writeroom posts

The phrase "game changer" is no doubt cliché and overused, but every now and again it just fits.

I had heard about Notational Velocity when Merlin Mann posted about it on 43Folders. It changed how I use my iMac, MacBookPro, and iPhone, bringing them all together in a very cool way.

The app has been around for awhile (we talked about it five years ago!) but some new features and new technologies make it well worth another look. It took me a minute to understand why I'd want Notational Velocity, it because it sounded like yet another "everything box" like Yojimbo, which I was already using.

Notational Velocity does save notes, either in ASCII, RTF, or HTML, but with the latest version, Notational Velocity syncs with Simplenote or WriteRoom for iPhone. It also easily syncs via Dropbox if you follow the important configuration notes here.

Imagine if Apple had created an over-the-air method of syncing Notes and it all Just Worked. That's what Notational Velocity has achieved. Notes on my iPhone, my iMac and my MacBook Pro. Edit a note anywhere, and the changes are synced nearly instantly and appear everywhere. It's fast, it's seamless. Thinking about getting an iPad? That's only going to make this setup even sweeter.

Every time I walk through Warehouse Stationery (New Zealand's equivalent to Office Depot) or Dick Smith's Electronics (pretty much Best Buy), I'm struck by how probably half the products in each store are pretty much useless to me since I've got an iPhone.

Thanks to the apps that come pre-packaged with the iPhone and the more than 100,000 third-party offerings now available in the iTunes Store, the iPhone has gained functionality that might have seemed hard to fathom under three years ago when Steve Jobs first announced the device.

"A widescreen iPod with touch controls... a revolutionary mobile phone... a breakthrough internet communications device... these are not three separate devices. This is one device." So Steve Jobs told us all back at Macworld Expo 2007. But since then, the iPhone has grown to be much more than just those three concepts.

What follows is a sort of anti-buyer's guide, a list of products and devices that you may never need or even want to buy again (or receive as a gift) if you have an iPhone. Some of these are certainly open for debate, but more than a few of them are products that, for all intents and purposes, are completely unnecessary if you have an iPhone. (Items in bold also apply to the iPod touch).

As Kevin pointed out on Wednesday, MacHeist has a new bundle for us at the moment -- but this one is what they consider a "nanoBundle" and it's free. I can't speak for everyone here at TUAW, but when I see the word "free" next to software, I horde it.

They've decided to just give away this bundle of apps in what appears to be a move to encourage their users to come back for more. 6 great mac apps for zero dollars. That's my kind of deal. There are only 6 more days to download this bundle, so go grab it after checking out the loot:

• Shove Box -- An awesome reminder, organization, gotta-get-it-done application that sits in your menu bar. You can then drag things like text, URLs, images... possibly anything to the menu bar app and it'll save it for later. When you get some free time, you can go back through and see what you have. There's an iPhone companion app as well.
• WriteRoom -- A simple writing application that removes all of the typical distractions from your writing sessions. It makes the text window full screen, completely cutting off the rest of the world from your mind -- if you so choose. It still has simple tools like word count, background/text color adjustments... but definitely keeps you focused. We've covered it quite a bit.
• Twitterrific -- One of my favorite apps on my iPhone as of late. The desktop version is similarly simple. Set up your Twitter account and tweet away with the easiest solution imaginable.
• TinyGrab -- Is a screen capture maniac's dream. It allows you to use the standard command-shift-4 and select part of your screen or hit spacebar to capture a specific window. The kicker: it uploads it directly to your own FTP server and puts the URL in your clipboard so you can paste it in Facebook, Twitter, email, IM... whatever your pleasure.
• Hordes of Orcs -- I'll admit, this is the real reason I'm downloading the bundle. I've heard nothing but great reviews about this game even from our own Mike Schramm. It's one of the most innovative desktop tower defense games I've seen. Everything is in 3D, there are 6 different game variations and let's not forget tower defense.
• Mariner Write -- This is a word processor with features you need but none of the "bloat" found in other applications *cough* Microsoft *cough.* Of course, it will open and save Word documents, as well as other formats.

