provided as previously. I didn't know at first where Firefox 3 was saving my downloads - it changed this unliterally from my previous default folder - and I only found out how to check and change this by doing some research on the net. I'm getting used to it now, but I don't personally see this particular change as an improvement.

Overall, though, I'm a big fan of Firefox 3. If you're a Firefox user and you haven't yet upgraded, I recommend doing so now. And if you haven't yet discovered the joys of using this open-source browser instead of Microsoft Internet Explorer, now could be the ideal time to take it for a spin.

50 Awesome Open Source Resources for Online Writers

That's the title of a very useful article I discovered recently on the massive Job Profiles website.

It lists 50 open source (i.e. free!) resources that may be relevant to writers, including word processors, grammar checkers, personal organizers, and many other handy tools.

For each resource, the author - Christina Laun - provides a paragraph of description and a link to the relevant website. Here's an example from the list:

wikidPad: This tool is a wiki-style notepad that allows users to to quickly and easily jot down their ideas and notes. Perhaps one of the best features of it is that it allows you to easily cross-reference information, helping you more easily draw plot points and facts together.

There are some great resources in this list, including a number I hadn't seen before and will be checking out in the coming weeks. And, of course, you can't beat the price!

Take a look at 50 Awesome Open Source Resources for Online Writers for yourself. I'll be surprised if there isn't something in it to interest you.

10 Things You May Not Know About The WCCL Network

In this blog I quite often refer to my publishers, The WCCL Network. However, from the feedback I get I know that there are still quite a few misunderstandings about them. So I thought I would take this opportunity to cast a little more light on WCCL (as I'll call them for short from now on).

1. WCCL is the online arm of White Cliff Computing Limited, an international new media group. And despite what some people think, I am not employed by WCCL, and I certainly don't own them!

2. The Managing Director of WCCL is Karl Moore. Karl is an author of two published books on computer programming. He is also a self-development guru of international renown. As well as his homepage, he has a blog at www.karlblog.com and a self-development forum at www.karlforum.com.

3. WCCL is an online publishing company. As such it is quite different from Clickbank, which is simply a self-publishing platform. All WCCL courses, manuals and software products are commissioned from specialist authors and software designers. All WCCL courses and manuals are professionally edited, designed and produced.

4. WCCL currently offers nearly 100 different product lines, in categories including Writers & Artists, Self-Development, Internet Business Tools, Computer Privacy tools, Windows Utilities, and UK Driving Products. In total they sell nearly 2000 different products.

5. WCCL runs one of the best affiliate programs on the internet. If you have a blog or website, you can sign up with them to promote any (or all) of their products. You will then receive a generous commission any time someone makes a purchase via your link. See my blog post about this for more info.

6. WCCL also provides a range of free services for writers. These include the forum Mywriterscircle.com (which I run in partnership with them), the internet radio station WritersFM, the writers chat room at www.mywriterschat.com, and the free Smart Writers newsletter. In addition, this blog is sponsored by WCCL.

7. WCCL are always happy to consider proposals for new courses and manuals that will fit into their portfolio. If you have an idea for such a product (or, indeed, already have such a product) you are welcome to submit a proposal and outline to them in the normal way. If they like your idea, they will make you an offer. I shan't provide contact details here, as I wouldn't like them to be inundated; but if you are keen, I'm sure you can soon discover this information for yourself.

8. WCCL also have a number of free giveaways. These include the writers' giveaway site, the self-growth giveaway, the software giveaway, and their free Motivator software. Thousands of dollars of free software are available from these sites. You may have to sign up to receive a newsletter as a condition of obtaining it, but you can of course unsubscribe at any time.

9. WCCL provide a free online helpdesk service at www.myhelphub.com. This operates 24/7, and offers advice and assistance to buyers of all WCCL products (you won't find anything like this at Clickbank, by the way!).

10. Finally, WCCL have an active program of charitable giving. Among other things, in the last year they have donated sheep and beehives to help develop starving towns in Africa and the East, provided over 6,550 cups of food to feed thousands of starving children, given over 2,500 UK pounds in food to starving and abused cats and dogs in north-east England, organized free relaxation workshops for thousands of nurses in British Columbia, Canada, and provided food for rescued wild horses at the Black Beauty Ranch, Texas. So if you buy any product from WCCL (including any of my courses!), you can be confident that some of your money will be going to support these and other excellent causes!

New Products From WCCL

As you may know, this blog and my forum are both sponsored by The WCCL Network. WCCL also publish several writing courses of mine, including Quick Cash Writing and Write Any Book in Under 28 Days.

WCCL publish high-quality courses, manuals and software in a range of fields. I thought you might perhaps be interested to hear about some new products they have released recently, even though none of these is directly writing related.

As the name indicates, Watch TV on Your PC lets you watch TV from around the world via the Internet. You can also use it to tune in to thousands of Internet radio stations, as well as web cams, videos, and more.

Watch TV on Your PC works on any Windows computer (including Vista). No TV tuner card or any other hardware is required - all you have to do is install the software on your PC and decide what you want to watch first. Of course, as with all WCCL products, there is free, unlimited customer support available 24/7, and with Watch TV on Your PC you also get free lifetime updates.

I must admit, however, what surprised me most about this software was the price. WCCL are currently selling it for just $14.95 US or 7.95 UK pounds. This is a lifetime fee - unlike most similar services, no monthly subscriptions are required.

If you like the idea of watching TV from around the world - including sporting events that in your own country may only be available on pay-to-view - Watch TV on Your PC has to be worth a look.

Moving on, WCCL have always specialised in privacy and security software, and they've recently introduced a new and improved undelete tool called Undelete File Recovery.

As you may know, even when you delete a file from your PC and empty the Recycle Bin, the file remains on your computer's hard drive until eventually it is over-writen. In this 'deleted' form it is normally invisible, but with the correct software it can still be viewed and - if you wish - recovered.

Enter Undelete File Recovery. This powerful program will instantly display hundreds of deleted files from any drive on your computer. Full details of the files are shown, and you can even preview them to see what they contain. Then all you have to do is choose which files to restore with the aid of the Recovery Wizard.

Undelete File Recovery is currently available for just $24.95 (around 13 UKP). What's more, right now buyers also get a completely free copy of WCCL's powerful Backup Magic software, which makes backing up all your important files a piece of cake. This one looks like another no-brainer to me ;-)

Moving on again, my colleague Karl Moore has been raving on his blog recently about The Quantum Cookbook, WCCL's brand new guide to the hot topic of manifesting (it was even mentioned recently on the UK soap opera Coronation Street!). The term manifesting is used to describe the process of reordering your personal reality to obtain the things you want. It's also sometimes referred to as The Law of Attraction.

The concept of manifesting has been around for many years, but The Quantum Cookbook brings it firmly into the 21st century. Written by self-development expert Bradley Thompson, it includes a 140-page manual crammed with little-known tricks and techniques for manifesting anything - from a new house to a soulmate, from a new car to more money. Buyers also get bonus CDs, interviews with celebrities who have successfully used the manifesting technique, and more.

I'll be honest, I'm normally more than a little sceptical when I see these sort of claims being made. But I've always thought that people do, to a large extent, make their own luck. It seems to me that what this guide does is try to explain how this process operates and set out strategies you can use to make it work for you.

Anyway, if you're interested, it's all explained on The Quantum Cookbook website - and, of course, WCCL's usual money-back guarantee applies.

Lastly, I appreciate that most readers of this blog are primarily interested in writing. That being the case, you might just like to check out WCCL's WriteStreet website, which lists all their writing-related products and services (including my courses), and Smart Writers, their free email newsletter for writers.

Happy writing!

Blogging for Storytellers

...That's the title of a new downloadable report in PDF format by Mywriterscircle.com member Nelodra (real name Leah Witmond). And the good news is that it's completely free of charge. You can get your copy by clicking on this link to the download page at Lulu.com.

Leah enjoys creating short stories based on characters she creates in the computer game Sims 2. You can see a number of her stories - and tales by other Sims 2 aficionados - at Leah's Sim Tales website. In her new report, she provides a detailed, step-by-step guide for anyone who would like to follow in her footsteps.

Of course, not everyone will want to write fiction about Sims 2 characters. In her report, however, Leah has provided a handy guide to setting up a blog using the popular (and free) Blogger platform, and much of her advice would be just as relevant if you are thinking of starting a more conventional blog or ficblog using Blogger. I particularly appreciated the generous use of screengrabs illustrating what you should be seeing on your computer at each stage.

