Tag Archives: web sites

Review: Writely App


So there’s this new website that has been live for, a couple of months by now I believe, called Writely. It’s a subscription based website that encourages you to write everyday. It has a forum for sharing writing and other discussions, a points system to reward you for writing, and tutorial writings that teach you how to do different types of writing. A few people on the forum said they were very excited for the app to be released and couldn’t wait for it to launch. I hadn’t had that kind of anticipation for it so this will be more of a casual review of it.

I liked the idea of this app when I first signed up to beta it, but its functionality doesn’t live up to what I had hoped. Granted, it is still in beta so it may get better with other people and other feedback. The app isn’t a phone app so it’s hard to use when you don’t have access to a computer, which describes most of my day. It also makes it hard to actually achieve the word count I’d like to for the day because I can’t access the web app everywhere I go.

I think with a few adjustments or with the addition of a phone or desktop app this could be a really useful tool for most people. I also think that with the addition of features like Scribophile has the interactive features of the site could also help a lot of people with editing and such. Before anyone who uses Writely complains that neither of these are the point of Writely; I know. I know that the point of the app is to get as many words written and projects finished as possible. But finishing the project is only half the battle. If you’re actually going to do anything with it, besides have it sit and collect digital dust on a hard drive somewhere, you need to edit it and send it out.

So do I think it’s worth checking out the free trial and maybe using if you have a specific project you want to get accomplished in a certain amount of time? Yes. Do I think it is a program I will pay for over a long period of time? No. I think I will eventually find that it does not benefit me as much as it would need to for the amount that it costs.

Disclaimer 1: I have not been paid for this review. I do not get paid for anything I post.

Disclaimer 2: I do not edit any of my posts. They are all just stream of consciousness kind of things. So if they are worded poorly or if they have typos, that is why. Usually it is because my brain moves faster than my fingers and forms five different versions of the same sentence resulting in a combination of all of them. Sometimes it’s just that I’m tired and/or distracted by the other people who live in my house. The later is the case for this particular post.

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BookCrossing


So I was looking through my Goodreads shelves and updating the ones I own and the ones I don’t own on my shelves and I decided to finally look up what that BookCrossing ID thing meant. What I found was that BookCrossing is a website where you can custom print book plates with an ID number on it. This ID can be used to track where the book has gone over the years. You can even release your own books into the wild.

It looks like the idea behind this was to make a public library with a world wide community involvement instead of just a local community thing. There are also no due dates, or late fees. You can keep the book as long as you want and release it whenever, wherever, and to whoever you want. You can write reviews and do pretty much all of the same things with BookCrossing as you can with Goodreads. You can even connect BookCrossing to Goodreads. But with BookCrossing you can track books you release, read reviews on the books you release, or see where the book you found is from. It’s pretty cool.

I made a profile for it, and a custom book plate that is released for public purchase. (There are free book plates or ones you can purchase.) My BookCrossing profile is under tonks4life, I’m sure you can find me with that. I just thought it was a cool thing. If any of you do sign up for this site I believe they have a referrer section on the profile so feel free to add me to that!

Since I know a lot of people find me because of the book reviews I used to do I’ll point this out. This site seems like a really cool way to market or spread word about your books. If you have print copies that you’re trying to get reviewed or that you’re selling on your own personal website, or even if you have them in bookstores you might want to buy a few book plates and put them in your books. It might spread word faster and to more people. (Maybe ask permission before placing it in bookstore copies that are waiting to be sold.)

Anyway, have fun sharing your books! Or reading them. Whichever.

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NaNoWriMo 2013


Hey,

I’m doing NaNo 2013 and I have a new stayclassy page to donate to! If you want of course. This will be the ONLY post I make about this I swear, I’m not going to be one of those annoying people who constantly asks for money. You don’t owe me anything. It would be awesome for the program if you would donate, but if you don’t well there are probably more important things to donate to or use the money for.