While I was writing this, the download total went up 5,000 downloads but it'll take 500,000 for all of us to get the full benefit. MacHeist says that Mariner Write is the unlockable application, so I'm hoping to get a serial and really try it out. Head over to Macheist, and download your nanoBundle. For the first time, I'll be using all of the apps in it -- and it's free!

When TextExpander touch for the iPhone was announced, one of the exciting aspects was the SDK to allow other developers to integrate TextExpander's technology into their iPhone apps.

The new version of WriteRoom for iPhone now includes TextExpander support. With this announcement, SmileOnMyMac has announced that they will be selling TextExpander touch for $1.99 until September 30 at 12 noon Pacific Time, a 60% discount off the regular price of $4.99.

WriteRoom for iPhone 2.1 includes other updates as well, as noted on the development blog:

• TextExpander support.
• Optional startup password.
• Settings are now accessed within app.
• New option to lock screen orientation.
• Sync service is out of beta and is open sourced.

If you purchase WriteRoom for iPhone ($4.99 on the App Store), you'll get a $5 off coupon that can be used to purchase either WriteRoom ($24.95) or TaskPaper ($29.95) for Mac.

I don't know about you guys, but I can't get enough of these Mac software bundles. Between MacHeist, the MacUpdate bundle, Mac Bundle Box, and even iPhone software bundles, I've got more unused software licenses than I'll ever need or want. Even though I rarely want every piece of software in the bundle, there's almost always 1 or 2 that make it more cost effective to buy the bundle than buy the software separately.

The Mac Sale (noted by Christina over at DLS) is the latest bundle out there and, like the others, has some hidden gems and a few applications I know I'll never use. Some of these may be perfect for back to school season. The rundown of applications:

• REALBasic Personal
• Iris
• Interarchy
• Flux
• Scribbles
• TaskPaper
• WriteRoom
• Stuf
• Mariner Calc
• HoudahSpot

Your $49 will buy you $450 worth of applications, but only until August 18. As a bonus for TUAW readers, you can get a 5% discount by using coupon code TUAW at checkout.

As you've probably gathered by now, I'm on a search for the perfect writing tool. I did a short blurb about Ulysses 2.0 a few weeks ago, I read Megan Lavey's Friday Favorite review of Scrivener with interest, and I'll have a detailed review of Storyist v2 soon -- if I can get over the writer's block I seem to have picked up with regards to that post.

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to writing tools. The first type is the do-everything tool, complete with project management and storyboarding, bulletin boards to pin notes on, even places to write up biographies of your characters. Storyist is a perfect example of one of these tools. The second genre, of which Ulysses and WriteRoom are members, is the minimalist school. These type of writing tools pare the user interface down to a minimum and are designed to give authors an environment in which to concentrate on putting words on paper. The analogy is sitting in front of a typewriter and writing.

WriteRoom [US$24.95] was last covered by TUAW back in 2007, and it is has been interesting to see the evolution of this product and its siblings over the past two years. It's currently in version 2.3.7, and there's a free trial download available on the website.

myTexts, a new app from MOApp, caught my attention recently. It's another "distraction-free writing" app with some nice touches and a reasonable price tag. This genre of apps basically time-warps you back to the days of full-screen, menu-free, plain text word processing. The most popular of the comparable applications would be WriteRoom, which is in active development and, I believe, the original app in this category. myTexts adds some great touches to the idea.

First, myTexts uses a database to store your documents, with auto-save and auto-backup. Your entire document library can be searched, including the title, full text, document notes and user-assigned tags. Documents can be exported in a variety of formats, ranging from plain text files (.txt) to Word documents (.doc). You can even export XML/HTML. Tags assigned in the app are written to exported documents as OpenMeta tags, making Spotlight searching more efficient, if you're a "tag" kind of user.