Congratulations to Leah on creating her report and making it available free to the online writing community. And, incidentally, I've also had lots of good feedback on my free 'Christmas Gift' report about devising and selling ideas for movies - click here to read my blog post about this - so I've decided to leave the link up a bit longer. By the end of next week I will definitely remove it, however, so if you're at all interested in this subject, please get your copy now!

Responding to Some Feedback...

I always welcome feedback on my writing courses and other projects for writers. Positive feedback is nice, of course, and thankfully I get plenty of that. However, in some ways negative feedback is more useful.

So I was actually pleased to see this less-than-flattering post on US author and writing teacher Tod Goldberg's blog and follow-up comments by some of his readers, as they give me the chance to try to answer the concerns raised and, hopefully, clear up a few misunderstandings.

Tod's post seems to have been inspired by an email he received from the marketing arm of my publishers, the WCCL Network, inviting him to join their affiliate program. The email referred specifically to my courses Quick Cash Writing and Write Any Book in Under 28 Days.

I would start by saying that I had no involvement in writing or sending the email in question. It was written by WCCL's marketing department, and obviously there is a certain amount of "marketing-speak" in it. I'm not going to criticise WCCL for this, or apologise on their behalf. I will just say that affiliate programs are commonplace on the Internet, and almost every big online retailer from Amazon downwards has one. I make no secret of the fact that anyone with their own website can join WCCL's affiliate program and earn a sideline income helping to sell my courses (and any other of the wide range of products sold by WCCL). You can read more about WCCL's affiliate program in this recent blog post if you like. But of course, if you think affiliate programs are the devil's work, you don't have to join!

Moving on, in the comments section "Lucy" writes: "DO NOT waste your money on the Nick Daws course. It is on a CD which is protected, meaning you cannot use it easily on different pcs, and now I run Windows XP it will not work at all. I emailed the company and they say I have to pay another 15USD for a new version which will work. Take my advice and spend the money on a good old-fashioned printed BOOK that you can use where and when you like."

I do have some sympathy with Lucy here. It is frustrating when you buy software and Microsoft then produce a new version of Windows and it no longer works. However, I tend to think that her ire should be directed more at Bill Gates and co. for producing operating systems that are not backwards-compatible.

Lucy evidently bought one of the earliest versions of my Write Any Book in Under 28 Days course (the only one of my WCCL courses which is not sold as an instant download), in the days of Windows 2000. When - presumably years later - it wouldn't work on the new Windows XP operating system, WCCL asked her for $15 US (around 7.50 UK pounds) for a replacement, XP-compatible CD. When you take into account the cost of the CD-ROM, postage to anywhere in the world, packaging materials and the labour involved, I doubt if they are even breaking even at this price. So I don't think in the circumstances they are being unreasonable. After all, imagine demanding that Microsoft provide you with a free version of Windows Vista because two years ago you bought Windows XP. I can hear Mr Gates laughing now!

My other courses are all sold as instant downloads in the universal PDF format, so migrating to a new operating system is much less likely to cause problems. And, of course, anyone buying Write Any Book in Under 28 Days today gets the latest version of the CD-ROM, which is fully compatible with both Windows Vista and earlier versions of Windows (and you get 24/7 advice and support from WCCL's dedicated helpdesk site if required).

And finally, if you don't want to mess about with CD-ROMs at all, my Write Any Book in Under 28 Days course is also available in an audio version!

Finally, "Gordon" has some interesting criticisms. He writes: "The whole tacky marketing tangle surrounding Nick Daws needs thorough exposure. He runs a number of schemes with identical pitches: Essential English for Authors, Quick Cash Writing, Write Any Book in Just 28 Days and How to Win Contests, as well as at least one non-site, Stop Spam Email, that gives trivial anti-spam advice probably as a vehicle to host advertising. It doesn't take a genius with Google to find these are part of a walled garden of sites on the WCCL Network affiliate marketing circuit..."

I suppose I should express my gratitude to "Gordon" for name-checking all of my WCCL writing courses! Contrary to what he seems to be implying, however, they are all quite different. Write Any Book in Under 28 Days is my course for anyone who wants to write a book in the shortest possible time. Quick Cash Writing is aimed at people who want to start earning from writing as soon as possible, and covers shorter writing projects such as articles, greeting card slogans, and so on. Essential English for Authors is my new course on grammar, spelling and punctuation. And How to Win Contests is my course on how to write winning slogans for consumer competitions (aimed primarily at a UK/Eire readership).

"Gordon" is right that there are cross-links between the sales sites for these courses and between the free writers' resources sponsored by the WCCL Network such as Mywriterscircle.com and WritersFM. It would be amazing if WCCL did otherwise, as all these sites belong to them, and presumably anyone interested in buying one of my writing courses might also be interested in joining my free forum, or vice versa. So, OK, consider me and my publishers exposed. It's a fair cop!

My Stop Spam Email site, incidentally, is not part of the WCCL Network. It's a private project I worked on some time ago, when I was trying to improve my website design skills. You won't find links to it from WCCL sites (apart from a couple of my blog posts such as this where the topic seemed relevant). OK, the site may not be cutting edge, but in my view it contains sensible advice on how to tackle the spam problem. Yes, it has some ads on it, but these barely cover the hosting costs. If Stop Spam Email was meant to be a money-making scam, I would definitely be starving in my garret by now!

Finally, "Gordon" writes: "As to the blurb - "He enjoys a life of holidaying with his beautiful wife, playing his part as a regional celebrity, and occasionally putting finger to keyboard to write another book" - I spluttered my tea out! I met the guy a while back. His long-time partner, Jayne (mentioned on his own website) would be surprised to hear that he's off holidaying with a wife. His local celebrity extends to being a member of Lichfield & District Writers, a small-city writers' circle. And he holidays no more than the rest of us. Those considering this course should ask themselves why, if he has such insider knowledge and is so successful, he needs to sex up his circumstances and why he needs this mess of marketing schemes."

OK, I hold my hands up. Jayne and I aren't actually married. We've been together for 20 years and most people assume we are married (apart from the nice lady at the local leisure centre who still insists on referring to Jayne as my "sister"!). I'm sure that's what WCCL's copywriter did too. However, to spare "Gordon" choking on his tea any more, I have asked WCCL to change "wife" to "partner" the next time they update the Write Any Book in Under 28 Days sales page.

And yes, I support my local writers circle, Lichfield & District Writers, even though I'm not a regular visitor any more. I really don't give two hoots about being a local or regional celebrity - I much prefer a quiet life - but I suppose you have to grant WCCL's copywriter a bit of artistic licence. As regards holidays, Jayne and I do actually go away more often than most people I know. In the last year we've been to Lanzarote, North Wales, Greece, Venice and Cyprus, as well as a few places around England. It's not something I want to boast about, but we both enjoy travelling and don't have any other expensive hobbies, so it's our one luxury really.

Anyway, there you go. I've gone on a bit longer than I intended in this post, but I don't like to leave criticisms of me and my courses unanswered. I hope that at least if anyone sees the blog post in question now, reading this as well will help them to form a balanced view.

Please note: As previously stated, comments on this post are now closed. Thanks to everyone who replied, supportive or otherwise. Please do not post any further comments here, as they will be automatically deleted.

Improving Your Writing Productivity

An interesting question was asked by a new member recently on my forum. Editing it down slightly, it read as follows:

"I'm an online writer, seeking tips to improve my writing productivity. Because everything I write, from flash fictions to articles, goes straight on the web, I don't have to spend time trying to get accepted by publishers. Of course, it is essential that the articles or stories are worth reading and, no doubt, some are better than others. But, at the end of the day, it is a numbers game. The more I write - to an acceptable quality - the more readers I gain and, cent by tortuous cent, the more money I earn. My big question is this: Have you any tips for writing faster whilst still achieving a satisfactory level of quality?"

With apologies for a bit of self-promotion here, it occurred to me that really the essential resource this writer required was my course Write Any Book in Under 28 Days. Not only does this include my unique, five-step blueprinting and outlining system, it is also crammed with other hints and tips on working more efficiently and boosting your writing productivity.

Thinking about it a little more, however, it occurred to me that there are a few other tools you can use as well to speed things along, especially if (like me) you're not the world's fastest typist.