Thanks,

Your blogger person

Stay Classy

Nano profile

NaNo Excerpts

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Writing Prompts


Okay so, I posted something about this on my writing blog but I figured I should post this here too. I’m super bored and would love writing prompts because the site I used to get mine from has been sort of lax with the prompt up keep. So if you can think of any prompts that would be fun or interesting it’d be cool if you submitted them to my Ask Box. The Ask Box can be found here.

If you wanna see the result of the prompt they’ll be posted here or here. Thanks! I’ll be around, probably posting a book review or two soon.

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Kobo Mini


I am not being paid to say this! (I’m not being paid to say anything on this blog. Would it be nice? Yes, but it’s not happening).

So I’ve had the free Kobo app for a very long time. I got it because Borders was advertising it and was selling their eReaders for some time (before it closed of course). Well, after Borders went away I still had the Kobo app, but no real way to get a eReader to read the books on other than my laptop. 1.) eReaders in general were way too expensive 2.) I still preferred physical books. 3.) I didn’t have anywhere to buy the Kobo and I wasn’t getting a Kindle or a Nook because their books are way too expensive and their eReaders were even more expensive. But then just this past year the Kobo Mini came out and I swear it was love at first sight.

The Kobo Mini was nice because it was a touch screen, it was small (only a little bit bigger than an iPod Touch), and it had an anti-glare/anti-fingerprint screen. The best part about it however, is that it costed less than my cell phone did at the time. This eReader has web browsing capabilities, games, books (obviously), and other awesome features. Now you’re probably wondering why (since I got it five months ago) I am writing this now. Well, I have been receiving multiple requests for reviews and most of them are eBooks, and most of them are Kindle eBooks.

I always knew that the Kobo could handle ePub books and PDF files and .docx files, along with multiple picture files. But what I didn’t know until yesterday was that it also holds Mobi files. Apparently, this is the type of file that the Kindle apps use, or at least are capable of using them. That means that I can now carry Kindle books on my Kobo Mini. that is EXTREMELY convenient and amazing so I thought I’d share. Plus this thing is amazing and I love it and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for an eReader but doesn’t want to pay a ton of money and carry something tablet sized around. (I mean come on if I wanted a tablet sized thing I’d buy a tablet, it’d probably cost less and do more).

The website for the free desktop app and other information on this product is: Kobo

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Writing Blog


Okay so I have been posting links to a few of my stories on figment and other things. Some people have actually been clicking on the links and reading them? I think? But I’ve been double posting them on here and on my tumblog, so if you want to get more of that, I will probably post more writing on my writing tumblog as opposed to on here. So:

My Figment: My Profile

My writing blog: Tessa’s Escape (this is named after a character of mine since it used to be an original character roleplaying blog. But it changed to a writing blog).

Those two places are the main two places where you will find my writing, and if you want to read more please go there because I might not always double post. The tumblog has fanfiction, figment stories, nanowrimo excerpts, and the ability to give me prompts and request stories on it through my ask. The figment will just have contest entries and any other piece of writing I feel like sharing with the public. This way, if you want to read more of anything you can contact me through the comments and my ask and not on here. (But you can also comment on the posts on here if you like).

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Filed under Editing (because I couldn't spell the first time), Rewriting, Updates, Web sites, Writing

Count Down to NaNo


There are 5 hours until NaNoWriMo 2012 and I’m stuck doing physics homework. But that’s okay. I know I say this every time I do it, but I love NaNoWriMo. It’s totally awesome and insanely fun! If you don’t believe me you should try it! This is run by a non-profit organization, which runs solely on donations. So each year they ask for people to fundraise so that they can fund all of their other programs and programs for children. This year, for sponsorships they have a website where you can sign up for a funding page and have people donate to the organization.

I have a funding page, where you can sponsor me, and hopefully keep me going until I finish the 50k. Amy’s NaNo Funds The link there is to my funding page. I’ll also put a widget underneath this post so that you can donate there. The donations are tax-deductable, and can be made at my page, the NaNoWriMo site, or at the OLL Store where you can buy merchandise and still donate.