Fonts and colors are customizable, although you only get two choices (shades of grey) for the background. There's a sidebar containing your document list, as well as notes and tags for the current document. Notes for the current document can also be popped up in a floating, always-on-top window which you can quickly paste to from other applications and which dims when not active. The sidebar automatically hides and can be triggered with a mouse-over, or you can disable the mouse trigger and call it only with a keyboard shortcut. There aren't a lot more features, but everything is keyboard-navigable and quite well-polished, especially for such a young application.

Like WriteRoom, myTexts is a Cocoa application and its editing area is fully-compatible with System Services, the OS X spell-checker and third party applications such as SpellCatcher X.

myTexts is available as a free trial, and can be purchased for 12 Euro (about $17US), making it slightly cheaper than WriteRoom (also downloadable as a free trial). If you're in the market, I'd suggest giving both apps a try, as they both have their own feel and features. The WriteRoom wiki lists a few other apps in this category, and I'm pretty sure WriteRoom 1.0 is still available as a freeware app if you don't want or need the frills.

When WriteRoom debuted, many of us were impressed with the software and the idea of a focused interface that just lets you write. WriteRoom allows you to write on a screen of nothing but text, and the default view mimics the way many of us used with our first word processor (myself included): green text on a black screen. Still, if all you want is a screen of text with very little interface, here's a free and quick solution.

Start with Backdrop, a simple application for obfuscating your desktop or other applications. You can get fancy and include something like Spirited Away for auto-hiding applications you aren't using, but that's not the point here (and I don't think that app works in Leopard). I am assuming you're settling in to "just write." I find the default gray works fine, but you can customize the color and make it black if you are ready to zone out on your text.

Next, fire up TextEdit. While you can zoom the TextEdit window, I find the wide view of your text is distracting. WriteRoom is nice because you have big margins on a wider screen, making it easier to read what you write. To simulate this, just resize your text edit window to mimic a page of paper in front of you. Go to Preferences in TextEdit and alter the default font settings (for rich or plain text, depending on what you prefer). You can also change the default window size, or text area. I found a height of 45 with rulers turned off went from the top of the screen to the bottom on my 15" MacBook Pro. I use 18-pt Helvetica, but if you prefer Marker Felt, go for it.

That's it! You can't customize TextEdit as much as you can Terminal, but if you want a universal text tool that can serve as a distraction-free environment, this works in a pinch. You could just as easily pare down your browser view and pop Google or Zoho Docs over Backdrop -- or for collaborative editing, open a free Etherpad page. If you do a lot of writing, you may want to look into WriteRoom. There's also an iPhone app for WriteRoom, which includes a mechanism for editing docs on your Mac (sort of).

Just like its Mac counterpart, WriteRoom for iPhone gives you a simple application to create a document in. When you open WriteRoom you are presented with a black screen -- all of your documents are located here. Clicking on a document name will place you in editing mode.

To create a document, just tap on the "+" button at the top right of the screen and a blank document will show up with a subtle blinking cursor against a black background.

WriteRoom's developer has created a neat way to retrieve documents from your iPhone and get them on your computer. You can browse, edit, and even create a new document on your iPhone from Safari. All of this is dynamic, so as soon as you create a document in Safari, it appears on your iPhone and vice versa (a web page reload is necessary in your web browser). The main problem with Bonjour sharing over Safari is that it only works with Safari's Bonjour bookmarks.

Overall, WriteRoom for iPhone is solid, just works, and is completely worth the $5 (US). WriteRoom is simplicity at it's best, and has a very nice user interface without distractions and fancy addons. You can purchase WriteRoom for the iPhone from the iTunes AppStore for $4.99 (US). Be sure to check out our gallery of WriteRoom screenshots.