One very useful resource I've been using for a while is Quick-Type, from my publishers WCCL. This is an extremely handy little program that can greatly speed up your typing. You simply give Quick-Type all the common pieces of text you type, along with a keyword for each of them. Then, whenever you type that keyword in future, it gets replaced with your chosen text.

Quick-Type works in any text-based application, including email programs and word processors. You can download a fully functional, time-limited free-trial version from the Quick-Type site. If you like it, you can then pay a small fee to register the software.

Another program that can save you a lot of time and effort is 101 Clips. This is a freeware clipboard program that greatly extends the functionality of the standard Windows clipboard. You can save up to 30 different items on 101 Clips at any one time, including images as well as text. A click on the system tray icon will bring 101 Clips to the front of whatever application you are working on. All of your copied items will be listed, and you can enter the one you require simply by clicking on it.

I used 101 Clips quite extensively recently when working on my accounts (using Microsoft Excel), to save constantly retyping words such as stationery, postage, bank charges, and so on. It's a neat, user-friendly program with quite a few extra features, and obviously you can't beat the price!

Finally, if you'd like to see other people's suggestions for enhancing writing productivity as well, you might like to check out this topic (where the question was originally posed) on my forum.

Karl's Christmas Screensaver

It's the start of December, and time to get into the Christmas spirit! So why not make your computer a little more festive by downloading the free Christmas screensaver just produced by my colleague and publisher Karl Moore and available from his blog at www.karlblog.com?

Karl's Christmas screensaver displays 100 beautiful festive scenes from across the globe, smoothly shifting from one image to the next. It's free of charge, and naturally it is also spyware-free, adware-free, and so on.


I should mention that Karl's Christmas screensaver is quite a large file. It's 35MB in total, and took around ten minutes to download on my broadband (cable) connection. I don't think I would recommend trying to get it this way if you're still on dial-up, therefore!

To download Karl's Christmas screensaver, just click on any of the links in this post, which will take you to the relevant post on Karl's blog, and click on the Download link (under 'Want to Download your Copy?'). It's a .exe file, so I recommend that you save it to anywhere on your PC (e.g. the desktop), then double-click in the usual way to launch it. The Christmas screensaver will then be installed on your PC. Of course, you can remove it permanently or temporarily at any time via your computer's Control Panel.

Finally, as I've mentioned Karl's blog here, I'd just like to recommend it to anyone who is interested in personal growth and self-development. It's a fascinating and inspiring blog, with an addictive mixture of odd facts, inspirational quotes and stories, random acts of kindness, and much more.

The same, incidentally, applies to Karl's forum at www.karlforum.com, which is great place for chatting with like-minded individuals and discussing some of the matters Karl posts about in his blog. Neither of these sites is commercially-oriented, but if you'd like to know more about the growing range of self-help products and publications sold by Karl's company, the place to look is Self Help Street. Do check them all out!

Another Record-Breaking Month

My forum at www.mywriterscircle.com is becoming ever more popular. Already in November we have smashed the previous record for the number of posts in a month. The old record was 7774, but in November we're already up to 8446, with one more day still to go!

If you haven't yet joined my forum, therefore, do give it a try. It's free and easy to do, and you will then be able to post any writing-related questions you may have, put up extracts of your work for feedback from other members, and generally enjoy belonging to a friendly, world-wide online writing community. Just go to www.mywriterscircle.com and click on Register to get started.

You will also be able to take part in our regular prize competitions, such as the current contest to win a year's subscription to SpellCheckPlus Pro. The closing date for this one is tomorrow, so there's still time to enter. Just click on this link to go straight to the topic concerned, though note that you will need to be a logged-in member to post your entry.

Finally, even if you don't want to register yet, it's still well worth reading our Writers Wanted board, as a number of interesting opportunities for writers have been posted there recently by long-standing member Linda Jones. They include details of an in-flight magazine looking for article pitches, a UK non-fiction book publisher inviting submissions, and a very interesting opportunity for a fiction writer to get involved in film work. Thanks for all the great market info, Linda!

Three Days Left!

A quick reminder that you have just three days left to enter the contest on my forum at www.mywriterscircle.com to win a year's subscription to SpellCheckPlus Pro.

All you have to do is write a short verse about Mywriterscircle.com and post it in this topic. Any verse-form may be used, with an upper limit of 14 lines. The judges will be Karl Moore of WCCL and myself, and we will each pick our favourite of the entries submitted. Each winner will then receive a prize (we have two to give away in total).

Forum members can post their entries as a reply in this forum topic, which also includes the full rules. Any comments or questions about the contest can be posted in this other topic.

The closing date is Friday 30 November at 12 noon GMT - so have fun, and get writing!

Essential English for Authors Launched!

I'm delighted to reveal that my latest downloadable course for writers, Essential English for Authors, has just been launched by my publishers, WCCL.

As the name indicates, Essential English for Authors is intended for anyone who would like to write for publication but fears their written English might let them down.

As regular members of my forum will know, grammar and punctuation are something of a passion of mine. It's a subject I often post about in the forum in response to member queries, and I've really enjoyed having this opportunity to put all my advice together in a single, modestly priced guide.

In twelve concise but information-packed modules, Essential English for Authors takes you through all the common problem areas for new writers: from the basics of grammatical sentence and paragraph construction, through the principles of capitalization and punctuation, to "minefield" topics such as subject/verb agreement and how to set out and punctuate dialogue. I have tried to explain everything in simple, easy-to-grasp terms, with lots of examples to illustrate the points made.

It's not just the basics, however. A long module titled "Putting on the Style" covers a range of matters that, while they may not all be essential to achieving publication, will help bring your written English up to the highest professional standards. The topics discussed in this module include parallel construction, active v. passive voice, use of the subjunctive in modern English, when to use "who" or "whom", and many more. There are also self-study tests you can complete to check your understanding of the material covered.

The course assumes no previous knowledge (beyond a basic familiarity with English), and is ideal for beginners and people for whom English is not their first language. It is, however, equally suitable for established writers who want to brush up on their knowledge of grammar, spelling and punctuation. And for aspiring self-publishers - especially if they won't be engaging a professional editor - it's an essential reference to ensure that your book isn't laughed out of court by critics and reviewers.

And even if you don't aspire to write for publication but just want to bring your written English up to the best possible standard in the shortest possible time, Essential English for Authors is ideal for you too!

Essential English for Authors is intended to be suitable for anyone in the world. It's written in US English, but British English is referred to throughout (I'm a Brit myself, of course).

For more information and to order Essential English for Authors, just click any of the links in this post to go through to my publisher's sales page. Alternatively, if you would like to read a short extract from the course first, please click here to go to the relevant page on my website.

Finally, I should mention that Essential English for Authors is currently on offer at a low launch price. After the launch period is over, this will certainly rise - so if you'd like to take advantage of the current special offer, please don't hesitate too long.

Good luck, and happy writing!

Spam Emails Sent to Forum Members

Several members of my forum (me included!) have recently received emails from someone purporting to be a member of Mywriterscircle.com asking them for help in moving large sums of money out of an African country, in exchange for a cut of the profits.

This is - as you may know - a scam that has been doing the rounds for some years. Surprisingly people do still fall for it, however, and end up paying thousands of dollars supposedly to cover bribes, customs fees, and so on. It's called Advance Fee Fraud, and takes a wide variety of forms, as discussed in this Wikipedia article. So please, if you get a message of this nature, just delete it. Or, if you're feeling public-spirited, report it to your email provider and/or the email provider of the sender.

It appears that the fraudsters have "harvested" members' email addresses from their profile pages on the forum, so I would strongly recommend all members of Mywriterscircle.com to select the option to HIDE their email address from the general public. I have explained exactly how to do this in this forum post.

To reduce the risk of spam, it is highly advisable NEVER to publish your main email address on the Internet. If you do need to publish an email address for people to contact you, use a free web-based service such as Hotmail, or a dedicated anti-spam service such as Sneakemail (which I use). The latter, which is free to try out, lets you create temporary "disposable" email addresses, which you can easily change when they start getting spammed.

To emphasise again, whoever is doing this is NOT a member of Mywriterscircle.com. If they were, we would of course ban them. They are simply fraudsters, and the best advice is to ignore them and/or install a spam filter such as Spam Bully to try to block their emails from reaching you. You might also like to check out my Stop Spam Email website, which has a lot more advice on preventing and dealing with email spam.

