In today’s business world, there are more opportunities than ever for entrepreneurs to gain exposure. The democratization of information has made it easy for small business owners to reach out to customers, clients, and colleagues through a wide range of inexpensive yet effective mediums, and self-publishing…
Everyone knows at this point that the traditional publishing industry is in trouble. Between ebooks and ereaders and the whole internet in general, the old-school paper and ink book backed by a major publisher seems to be going the way of the illuminated manuscript. While I’m definitely a little bummed…
When you start a company, you’re going 90 to nothing. You’re making sales. Hiring and firing. Coding. Even getting the coffee. But I’m betting there’s one area you’re steering clear of: writing. A lot of times, startup founders have difficulty expressing themselves through content, or simply don’t have the time…
We all know that our well-being plan should include eating right, sleeping well, drinking plenty of water, and making time for your nearest and dearest. But word has it that when it comes to increasing our happiness and well being, there’s a new kid in town. Daily writing. According to psychological research…
Moving in with the in-laws is not what most of us have in mind when picturing ourselves controlling our own destiny, which is why not everyone enjoys the same freedom as Laura Pepper Wu. Thanks to bunking with the fam and more sacrifices, she’s in charge of her life story and her startup 30 Day Books. Both…
People get hundreds of emails a day today, bypass many and read few. It’s getting harder and harder to meet people through email and then turn that email into an actual, in-real-life relationship. And yet for Gen Y entrepreneurs (aspiring or current), the ability to do outreach via email is an essential…
Guest blogging plays an important role in the search engine optimization process. As odd as it seems, the future of link building may point at guest blogging. True, you would be providing a great article to some other blog, but this very act of guest blogging will help increase traffic and add audience to…
This probably doesn’t come as too much of a shock, but I absolutely love stories. One of my favorite things to do at my Grandma’s house is go through all of her old photo albums and journals and letters that stretch back as far as the Mayflower. Sometimes, though, there just isn’t information available…
Attention students: if organizing your thoughts, bettering your grades, I don’t know – preparing for your future – don’t quite motivate you enough to take good notes, this startup news may make you reconsider the effort you put into your schoolwork. Flashnotes gives you a place where you can sell your…
I dropped out of college to pursue my business goals instead of completing a degree. While I wouldn’t say that college is a waste of time for everybody, I do think that there are plenty of important entrepreneurial skills that just aren’t covered in obtaining a traditional education. So, if you’re…
Identifying teenagers with exceptional artistic and literary talent, the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers showcases their work to a national audience. On artandwriting.org, you can view some of these works. About 1400 awards are given, where national winners receive recognition at Carnegie Hall.
Read more on Artandwriting.org – Alliance for Young Artists and Writers…
Read more on How Launching Your Writing Career Can Boost Your Business…
Aimed at authors, journalists, bloggers, teachers, students and just any person who’s got a writing assignment to tackle, Shelfster makes for the easy collection and categorization of ideas. This new platform lets you capture everything from text snippets and images to voice notes and full web pages, and have it all stored in the same place. This collection of data is handled using a series of free tools, which are available both for Windows and Mac, and also for smartphones.
Anything you collect using this platform is called an “item”, and “items” are combined to form “documents”. And both “items” and “documents” are stored into “projects”.
Once you’ve created a “document”, then you can have it printed, exported to HTML (IE, zipped) and turned into a PDF. So, Shelfster makes it very easy to share your files with any collaborator, and have them swapped back and forth until you’ve arrived at the final version of what you’re working on.
And remember, all of the above can be done for free. Sign up for an account of your own here in order to get started.
You want your writing to be original and engaging? Then there’s just one thing you should do. Read, read and read a lot. Reading is the one prerequisite for becoming a powerhouse of a writer. And this is anything but a well-kept secret, really. What happens, though, is that not anybody has got the time to do that. And you might feel that reading in your spare time just to do your job better feels too much like working overtime.
Enter Frazeit. Think of it as a search engine for phrases. It indexes more than 100M of them, and the six most-spoken languages in the world are all supported. Just by picking the one you speak and choosing a category for your search query (“Generic” or “Famous Quotes”) you’ll be presented with a bunch of phrases you can use to spice up anything you’re writing.
While Frazeit is not the first service of its kind to come along (see PhraseUp, for example), it’s got a true fighting chance because A) It’s simple to use, B) It’ fast, and C) It’s free. And that’s a nice triplet any way you look at it.
By assessing each student’s abilities and special needs with the LevelSet – Lexile assessment tool, Achieve3000.com helps ensure that students achieve mastery in reading, writing and other courses. The Achieve3000 program helps to foster steady growth for students in grades K-12 while helping to ensure that they improve their test scores. Students receive assignments and follow-up exercises based upon their personal learning profiles. Achieve 3000 uses this technique to not only improve their performance but also to help build their confidence and self-esteem. For students with limited English skills, Haitian-Creole and Spanish versions of the programs are also available.
The Achieve3000.com program helps students improve their vocabulary acquisition, writing skills, fluency, and reading comprehension. First, the Lexile level of the student is assessed with the LevelSet assessment tool. The Lexile Framework for Reading helps determine the reading and comprehension abilities of students in order to match them with articles, books, and other reading resources appropriate for their reading level.