 

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Filed under Books!, Charity, Nerdfighteria, Web sites, Writing

Figment: Who Done It? Contest


So Figment.com has contests every once in a while, and sometimes I enter them just for the heck of it. This one was particularly fun because you needed to write an alibi for a fictitious murder that took place of an infamous editor. The contest ran until October 8th, and now voting runs until October 15th. Now I’m not saying that you should vote for me, because that would just feel like cheating. But if you go to this: http://figment.com/books/427340-I-Swear-it-Wasn-t-Me- link, you can get to my story, then if you click on the tag you can find the rest of the entries.

I highly recommend that you read them, they are really fantastic, and if you like writing you should sign up for an account on Figment, and feel free to follow me on there! You can only vote for the contestants by having a figment account and by hearting the stories. So if you just want to have an account so you can read and comment on awesome people’s writing I highly recommend you get an account for that as well. The people on this site are really fantastic.

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Nerdfighters, Kelly Clarkson, and other stuff


Alright so I have not been very active in anything, whether it be this blog, the roleplay sites that I’m on, and tumblr. Well that is because I have been watching Vlogbrothers videos like a lot of them because there are 977 and I don’t even know how many of those I’ve watched… I think it’s at least a hundred or more. So that is what I’ve been doing and is what I will continue to do until I have watched them all. (I will post links to every single thing I talk about in the bottom of this post). Now the thing called Nerdfighters is basically a huge community of their fans which can be found in multiple ways. There’s youtube, the ning, and a whole bunch of other cool things. I absolutely love them and you should go watch videos because they are fun, granted watching all of them might be a little crazy so don’t do that unless you don’t like sleep or have an insane amount of time.

Alright so that is only one thing that I’ve been doing for the majority of the week is earning Kellebrities points. They are part of Kelly Clarkson’s new rewards system that will give you cool prizes and stuff. Which is awesome because I’m a HUGE fan and cannot afford awesome stuff after already buying all of her cds (which are also in the prizes). From this, I got the most amazing google chrome skin ever! Unless of course someone has one that features any of the things that are in the picture above my homepage.

As before I mentioned that I have other things to be doing, like roleplaying and tumbling (I don’t know if that’s a real word or not but I’m making it one so it is). All of the sites that I roleplay with are on the sidebar in little picture link things (the sites call them affs.). My tumblr is crazy so I wouldn’t really recommend looking at it unless you want to be drawn into my insanity. But if you do there’s a link in the links section of this post.

I also have books that I’m reading, and books I am writing with Camp NaNoWriMo, and grad. parties because I just graduated high school, and college stuff to do, and movies that I’ve seen, and other stuff like that. So yeah I’ve been busy, also there are charities that I’ve been trying to raise money for (unsuccessfully might I add).

That’s what I’ve been doing, and this post is very uninteresting and a huge block of text but I don’t really care because if you love me you’ll read it anyway. The aforementioned links are just below this sentence in a list, and have a wonderful rest of your day and hopefully you’ll see more posts if you care.

Links:

Also, since I have shoved so many different teasers about stuff I’m writing, if you want like a chapter posted as a post, I will consider it just comment on this and tell me that you would like to read something and then I’ll make a poll and put it in a post and you can vote on which you would like to read. But for now: comments make for a happy blogger so comment!

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Filed under Books!, Charity, Editing (because I couldn't spell the first time), Friends, Movies, music, Nerdfighteria, Rewriting, School, TV Shows, Updates, Web sites, Writing

New Computer


Hey so I just got a new computer and I’m still trying to figure out how to use it. But now that I have it I will probably be posting more on here than I normally do. Sorry I haven’t been posting, but I have another blog that I update more, and I have other things that I have to do before I post. Also, I haven’t really been doing anything all that interesting so doing this is probably just stupid and not interesting.

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