New Online Spelling and Grammar Checker

I was recently emailed by Dr Terry Nadasdi, who is co-developer of a free online spelling and grammar checker called Spellcheckplus. Dr Nadasdi asked if I would be willing to look at the site and offer any comments.

Well, I have done this, and was duly impressed. Because it is web-based, Spellcheckplus will work on any computer, PC or Mac. The Spellcheckplus website allows you to paste any amount of text into it, and it will then check this for possible spelling and grammatical mistakes.

When I tried this with some text I had written for an e-book, copying and pasting directly from Microsoft Word into the text box, it analyzed my writing and identified a couple of possible mistakes. One of these was a misunderstanding by the software, but the other was a grammatical point that I had to admit needed attention.

The checking process is quick and intuitive. Clear errors (e.g. typos) are highlighted in red, whilst items to check (e.g. possible grammatical mistakes) are shown in yellow. If you hover your cursor over a highlighted area of text, a box appears to the right with an explanation and/or suggested alternatives.

Unlike some commercial programs such as WhiteSmoke, Spellcheckplus does not make any changes for you - you have to go in and do this yourself. This is an intentional feature. SpellCheckPlus is aimed primarily at people who are learning English as a second language, so for pedagogical reasons it requires users to make all corrections themselves. Then, of course, they can re-check to see if all their errors have been put right.

The developers emphasise that Spellcheckplus can ONLY check for spelling and grammatical errors, however. It cannot detect whether a sentence makes sense or not, neither does it provide the "enrichment" suggestions offered by WhiteSmoke.

As mentioned above, Spellcheckplus is free, but there is also a premium version called SpellCheckPlus Pro which offers a few additional features (and no advertising). This costs just $15 Canadian a year.

Overall, I think Spellcheckplus is a very nifty application. If you're at all shaky on spelling or grammar, running your work through it before sending it for publication could save you some embarrassment. Ideally it would be nice if it offered the option for suggested corrections to be incorporated automatically by clicking on them - but even without that feature, Spellcheckplus offers an extremely useful free service. For people for whom English is not their first language, in particular, I would highly recommend it.

UPDATE 1 October 2008 - Check out my new, free contest to win a year's subscription to SpellCheckPlus Pro!

Oops!

In my post yesterday, I managed to provide the wrong links for WCCL's Big Software Giveaway site. If you clicked and were puzzled by what you saw, please accept my grovelling apologies, therefore. All the links have now been put right, or you can click on the Big Software Giveaway links in this message to go straight to the correct web page for this special offer.

Sorry again!

WCCL's Big Software Giveaway

My publishers WCCL are getting into the Christmas spirit early! Until the end of November, they are giving away a wide range of free Windows software and privacy tools from their Software Giveaway Site, just in exchange for signing up to one of their free email newsletters.

The newsletters in question are their Windows Power User newsletter, which features all the latest technology news and downloads, and their Privacy #1 newsletter, which provides tips and tricks for preserving your anonymity online. You can choose which of these to receive according to where your main interests lie (or you could subscribe to both, of course). The newsletters are sent twice weekly. They are full of interesting advice and information - you can view sample issues on the Software Giveaway Site - but naturally you can unsubscribe at any time if you wish.

You can see the free software on offer at the Software Giveaway Site. Just a few highlights include a program that will turn your free GMail account into a virtual hard drive with around 3Gb capacity - a voicemail program that lets you record your own voicemail messages and send them by email - and a privacy program that automatically erases your browsing history when you close your browser. There is also a range of downloadable video games.

WCCL site manager Trent Steele emphasises that these are not poorly-produced DOS programs of the type you’ll find floating around in freeware libraries from the 1990s. They are the very latest software, and they work in both Windows XP and Vista. Many of the products are produced by WCCL themselves, and are not available from any other source. Obviously, you can pick and choose which products you download, or you can grab all of them!

OK, if you only ever use your computer for word processing, this offer may not be for you. But if you like to keep up to date with the latest software - and you are conscious of the importance of protecting your security/privacy online - in my view it's well worth giving the Software Giveaway Site the once-over.

Finally, I understand that people are sometimes suspicious of offers that sound "too good to be true", so I would just like to emphasise again that this offer comes from WCCL, who as well as publishing my writing courses also sponsor this blog and my forum. They are keen to increase the circulation of these newsletters, which is why they are making this one-time offer. I can vouch that they are a reputable company, and will not use your e-mail address for any purpose other than sending you copies of your chosen newsletter.

Another WhiteSmoke Winner!

Yes, our final (for now) copy of WhiteSmoke writing software has been won. The lucky winner who posted message number 105,000 on my forum was Narnian Prince, otherwise known as Chris. Here's a link to the post in question.

Chris was surprised to discover he had won the prize. On the forum he wrote, "I had no idea that I was going to win! To be honest, I wasn't even aware that more copies were being given out! To say the least I was completely flabbergasted and sat in shock for a good deal when I found out."

He has already started putting the software to good use, however: "As I found out about my win while I was at work, I had to wait until I got home to download it and give it a whirl. To say the least, it left me quite breathless! I love the features and the way you can interact to improve your writing style and quality. I've only given it a quick once over but feel very confident in saying that this software will play a major factor in most of my writing from now on..."

Congratulations again to Chris, and I look forward to seeing more of his new, WhiteSmoke-enhanced writing on the forum soon! Many thanks, also, to our friends at WhiteSmoke, who kindly donated the software prizes for the recent contests. If you would like more information about their popular program, which not only checks your writing for mistakes but suggests ways of improving it, please click on the banner below.

And watch out for more prize contests on my blog and forum soon!

Another WhiteSmoke Winner

Congratulations to Cathy C, who is the latest winner of WhiteSmoke's writing software on my forum. Cathy posted message number 102,000, which was actually a contribution to our Limericks topic! Here's a link to her prize-winning post.

Cathy is, as you may know, a moderator on Mywriterscircle.com. As such she generously gives her time unpaid to helping ensure that the forum runs smoothly and remains a safe, welcoming place for all its members. So I am naturally delighted that she has won the prize this time.

We have one more copy of WhiteSmoke to give away, and this will go to whoever creates post number 105,000 on my forum. As with the last contest, the version being given away this time will also include a translation feature to 18 languages and an enhanced dictionary.

As mentioned before, WhiteSmoke is a program that aims to help users produce better-written documents. It does this by analyzing the spelling, punctuation and grammar in any document, then suggesting corrections and possible "enrichments". You can read my full review of WhiteSmoke's software here, though note that this does not mention some of the new features added recently. See also this topic on my forum, where I announced this latest contest.

Win ANOTHER Copy of WhiteSmoke!

Just a quickie to let you know that, if you missed out in our recent competition, you now have a second chance!

Our friends at WhiteSmoke have donated another copy of their popular writing software, which we're going to give away to whoever creates post number 102,000 on my forum. In fact, this is an even better prize than last time, as this version will also include a translation feature to 18 languages and an enhanced dictionary.

As mentioned before, WhiteSmoke is a program that aims to help users produce better-written documents. It does this by analyzing the spelling, punctuation and grammar in any document, then suggesting corrections and possible "enrichments". You can read my full review of WhiteSmoke's software here, though note that this does not mention some of the new features added recently. See also this topic on my forum, where I first announced this contest.

Of course, you do have to be a member of my forum before you can take part, but joining is quick and easy, and naturally it's free. So why not join today, if you haven't already?

Good luck, and get posting!

We Have a Winner!

Yes, the contest to post message number 101,000 on my forum has been won.

The lucky (skilful?) winner is Bonsibabe (real name Di), who was convinced she had no chance at all. On the forum last night she wrote, "I'm not generally a lucky person with these kind of things, I always just miss out! So I'm not really on to win..."

Well, guess what, Di, your luck has changed! For those who like to know these things, here's a link to the winning post (no pun intended).

Thanks to everyone who took part in the posting frenzy last night, which meant we reached post 101,000 much sooner than I anticipated. Indeed, it happened while I was having my tea (I do have to leave my computer occasionally!), so I had to do some frantic counting back to work out the winner.

Many thanks, also, to our friends at WhiteSmoke, who kindly donated the software prize. If you would like more information about their popular program, which not only checks your writing for mistakes but suggests ways of "enriching" it, please click on the banner below.

