In the weeks that I’ve been checking the site, the offerings have been hit-and-miss, but today’s software looks interesting. It’s a mindmapping program called ConceptDraw MINDMAP Personal 4.

I’ve been using mindmapping software for a long time. Mindmapping has been especially useful for outlining my ideas before sitting down to write. I originally used Mindjet MindManager, but it has gotten to be too expensive, in my opinion.

Lately, I’ve been using the free, open source mindmapping package called Freemind. Freemind is slow to start up and a a bit clunky overall, but it is remarkably useful, especially considering the price. Still, I’m interested in giving MINDMAP Personal a try. I’ll be downloading it as soon as I finish this post.

Both fiction and non-fiction titles are included. WikiSummaries can help you decide whether or not to read Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope or help you review the plot of a previous Harry Potter book before starting the next one. And since anyone can edit the wiki, it’s easy to contribute your own summaries or help to improve the existing ones.

On that note, I ran across an article on DonationCoder.com recently comparing various freeware and shareware text editors. I happened to be on the lookout for a tool capable of doing multi-file search and replace and the review highlighted that feature of PSPad. I gave it a try and it is one of the best tools I’ve seen for text replacement in multiple files (and I’ve looked at quite a few). And that’s just one of its many features.

PSPad also does what I was looking for in the shareware versions of NoteTab: multi-level undo and line numbering. Plus, it has many of the features of NoteTab Light that I’ve come to expect in a text editor: sorting, word count, tabbed interface, extensive documentation, and regular expression support.

Technorati Tags: freeware, shareware, text, editors

Sawatsky’s rules are simple, but he says they get broken all the time: Don’t ask yes-or-no questions, keep questions short and avoid charged words, which can distract people.

I’m a fan of well done interviews. Interviewers like Terry Gross, Charlie Rose, and Bob Costas can bring out some of the best in people. I have only done a few interviews myself—mostly for the profiles I’ve written—but I find them to be challenging and fun. As Sawatsky suggests, I try to put a lot of thought into the questions I ask.

If the NPR story on Sawatsky leaves you wanting to know more about his interview techniques, check out the additional audio clips on the NPR website. One of the clips includes an additional hour of David Folkenflik’s interview with Sawatsky.

The American Journalism Review also ran a story on Sawatsky a while ago. The AJR story included a sidebar with a more details of his do’s and don’ts. For even more information on interviewing techniques, the Poynter Institute has a thorough collection of links and references on interviewing.

Some programs and printers allow users to shrink documents so that multiple pages can be printed onto a single sheet of paper. So called “n-up” printing can be convenient for reference documents, especially if you don’t want them taking up a lot of space. You may not want to read an entire book at 16 pages per sheet, but it can be convenient to have your address book crammed onto just a few sheets of paper to carry in a notebook or wallet.

Check out the comments too, for even more printing tips.

Technorati Tags: budget, printing

In the past year I have often been asked why I don’t have a blog. My answer was always that I write so much, already, that I don’t have time to write anything else. But, as should be obvious, I’ve now changed my mind. I have come (belatedly) to the conclusion that a blog can be a very valuable supplement to my books and the writing I do for the New Yorker. What I think I’d like to do is to use this forum to elaborate and comment on and correct and amend things that I have already written. If you look on my website, on the “Blink” page, you’ll see an expanded notes and bibliography, which mostly consists of copies of emails sent to me by readers. Well, I think I’d like to start posting reader comments for everything I write, and this is a perfect place for that.

There are also times when I think I’ve made mistakes, or oversights, and I’d like to use this space to explain myself and set things right.

Gladwell is an author and regular writer for the New Yorker magazine. He’s one of my favorite non-fiction writers, as he has a knack for explaining things about the world in ways I hadn’t previsously considered. I’m interested to see what makes it onto his blog. Check out Gladwell’s main site to sample even more of his writing.

Technorati Tags: writing, reading, blogs

In addition to books, many libraries loan movies, music, audio books and more. Though they may not have the latest BillBoard Top 40 or box office blockbusters, you will likely find many of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time or IMDb’s Top 250 movies. If you’re lucky, your library might even loan audio books on iPods.

Many libraries also provide access to reference databases and other resources online. With just your card number and a password, you may be able to access databases like Academic Search Premier or Student Resource Center Gold Edition. Don’t be fooled by the names; these databases aren’t limited to dry academic journals. You’re likely to have access to archived articles from newspapers and magazines like The New York Times, National Geographic, and Sports Illustrated.

Technorati Tags: library, online, book, movies, music

Technorati Tags: lifehacks, budget, travel, deals, hotels

When I got home, I tried to find a Microsoft Word macro that might keep a constant tally of the current word count. I didn’t find a macro, but I did find that Word has a Word Count toolbar. The toolbar isn’t as automatic as I’d like—you have to click the “Recount” button or hit Alt-C to refresh the count—but it is at least one step shorter than using the Word Count option on the Tools menu.

Technorati Tags: msword, writing, tools

Are your written messages easy to read and understand? One way to know is to look at how often people respond positively to your requests; or whether they respond at all.

From there, I found links to a couple of web forms that analyze text for readability:

• Textalyser
• Check Text Readability

I tried writing a bookmarklet to feed selected text into the form on the second site, but it chokes when the text gets too long. I’m guessing that there is a way to use post instead of get when passing the text to the form, but I need to dig into javascript a bit more to figure out how to handle that. If you happen to know the trick, please feel free to post a comment.

MagazinePriceSearch.com saves you time and money by continually monitoring subscription prices for 2552 magazines from 24 online magazine merchants, plus 63 coupons, and compiling everything into one easy to use site!

Surprisingly, the other source of inexpensive subscriptions I found was eBay. In the end, for each of the three magazines I ordered this week, I found the best prices on eBay. I made sure to check seller ratings and that none of the sellers auto-renew the subscriptions, so it actually felt safer than ordering the same magazine from one of the dozens of discount subscription websites.

A new Web site debuted recently, called Pandora, seemingly in answer to my musical prayers. Not only does it let users create a customized and personalized station of 128Kbps streaming music, Pandora lets users create up to 100 such stations.

Use “draft” instead of “write” (less intimidating to have “draft proposal to yada yada” on your list than “write proposal”)

It’s subtle, but I think it would be useful to help change my thinking about writing. It fits in well with one of the themes of The Now Habit:

Work for an imperfect, perfectly human first effort.

I’m also curious about the paperclip exercise mentioned toward the bottom of the notes. Anyone know more details about it?

Playlist: Have iPod, will travel
With the right resources on-board, that iPod may just take the place of a hired tour guide, a pocket full of driving directions, or even a printed guidebook.