MacBundleBox is offering 15 Mac applications for $49.95: an 85 percent discount (compared to buying each app individually). The apps included are:

• Headline - A full-featured RSS/ATOM feed reader with an ultra-minimal UI.
• Mac Pilot 3 - A system optimization and customization utility.
• iConquer - A game not unlike Risk.
• Mahjong Forests - A traditional mahjong game.
• Shoebox Express - A solution for organizing all your photos by content.
• Caboodle - A way to collect random snippets of text or images on your machine.
• Narrator - A program that will read out stories in multiple voices.
• WriteRoom - A distraction-free word-processor, and possibly the most popular app in the bundle.
• Scribbles - A simple drawing utility.
• Money - An accounting app.
• Operation - A simple project management application.
• Aurora - An iTunes-integrated alarm clock.
• Compositor - A CoreGraphics-based image editor.
• Sofa Control - Allows you to control your applications remotely, using an Apple Remote.

MacBundleBox is available directly from their website.

Today is the last day to buy the much coveted MacHeist application bundle. MacHeist has decided to sweeten the deal by unlocking SoundStudio early and offering $5 off any Insanely Great Tee. If you are a registered member of the MacHeist site you can also get early access to Headline (an RSS reader).

The MacHeist Bundle currently includes the following Mac apps:

• VectorDesigner
• DEVONthink
• XSlimmer
• CoverSutra
• Awaken
• iClip
• Overflow
• Cha-Ching
• WriteRoom
• Enigmo
  
• Bugdom 2
• Nanosaur 2
• TextExpander
• SoundStudio

The MacHeist Bundle costs $49 and 25% of your purchase will be donated to your choice of charity. Currently, MacHeist has sold over 4,000 bundles and raised over $50,000 for charity. You can purchase a bundle at the MacHeist website.

If you're on your way back to school this year, or you know someone who is, a new MacToSchool software bundle could save you some cash. Featuring twelve apps ranging in appeal and actual usefulness, this bundle offers $300 worth of software for $49.95. Included in the MacToSchool package are apps like Clockwork, a simple desktop timer, WriteRoom, the popular full-screen text editor that helps you focus on your writing, a family history app, a calendar-based financial planner and more. Pencils Down - a test building app for teachers - is even included, making this package appealing to the other side of the education fence that, as the husband of a high school English teacher can attest to, often doesn't get the attention and discounts it deserves.

The typical price you would have to pay for even a few of these apps could easily add up to $50, so this could certainly be a valuable package. Each app at the MacToSchool.org site has a simple description page and a demo download so you can try everything before you buy, and there are also links to the orignal app developers' sites in case you need more info. Interestingly, this bundle was organized by the developers themselves in an effort to help spread the word about the utility of 3rd party software and to do something good for the education community.

The press release we received says 'limited time only' but makes no mention of when the deal will end, so my advice would be to act sooner rather than later if you're interested.

WriteRoom, the application for "distraction-free writing," reached version 2.1 today. Changes include:

• Generate word counts for any part of a document.
• "Typewriter scrolling" setting is more flexible.
• Many squashed bugs

Some call it gimmicky, but I've been using it since version 1.0 and enjoy it. WriteRoom requires Mac OS 10.4, and a single license will cost you $24.95US (though you can use it for free).

We reported a WriteRoom 2.0 beta from Hog Bay Software early last month, and the company has now announced an official release. Version 2.0, as you might remember, brings with it rich text editing, a live word count, saving documents wherever you please and a standard text/rich text storage format and more. In addition to an official version release, WriteRoom's price is now $24.95 (up from its previous 'free' and $14.95-while-in-beta prices).

WriteRoom 2.0 is a Universal Binary, and a free demo is available.

Thanks everyone who sent this in.

Ah, the holidays: a time for reflection, relaxation, and finally getting your GTD feng shui into proper order. Who better to give you some leverage over the incredible source of distractions and detours that is your Mac than Merlin Mann? The 43Folders productivity guru gets focused with Leo Laporte on the most recent edition of MacBreak, covering additional ground after an October episode on desktop de-cluttering.

My favorite attention-enhancing power tool is currently WriteRoom, which has made it much easier for me to take notes in meetings without getting lured away by the siren call of unread emails and projects in progress. What do you use to help clamp down on the tangents and procrastination?

[via Lifehacker/43folders]