And watch out for more prize contests on my blog and forum soon!

How to Set My Blog or Forum as Your Homepage

If you know how to do this already, you can skip to the last paragraph if you wish. But I know for a fact that lots of people never change the homepage of their browser from the one set by default, and it's actually very easy to do.

If you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer, click on Tools in the main menu (normally at the top of the screen), then on Internet Options in the pop-up menu. In the new window that appears, click on the General tab if this isn't already at the front.

Lo and behold, at the top of the window you should see a box with the URL of your current homepage in it. Just type into this box http://www.mywritingblog.com or http://www.mywriterscircle.com (for my forum) and click on OK at the bottom of the window. The site in question will now become your homepage. Any time you start up Internet Explorer it will load, and likewise if you click on the 'Home' icon in the navigation toolbar.

If you use Firefox (which personally I prefer) as your browser, it's just as easy. In this case, click on Tools in the main menu as before, then on Options. In the new window that launches, click on the Main tab. Again, near the top you will see a Homepage box, in which you can enter the URL of your choice. All you need to do then is click on OK as before.

But what if you have another site that you want as your homepage? Or several? With Firefox, anyway, there's a great little add-on you can get (for free, of course) which effectively gives you any number of homepages. It's called Morning Coffee, and if you click here in Firefox you can download and install it. Morning Coffee lets you set two or more of your favourite pages, and any time you click on the Morning Coffee icon in Firefox (I'm sure you can guess what the icon looks like) all of your chosen sites will load, each on a separate tab. At a single click, therefore, you can launch my blog, my forum, and any of your other favourite sites, then visit them all in turn.

Happy browsing!

Win a Copy of WhiteSmoke's Writing Software!

Here's a special contest for members of my forum only! As you'll know from my last post, we just clocked up 100,000 posts. Well, we've now arranged with our friends at WhiteSmoke to give away a copy of their popular writing software to whoever creates post number 101,000!

For those who don't know, WhiteSmoke is a program that aims to help users produce better-written documents. It does this by analyzing the spelling, punctuation and grammar in any document, then suggesting corrections and possible improvements. If you missed it, you can read my full review of WhiteSmoke's software here (though note that this does not mention some of the new features added recently, such as the built-in dictionary).

This contest is already generating lots of interest on the forum, and there are now only a few hundred posts to go until the magic 101,000 is reached. See this topic where the contest is being discussed!

Finally, I should mention that WhiteSmoke currently have a special 'Birthday Offer' running. As it's the company's birthday, they are offering everyone who buys their standard software the opportunity to buy any two of the 'pro' versions as well for just $1 each. The pro versions are designed to apply a particular style, and among the choices you can get a creative writing version and a business version. This offer represents a saving of over $100 on the full price. For more info, see my review or click on the banner below to go straight to the WhiteSmoke site.

Good luck in the contest, and get posting!

Flash Fiction Contest Deadline Approaching!

I just wanted to remind you that the WCCL Flash Fiction Contest closes in two days time, on 31 August 2007 at 12 noon GMT.

The contest is to write a short story in exactly 100 words - no more, no less - which includes the following six words: mirror, subliminal, genius, white, cliff, clepsydra. In addition, you will need to provide a title of up to 15 words (this does not count towards the 100 words for the story).

Entry is free, and the best three stories submitted will win prizes of the popular WriteItNow novel-writing software from Ravenshead Services. This is the full version, which normally sells for $39.62 (US Dollars) or 19.95 UK Pounds. The winning stories will also be published on my blog and forum.

For full details of the contest, and how to enter, please click on this link. The results will be announced by the end of September. I don't think I'm giving away too much by saying that so far we have only received about 40 entries, so if you can come up with a compelling 100-word story that meets all the requirements set out above, you really do have every chance of scooping a prize.

Good luck, and happy flash fiction writing!

WhiteSmoke Creative Writing Version for $1!

OK, I do mean just a dollar more than the standard version! But that still makes for a very substantial discount on the normal price for the Creative Writing version of WhiteSmoke (which is definitely the one that any serious writer should have). The discount is available until Sunday 26 August under WhiteSmoke's special 'Back to School' promotion.

To remind you, WhiteSmoke is a program that aims to help its users produce better-written documents. It does this by analyzing the spelling, punctuation and grammar in any document, and then suggesting corrections and possible improvements. If you missed it, you can read my full review of WhiteSmoke's software here (though note that this does not mention some of the new features added recently, such as the built-in dictionary).

For more info, or to order, click on the banner below or in my review, and click on the 'Back to School' banner on the WhiteSmoke website. As mentioned, this special promotion only goes on till Sunday, so don't leave it too long to order if you are interested.

GOOD NEWS! WhiteSmoke have just announced that the 'Back to School' promotion is being extended to Sunday September 2nd.

Free Fax Service to US and Canada

If you ever have to send faxes to North America, you might be interested in this service I discovered the other day.

faxZERO is an Internet faxing service that lets you send a fax free of charge to anywhere in the USA or Canada. Here's a screen grab of the homepage...



As you might gather from this, faxZERO is simple and straightforward to use. You simply select the file you want to fax on your computer (either a .doc or .pdf file), or you can enter your own message in the 'text to fax' box.

Then it's just a matter of entering the relevant details in the boxes at the top of the screen. The most important of these, of course, is the number you are sending your fax to. You don't have to enter a fax number for yourself if you don't have one.

Once you've provided all the necessary info, click on 'Send Free Fax Now' at the foot of the screen and your fax will be sent almost instantly. You'll be told whether or not the message was sent successfully.

So what's the catch? Well, if you use the free service, an ad will be printed on the cover page of your fax. Also, you are limited to two faxes a day, and each fax cannot be more than three pages. There is also a premium service without these restrictions (and no ads) costing $1.99 per fax, payable by Paypal.

I'm not being paid to promote faxZERO - I just think it's a very handy service. It will work from anywhere in the world, although unfortunately you can only use it to send faxes to the US and Canada. I used it last week to confirm an order at an Internet store in the US (they wouldn't accept an email), and I'm happy to say it worked like a charm.

My Contact Station - One Answer to the Spam Problem?

One problem facing anyone with a website, writer or otherwise, is how to provide a method for people to contact you.

Of course, you can publish your email address on your site. The trouble is that as soon as you do this you become prey to spammers, who use special software to trawl the net and automatically find and save any email addresses they come across. You will then find yourself getting torrents of spam messages pushing everything from share tips to cut-price pharmaceuticals.

One possible solution - which I have used for a while - is to get a disposable email address from a service such as Sneakemail. Any emails sent here are then automatically forwarded to your actual email address. Of course, if you publish this address on your website it will soon start getting spammed as well, but once this gets too bad you can simply "retire" the disposable address you've been using and get a new one.

That's one solution, but it's not a perfect one. For one thing, every time you change your disposable email address, you have to go through all the web pages where you used the old address and substitute your new one. And second - as has been pointed out to me - quoting your address as drfgtly142k@sneakemail.com or whatever on your website doesn't look very professional.

I recently discovered a much better solution to this problem. It's a program called My Contact Station. Once it's installed, if someone clicks on your Contact Me link (or whatever you choose to call it) a snazzy-looking box opens in which your visitor is invited to enter his or her message. The message is then forwarded to your normal email address, without your visitor (or anyone else on the web) ever seeing this.

I'm now using My Contact Station on my homepage at http://www.nickdaws.co.uk/, so if you go there and click on Contact Me (directly under Site Last Updated...) you can try it out for yourself. Or here's a screengrab of the MCS dialog box, if you just want to see what one looks like...

As you'll see from this, before anyone can send you a message, they have to provide the answer to a mathematical formula or copy a series of 'CAPTCHA' characters (your choice, though not all hosts support the CAPTCHA option). This should help to ensure that only human beings, not spam programs, can use the form to send you messages. The software also provides visitors with the option to submit anonymous feedback, if you choose to enable this feature.

My Contact Station is provided as a compressed zip file. The way it works is that you edit a couple of the files contained in the zip using a program such as Notepad (provided free with Windows), following the step-by-step instructions provided. You then upload the whole MCS folder to your website using your favourite FTP program. Finally, you enter a line of code on your web page anywhere you want the "contact me" facility to appear. I'm no techie, but I managed to get it set up in an hour or so without any major problems (and no need to contact the helpdesk!).