Next, the Achieve3000 program emails students personalized reading assignments which are based on their Lexile level, engaging, motivating, and interactive. Students receive nonfiction reading and writing assignments every day through the secure Achieve3000 email system.
The reading comprehension levels of students are monitored daily. Mid-year, a second LevelSet assessment is done and assignments are adjusted if needed to match the current Lexile level of the student. At the end of the year, a third LevelSet is administered to students in order to determine how much their reading comprehension has improved through the Achieve3000.com program.
Throughout the year, Achieve3000.com provides administrators and teachers with diagnostic information and management reports to help ensure the students are receiving teaching and support based upon their specific needs. 
With more than 13,000 fun, freaky, stylish, cute, and elegant fonts for free, AbstractFonts.com offers a break from the everyday hum drum of Arial and Calibri, Times New Roman and Verdana fonts most computers and laptops come equipped with. AbstractFonts offers alternatives to the standard fonts such as “Jaggy Fries,” “Exquisite Corpse,” and “Paper-Mache” to name a few. Other fonts currently popular on AbstractFonts.com include “Billy Angel,” “Swamp Witch,” and “Respective.” Visitors to the website can either enter their own text to view each font, or opt for the default texts.
Options for each of the 13,378 (and counting) free fonts available on AbstractFonts.com include download, bookmark, and like. Choosing to download a font will result in the download of a zip file. The zip file will contain a TrueType file (ttf) which is the file with the font. The zip file may also contain specific copyright information, author details, or instructions for the font. Installation of fonts from the AbstractFonts website is easy and only takes a minute.
Once users have downloaded the zip file, they simply need at add the ttf file to their FONT folder, (for Windows users). The help / Q&A section of AbstractFonts.com provides detailed instructions and a video to help people with installation of the fonts found on the website, including special instructions for Mac OS.
The free fonts from Abstract Fonts are for personal use only. If users intend to use the font for commercial use in any way, they must first request and receive permission from the author and copyright holder of the font. The free fonts from AbstractFonts.com may not be distributed, altered, published, reproduced or used for profit in any way without consent from the author of the font. 
How can we instil writing habits in our children? I am sure many would say that such a thing is harder than ever since the Internet came along. But that position is short-sighted bar none. The Internet does not make things harder (or instantly easier, for that matter). All it does is to modify the dynamics in which things are done. It is up to people to put it to great/bad uses. And as far as making children take a liking to writing at an early age is concerned, this is a truly good site.
Essentially, Little Write Brain provides the younger ones with all the tools they could ever need to write short stories and have them shared with all of their friends, and with other children that also happen to use the site. Both a character builder and a story builder are provided, and children get to use these in order to create a storybook of their very own.
The company provides free online storage to all its clients, and anything the children create can be printed in the highest quality, and delivered right away. The children will then be able to share what they have created with all their older relatives and grandparents.
Read more on LittleWriteBrain.com – Story Builder For Children…
With its ability to have any text proofread and analyzed, Grammarly stands as a really interesting alternative for all those who want to become better writers. Not only can this application check grammar and punctuation on the whole, it can also detect texts that are plagiarized and perform deep stylistic analyses. Grammarly is able to tell you where you should begin focusing your attention in order to improve your writing in a reasonable amount of time.
Some of the grammar checks that Grammarly can run include looking for subject-verb agreements, faulty parallelisms, run-on sentences and comma splices… It is claimed on the site that Grammarly can carry over 150 different grammar tests, and while it is obviously impossible for me (or for anybody) to say whether that is accurate, I must say that the texts I threw at it were processed more than satisfactorily. But there is no reason for you to take my word for it – you can have texts analyzed for free, and without having to even sign up first. Just go and do.
UrlAi is a new web tool that bloggers can use to have their blogs analyzed. Yet, this tool won’t look at the blog’s backlinks and number of daily visits.
It will look at something entirely different: the writing style. Yes, that’s right. UrlAi is a tool that can look at any blog and tell you the gender of the person that writes and his/her age based solely on the person’s writing style. It can also tell you what the predominant mood of the blog is.
If you are a blogger and you want to ensure that your writing style suits the themes and topics that you are dealing with, then, you can simply submit your blog’s URL and have it analyzed. It’s just no good having a blog about Brazilian metal band “Sepultura” and have a writing style that is rosy, upbeat and that sounds as if it has been written by a tween (unless it’s all a joke, of course).
The analysis in itself is immediate – you just copy and paste the URL for it to be carried out. The 10 most recent posts are going to be weighed up, and you will then either marvel or shudder at the results.
Most people I know fancy themselves as writers to a bigger or lesser degree, and you can count me in. Scribesnook is a niche social network for all of us who deem ourselves as that, and also for those who are “actual” writers.
The line that separates “being” a writer from “thinking” that you are one is a thin one at best, but it doesn’t really matter in social sites like this one. Anybody can join and get in touch with people who share his same interest.
The genres that are covered here include “Romance”, “Humor”, “Fantasy” and “Action & Adventure”. For its part, Lord Byron wanna-bes have a whole section devoted to them. And in addition to letting authors share what they do, Scribesnook makes it possible for them to discover new authors and content to try out.
The website has a truly minimalist feel to it, and it is evident that the main preoccupation of the one who built it all was coming up with a platform where the content is the real star. I think that it has paid off, but the fact that I love writing has got noting to do with that. I encourage you to pay it a visit in order to arrive at your own conclusions.