My Contact Station works on most websites. Technically speaking, your host will need to have PHP and SENDMAIL enabled (all but the very cheapest hosting solutions offer this). To use the CAPTCHA feature, you will need GD Support with Freetype enabled. To see if you have these features or not, the README file provided with the software includes a link to a test file you can upload to your domain. If you view it in your browser, it should then tell you whether these features are enabled for your domain.

The best thing about My Contact Station, however, is the price. It's just $7, or around 3.50 UK Pounds. There is a more expensive premium version with more bells and whistles, but I didn't see any need to buy this, and unless you run dozens of websites you probably won't either. And finally, as you may have guessed, it's another of those Seven Dollar Secrets products where, once you've bought it, you can sell copies yourself as an affiliate and keep 100% of the profits!

OK, this product is only going to be of interest to you if you have a website, but if you do, and you need a better method for allowing people to contact you, it's well worth looking into. If you've ever edited a web page and used an FTP program, you should be able to manage the technical aspects, but there is also an optional installation service (costing $25) which will take care of this for you if required.

And incidentally, you only have to install the script once to one site. You can then use it from any web page and website that you like.

All in all, My Contact Station is a neat little product, and one I am very happy to recommend to others.

Navigating Around Long Documents

You learn something new every day. The other day on my forum a member asked, "I'm writing a novel in Microsoft Word and it's rather large, 250 pages so far, and I was wondering if there is a simpler way of finding simple pages rather than using the side scroll thing to scan the document..."

As you would expect on MWC, various members leapt in to try to help. However, the answer I found most interesting came from a member named Justin. He wrote: "Below the scrollbar on the right you will have a button in between two arrows. These two arrows allow you to scroll quickly and the button selects how you scroll. By pressing this button you can select to browse by page or chapter (section) as well as a whole other bunch of options. Check it out."

I must admit, I've used Word almost every day of my life for the last ten years, but I've never really looked into these scrolling options. Anyway, I decided to follow Justin's advice and check out the buttons concerned. Here is a screengrab of the bottom of the right-hand scrollbar in Word. You will see the two buttons with double arrows that move you quickly up or down the document, and the button in the middle that selects how you scroll.

If you click on the button in between the two double-arrows, the following box appears...

This box allows you to choose how you want the double-arrow buttons to work. As you hover your cursor over each of the icons, the message in the box below changes to describe what that particular button does (e.g. 'Browse by Heading').

By default, the double-arrow buttons allow you to move up or down through your document one page at a time. But by clicking on the appropriate icon in the box above, you can elect to browse by section, by heading, by graphic, by table, and more. You can also choose the 'Go To' option to go directly to a particular page number. Just remember to click on the button again once you are finished and choose 'Browse by Page' to return to the default setting.

If, like many writers, you regularly find yourself working on long documents, using these controls should make it much quicker and easier to navigate them. I can see myself using these features quite regularly in future, so thanks a lot for the tip, Justin!

AGLOCO Viewbar Now Available

A few weeks ago in this blog I mentioned a new sideline opportunity called AGLOCO. AGLOCO were offering people the opportunity to get paid for having low-key adverts displayed in a viewbar at the bottom (or top) of their screen any time they were browsing the Internet.

Well, it's taken a little longer than expected, but at last the AGLOGO viewbar has been released. I received an email from the company this morning with full download instructions. I've saved it on this Google Documents page if you wish to read it.

I followed the instructions and downloaded the viewbar without any difficulty. Here's a screengrab showing how it looks on my PC (click on the image to see a larger version). The viewbar is down at the foot of the screen, just above the Windows XP taskbar. I think you'll agree it's not too intrusive.

Adverts aren't yet being served (to me, anyway), but AGLOCO assure me I am already starting to earn hours. The ads will appear in the main area of the viewbar, to the left. There is also a search box, allowing you to search using Google or a range of other search engines, whatever page you may be on. The 'gear' icon on the far right gives access to your Internet Explorer and Firefox Favorites lists, as well as tools such as Calculator and Calendar. Finally, the down arrow lets you minimise the viewbar so that it no longer appears on your screen. Of course, with the viewbar minimised, you won't get credited by AGLOCO for your browsing.

Overall then, everything seems to be going well. The maximum you can currently be credited for by AGLOCO is 5 hours a month, which certainly won't be a problem for me (I'll do that in a day or two!).

If you've already joined AGLOCO and received their email, I recommend you go and download the viewbar as soon as possible - the quicker you have it, the quicker you'll start earning! If you've not received the email, it's still worth logging in to your AGLOCO account and seeing if a link to download the viewbar is available. Read the email I saved here for full instructions. If there is no download link visible when you log in, it just means you will need to wait a little longer to get your viewbar.

Finally, if you haven't yet joined AGLOCO and you're looking for a painless, cost-free way to earn a sideline income, do read my original post and click through one of the links in it, or click here to go directly to the AGLOCO application page. Even better, join The Marketing Pond and join AGLOCO through this - AGLOCO is one of the top programs they recommend. Here is a link to my original post about The Marketing Pond.

Happy browsing!

Free Inspirational Screensaver

Thought you might like to know that my colleague and publisher Karl Moore has just released a free screensaver, featuring inspirational quotes from writers from Albert Einstein to William Shakespeare.

The quotes are all beautifully presented on colourful backgrounds. One of my favourites is by William Shedd: "A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for."

You can download the screensaver from Karl's blog - clicking here will take you straight to the relevant post. The file is around 15MB, so even with a broadband/DSL connection it will take a few minutes to download. I don't think I would even try it on dial-up!

I found the screensaver very easy to download and install, simply accepting the suggested defaults. Once the screensaver is installed on your computer, you can access - and if you wish change - its settings via your computer's Control Panel. If you get tired of it any time, you can simply go in to Control Panel and change to another screensaver (or none at all).

Of course, modern flat-screen monitors don't actually need screensavers (on old-fashioned CRT monitors they were required to stop an image being burned on to the screen due to it being displayed for long periods). However, screensavers still perform a useful function in safeguarding users' privacy, and - as in this case - can provide a good opportunity for displaying attractive and useful images and information.

Lowest Ever Price for WhiteSmoke

I thought some readers might be interested to know that WhiteSmoke's writing software is currently available at the lowest-ever price. They have deducted $20 from the original price of all versions. But not only that, they are giving an additional 25% discount as well.

The standard edition of the software costs $79.95. Deducting $20 gives $59.95. If you then deduct 25% from that you end up with a final price of just $44.95, or around 23 UK pounds. That is definitely the lowest price WhiteSmoke has ever been offered for, and they have recently added some additional features to the software as well.

Just to remind you, WhiteSmoke is a program that aims to help its users produce better-written documents. It does this by analyzing the spelling, punctuation and grammar in any document, and then suggesting corrections and possible improvements. If you missed it, you can read my full review of WhiteSmoke's software here. For further details and to order, just click on the banner below. I don't know how long this promotion will run but it is definitely a limited time only, so don't leave it too long to order if you are interested.

NEW ADDITION - 19 APRIL 2007 - I have just heard from WhiteSmoke that this offer is ending on Monday 23 April, so there are only a few days left if you wish to take advantage of this lowest ever price.

Review: Book Backup

Book Backup is the latest new product for writers to be released by my publishers WCCL. As the name suggests, it's the first ever backup program specifically designed by and for writers.

I have to admit to a special interest in this software, as it was developed by WCCL from my original suggestion! As a full-time professional freelance writer I'm well aware of the importance of backing up my work, but I'm simply not as conscientious about it as I ought to be. So what I wanted - no, what I needed - was some software to make the whole process as painless as possible for me.

Well, it took a few months, but I'm delighted to say that WCCL exceeded my expectations. In Book Backup you have a powerful and versatile piece of software that is easy to operate and can be left to run automatically at set intervals (or you can run it manually any time you like). Naturally, you can choose which files are backed up, and if you wish set a number of different backup routines to run at different times and intervals (for example, you might want to run backups for your novel in progress twice a day, but a backup for other projects you aren't currently working on only once a week).

Of course, backup software has to have somewhere to back up files to. The beauty of Book Backup is that it will work with almost any storage medium you like: USB key, external hard disk, partitioned drive, and so on. It can also back up to any remote location by FTP or email. One example: Book Backup works seamlessly with Google's Gmail. Anyone can open a free Gmail account, which includes nearly 3GB of free storage space - more than enough to house a large library full of document files. But if by chance you don't want to use your Gmail account for this purpose, buyers of Book Backup also receive from WCCL a free FTP account for life with a still-substantial 1GB of storage.

It's a good idea to back up your work to a remote location, in case your computer and any attached backup devices are stolen, catch fire, or suffer some other calamity. However, backing up a lot of files by email or FTP can be very time consuming. So Book Backup has the facility to compress your backup files so that they take up much less space. It is, of course, easy to expand them again if you need to recover the saved files.

Naturally, Book Backup is simplicity itself to use. A detailed instruction manual is included with the software (though to be honest it is all pretty intuitive), and there is 24/7 support from WCCL's dedicated customer service website at www.myhelphub.com.

Book Backup has many other features as well, so if you are interested I urge you to click through to WCCL's sales page and read about them. One other thing I should clarify, though. Although designed primarily for writers, Book Backup will back up other sorts of file as well, including spreadsheets, database files, multimedia, and so on.

Finally, the best news is that WCCL have set the price of Book Backup to be affordable for any writer. It's currently on offer at just $19.95. That's around 9.95 UK pounds, or 14.95 Euros. In my view that's a very low price indeed for potentially saving six months' hard work going down the drain!

WhiteSmoke's Weekend Sale

I've just heard from the people at WhiteSmoke that, for this weekend only, they are offering a huge 30% off the price of their writing software. If you're at all interested in this, there's never been a better time to place your order.

For those who don't know, WhiteSmoke is a program that aims to help users produce better-written documents. It does this by analyzing the spelling, punctuation and grammar in any document, and then suggesting corrections and possible improvements. You can read my original review of WhiteSmoke by clicking here.

I should perhaps mention as well that WhiteSmoke have just added two new features to their software. There's a new Dictionary and Translation tool, which includes definitions, idioms, a thesaurus, and translation to 17 different languages. And they have also launched a "top expert" service, which enables users to ask any question about English writing and grammar.

For more information, please click on the banner below. Remember to enter the coupon code 3030 to claim your 30% discount!

Free Motivational Software From WCCL

If you have trouble motivating yourself to write - and let's face it, we all do at times - here's a program to get you on track again. It's called The Motivator, and it comes from my publishers WCCL. And perhaps the best news is that it's completely free, with no strings attached.

The Motivator uses a powerful psychological technique called programmed rehearsal. Basically, you load it with a series of messages to help you remember your goals. The Motivator then runs quietly in the background, and at intervals displays your messages in popup boxes like those instant messenger popups that tell you a friend has just logged on. But instead, The Motivator software will be moving you one step closer towards achieving your aims.

The Motivator isn't specifically designed for writers, but it can certainly be used to help achieve writing-related goals. To give you an idea, here are some possible messages you could program into the software:

* I am a talented writer.

* Every day I write better.

* Great ideas come naturally to me.

* I am focused and "in the zone".

* I enjoy my writing.

* Every day I achieve my writing targets.

* I enjoy exercising my writing skills.

Obviously, you can choose any messages you like, but it is normally best if they are (a) positive rather than negative, and (b) set in the here and now ("I am") rather than the past or future ("I was" or "I will").

There's lots more advice included with The Motivator software, including a video tutorial prepared by WCCL's Karl Moore, so why not click through any of the links in this post to find out more? It could make all the difference between finishing your book or having it gather dust in your desk drawer!

Finally, while on the subject of software, I just wanted to mention that WhiteSmoke are having another of their weekend sales. Until Sunday 11 March, you can buy their writing program for a huge 25% off. See my review of WhiteSmoke for more information about the software, and click on the banner at the end of the review to visit the sales page. Remember to enter the coupon code 2525 to claim your discount!

The Joys of E-Commerce...

OK, I'm venting a little today. But sometimes in this business you don't know whether to laugh or to cry. Here's an email I received a few days ago:

Subject: Write for Cash Course

SWREG have cashed my cheque for this course over three weeks ago yet I have not received your course.

I will take legal action to recover costs if you do not deliver the course within the next 7 days.

I can't say I was delighted by this communication, but I replied as politely as I could:

Thank you for your email. I am sorry you have not received the course you ordered.

I am not sure from your message which of my courses you ordered. If it was "Quick Cash Writing" this is provided as an instant download via the Internet. If it was "Write Any Book in Under 28 Days", this is supplied on CD-ROM, which is of course sent by mail.

In any event, can I ask you to go to my publisher's customer support website at www.myhelphub.com and raise a ticket there? Please give them as much information as possible, including the correct name of the course you ordered and, if possible, your order reference number. They should then be able to trace your order and, assuming it was for "Write Any Book in Under 28 Days", let you know when the CD was dispatched. Alternatively, if your order was for Quick Cash Writing, they will be able to provide you with download details.

I am sorry I cannot give you this information myself, but I am simply the writer. All orders are processed and dispatched by my publishers, WCCL.

Thank you for your interest in my writing courses...

And that was the last I heard from this lady - until I started getting emails from people listed on the testimonials page of my publisher's sales site saying that they had received emails out of the blue from this lady asking about "the Nick Daws scam" and requesting various items of information from them.

So can I say first of all that if you have received any emails from this lady in the last day or two, I can only apologise and suggest that you disregard them. As well as my email above, she has also had a stronger message from my publishers asking her to desist from contacting people via our websites with her possibly libellous comments. As a matter of interest, my publishers have no record of receiving any order from her email address, and neither has she (as of this morning) opened a support ticket with them.

I'd just like to add that most of the (many) emails I get are friendly and positive, and I'm delighted to receive them. But there are always a few who, at the drop of a hat, start screaming "scam" rather than go through the appropriate channels. So I'd just like to conclude with a few pointers for anyone who orders my writing courses or any other software via WCCL and has a query about it...

1. With CDs, please allow up to 28 days for delivery. CDs are normally dispatched within 24 hours of orders being received, but sometimes when they are being sent internationally they get delayed at customs and such like. This is outside WCCL's control, but if you haven't received your CD after 28 days please raise a ticket at www.myhelphub.com and they will do their best to find a solution for you.

2. If you have any queries about the ordering process or when your CD was dispatched, again, please raise a ticket at www.myhelphub.com. All these matters are looked after by my publishers, WCCL, rather than me personally. As I frequently have to tell people, I'm just the writer!

3. And again, if you have any problems with the CD's copyright-protection feature (e.g. you have forgotten the email address you ordered the CD from, so cannot activate it), please raise a ticket at www.myhelphub.com and their technicians will sort it out for you. I'd really like to help, but I'm just the... Well, I'm sure you get the idea by now!

OK, vent over. Back to writing-related topics in my next post!

Closing Soon...

It's nearly the end of another month, so I thought I'd highlight a few opportunities that close at the end of February.

First of all, the 25% discount on WhiteSmoke's writing software comes to an end. Just to remind you, WhiteSmoke is a program that aims to help its users produce better-written documents. It does this by analyzing the spelling, punctuation and grammar in any document, and then suggesting corrections and possible improvements. You can read my full review of WhiteSmoke's software here, and you will also find details of how to claim your 25% discount.

Secondly, the Creme de la Crime opportunity for aspiring crime writers also closes at the end of the month. This UK publishing house is looking for new crime writers whose careers they can help launch. Applicants have to submit a 500-word synopsis and the opening 5,000 words of a crime novel which will eventually total 70-80,000 words. Check out also this article I wrote about Creme de la Crime last month on this blog.

Finally, the I Publish Press contest also closes this month. This is for a full-length work of fiction of 60,000-120,000 words, including novels, short story collections and long narrative poems. There has been some discussion of this contest at this topic on my forum, or you can go straight to the info page here.

WhiteSmoke's Weekend Sale

Just when I thought WhiteSmoke's writing software couldn't get any cheaper, they've gone and shaved another 5% off the price. That means for this weekend only, you can buy the standard version for just $55.96 instead of the standard $79.95. For British buyers, that's around 30 UK pounds.

That really is a very competitive price for this popular software that will analyze the spelling, punctuation and grammar in any document, and then suggest corrections and possible improvements. I don't honestly see how they can cut it any further.

Anyway, if you'd like to read my full review of WhiteSmoke's writing software, just click here. Or you can click on the banner below to go straight to WhiteSmoke's main info page. Note that to get the full 30% discount, you will need to enter the coupon code 3030 when prompted. However, this will ONLY work till Sunday 18 February.

WhiteSmoke Discount Offer Extended

Here's some good news if you were interested in buying the WhiteSmoke writing software but missed the 31 January deadline for their 25% discount offer. I've just heard from WhiteSmoke that due to the amount of interest the promotion has generated, they are extending the offer to the end of February.

To remind you, WhiteSmoke is a unique program that aims to help its users produce better-written documents. It does this by analyzing the spelling, punctuation and grammar in any document, and then suggesting corrections and possible improvements. It will work in almost any text-based application, including word processors, email programs, web-based forms, and so on. You can read my full review of the WhiteSmoke program here.

By the way, I've had some good feedback from readers who have bought the program, including the following in an email:

"...I did purchase the WhiteSmoke Software, and would say that it is very helpful in use. I bought the Creative Writing Software as well. Obviously it does not grasp the sense of the prose and dialogue, and can make some silly suggestions, but it does also pick up on errors which are not immediately obvious.
"One drawback was that it did not highlight where I used the same word twice in adjacent sentences. I thought it should have picked up on that. But there again, I had overlooked this myself, and noticed it because of other prompts from the WhiteSmoke Software.
"Overall, I thought it was a good additional help, and with the discount, not overpriced."

Anyway, if you want to find out more, and perhaps take advantage of the massive 25% discount right now, just click on the banner below and enter the discount code 2525 when prompted. If you're an email subscriber, you will probably need to visit my blog on the web to see this.

Last Chance Today!

It's the end of January, so I thought I'd just remind you that the opportunity to take advantage of my two great special offers on writing software ends today.

My first offer is on WCCL's brand new "Write a Movie in a Month" course. This is the top-selling CD course that has been making waves across the whole screenwriting community.

Regular readers will know I'm a big fan of this course, which has inspired me to write my first ever full-length screenplay. And to encourage you to buy via one of my links, I'm giving away the following as extra special bonuses: (1) my original report on how to make big money selling movie ideas, (2) my mini-report on how to write a movie treatment, and (3) my recommendation for a program you can try out for FREE which will help you outline your script and "automatically" produce a treatment for you. Not only that, I'm also throwing in a free, downloadable copy of my Short Story Acumen tutorial. Here's a link to my review of Write a Movie in a Month, along with details of my special offer and how to claim your free bonuses from me. Please remember - this offer MUST end today!

Secondly, my unique 25% discount on WhiteSmoke's writing software also ends today. As I've noted before, this is the biggest discount WhiteSmoke have ever given and there is no knowing when (or if) it will be repeated. So again, if you want to buy this popular software, which corrects errors in your writing and suggests ways in which it can be improved, see my review of WhiteSmoke for further details.

Happy writing!

(Almost) Free QuarkXPress!

Many jobs in publishing require familiarity with the desktop publishing program QuarkXPress. This normally costs hundreds of pounds to buy, so I thought some readers might like to know that in the UK version 5 of the software is being given away free on the cover disk of March's PC Pro magazine. The cost of this is just 3.99 UKP with the CD version of the cover disk, 4.99 UKP with the DVD-ROM (Quark is included on both).

This is an earlier version of the program (they are now up to QuarkXPress 7), but it is full and unrestricted, not a demo or shareware version. If you want to try out the program and gain some experience using it (so you can add it your CV/resume?), in my view it's well worth paying the modest cost of the magazine.

I'm sorry non-UK readers may be unable to get hold of PC Pro. However, it's always worth checking the cover CDs/DVDs on computer magazines to see if this or other useful software is being given away in your country as well.

Deadline 31 January...

A number of writing-related deadlines are coming up at the end of this month. It's only a week away, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to review them.

Firstly, if you want to take up my special offer for buyers of WCCL's new "Write a Movie in a Month" course, this will be closing at the end of January. In particular, I have been told I MUST stop giving away my Short Story Acumen tutorial to people buying the Movie course via one of my links.

So if you want to get your hands on this ground-breaking CD course, plus my two free reports, plus my software recommendation, plus a copy of my Short Story Acumen tutorial, you have just a week to place your order. Here's a link to my review of Write a Movie in a Month, along with details of my special offer and how to claim your free bonuses. If your ambition is to write for the movies, I guarantee it's the best offer you'll see all year!

Secondly, WhiteSmoke have told me that the 25% special discount on all their writing software must also end this month. This is the biggest discount WhiteSmoke have ever given and there is no knowing when (or if) it will be repeated. So again, if you want to buy this popular software, which corrects errors in your writing and suggests ways in which it can be improved, see my review of WhiteSmoke for further details.

There are also a few anthologies and other opportunities that are closing their doors at the end of January. Here are some details, along with links to the relevant items on my forum:

Erotic Short Stories
This e-publishing company is seeking erotic short stories of 12,000 to 15,000 words for publication in electronic and print form. Payment is by royalties on sales.

Literary Appraisers Wanted
Experienced writers and writing teachers are required to provide professional appraisals of work by new writers. You probably need to be UK-based for this.

Short Story Anthology
This new publishing house is seeking contributions of short stories in any genre.

As mentioned above, the deadline for all of these is 31 January 2007. Good luck!

Review: WhiteSmoke Writing Software

Recently the good folk at WhiteSmoke sent me a copy of their writing software to evaluate. So here's my review of this popular tool for writers...

For those who don't know, WhiteSmoke is a program that aims to help its users produce better-written documents. It does this by analyzing the spelling, punctuation and grammar in any document, and then suggesting corrections and possible improvements. WhiteSmoke is compatible with Microsoft Windows ME, Windows2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. It will work in almost any text-based application, including word processors, email programs, web-based forms, and so on.

Once WhiteSmoke is installed on your PC, you use it as follows. First, you create your text in your chosen application (e.g. Microsoft Word). Select the text you want to analyze by highlighting it in the normal way, then press the WhiteSmoke shortcut key. This is set by default to F2, though you can change it if you like. In Word a separate "Enrichment" button is created on the toolbar, and you can click on this as an alternative to pressing the shortcut key.

WhiteSmoke will then open in a new window, with your selected text in a box in the middle. Spelling mistakes are highlighted in red and grammar mistakes in green. When you move the cursor over any item, suggested corrections (a range of them) appear in a box at the foot of the screen. You can accept or reject any correction just by clicking on it.

Perhaps the most interesting feature for writers, however, is the enrichment function. The WhiteSmoke software analyzes your writing and looks for ways it could be improved, e.g. by using an alternate word or phrase (thesaurus function), or by adding extra words. All candidates for enrichment are highlighted in blue in the WhiteSmoke window, and suggested additions and alternatives are shown in the boxes below. Again, you are at liberty to accept or reject any change. Once you have gone through all the program's suggestions, just save the changes and close WhiteSmoke, and the corrected and "enriched" version will automatically appear in the original application.

Overall, I was impressed with how easy WhiteSmoke was to use, and its effectiveness. Obviously Word does have its own spelling and grammar checkers, but WhiteSmoke's appear to work better. This is especially so with the grammar checker, which is far more user-friendly than Word's. The "Enrichment" function is particularly good for revealing ways in which text can be improved. Obviously not all the changes the software suggests will be appropriate, but simply seeing the suggested alternatives can jolt you out of using the same old words and expressions, and give your writing a new, fresher feel.

The version of WhiteSmoke I evaluated was the standard one, which is really aimed at business users. It would still be useful for writers, but WhiteSmoke also offer a version of the software specially tailored for use by creative writers. If you're a novelist or short story writer, this would probably be the version to go for. It has a larger vocabulary than the standard version, and is less likely to suggest inserting business-related terms such as inventory and turnover into your sensitive description of a woodland sunset...

Are there any drawbacks to WhiteSmoke? Well, a possible one for some users is that you need to have an Internet connection open while you are using it. WhiteSmoke say this is because the program's database is constantly updated via the web. For most users this is unlikely to present problems, but if you regularly use your computer off-line, it might be a bit frustrating.

WhiteSmoke is probably ideally suited for writers who are buzzing with ideas but know that they have a few shortcomings in grammar, punctuation, and so on. Even if you're reasonably confident in these areas, however, WhiteSmoke can give you a fresh perspective, and suggestions for improving passages of text you may have become "bogged down" on.

For more information about WhiteSmoke, click on any of the links in this article to visit their sales site. Watch out for their regular special offers!

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