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Zen and the Art of Writing

November 8, 2012 •

Those cre­ative dudes in Barcelona are at it again: they’ve upgraded a charm­ing min­i­mal­ist tool for writ­ers and blog­gers called OmmWriter. Its cre­ators call it “a writ­ing envi­ron­ment.”

If you have ADHD or thrill to the joys of 3‑screen multi-task­ing, read no fur­ther. OmmWriter serves peo­ple who need to focus or pre­fer con­cen­tra­tion when engaged in writ­ing…

It’s also a good option for peo­ple who pre­fer to sep­a­rate the free-flow, right-brain act of cre­at­ing from the more ratio­nal tasks asso­ci­ated with edit­ing.

A Zen Garden for the Mind

Once you launch OmmWriter, there are no dis­trac­tions. All the menus and oper­at­ing sys­tem func­tions hide in the back­ground. Instead the writ­ing can­vas fills the entire screen (as shown below).

OmmWriter

If your sys­tem pro­vides noti­fi­ca­tions, OmmWriter sus­pends those noti­fi­ca­tions until you leave the peace­ful­ness of the OmmWriter envi­ron­ment.

Soothing Sounds and Visuals

OmmWriter launches with a sooth­ing sound­track, one that reminds you of foun­tains trick­ling in a quiet court­yard on a hot sum­mer’s day. The back­ground is mono­chro­matic, gen­tly pleas­ing but with­out call­ing atten­tion to itself.

There are two ver­sions of OmmWriter: Dana I and Dana II. The first ver­sion is free, the sec­ond has a small fee of $4.11. Read the devel­op­er’s “fre­quently med­i­tated ques­tions” for the ratio­nale behind their pric­ing. Theirs is an intu­itive and val­ues-based approach to pric­ing.

The main dif­fer­ence between Dana I and II is the num­ber of audio-visual choices offered (visual back­grounds and sound tracks).

    • Dana I offers 3 audio-visual choices.
    • Dana II enables you to choose among 7 audio tracks and 8 visual back­grounds.

Con­sis­tent with its design intent of utter sim­plic­ity, there are no options for for­mat­ting within the tool. You can’t set font fam­ily or styling choices, use bul­lets or num­bered lists. (You do that later with your edit­ing or blog­ging tool.)

Where Can You Use OmmWriter

OmmWriter works with Macs, PCs and iPad.

This lat­est release has been opti­mized for Retina Mac dis­plays and the cur­rent ver­sion of the Mac OS with its built-in noti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem.

Files cre­ated with OmmWriter can’t be printed directly from the tool. Instead you save them to one of the fol­low­ing for­mats, for pol­ish­ing and edit­ing in a tool that’s been designed for edit­ing:

    • Text file (.txt)
    • Rich Text File (.rtf)
    • PDF

OmmWriter pro­vides an auto­matic back-up behind the scenes.

    Best of all, OmmWriter offers peace and quiet in an oth­er­wise noisy and dis­tract­ing world.

Serendipity, or Applied Intelligence?

June 1, 2010 •

To help you get more value from my post­ings, I added the LinkWithin wid­get to my blogs today. This wid­get can auto­mat­i­cally sug­gest, for any new post, related sto­ries found else­where within the blog. I’m still get­ting a feel for what it con­sid­ers to be “related” — and am already chuck­ling at some of its whim­si­cal results.

What You See

At the bot­tom of each post, the LinkWithin wid­get dis­plays links and thumb­nails for up to 3 related sto­ries within my blog.

You’ll see the ben­e­fits of its “intel­li­gence” at the end of this and all other posts in this blog.

How It Works

LinkWithin chooses related sto­ries based on their title, tags and con­tent, accord­ing to the developer’s FAQ.

Hav­ing said that, I’ve found some of the choices to be quite amus­ing: it sees link­ages that a human edi­tor would never con­sider. Take a look at the post “Indi­ca­tors of Waste Heat” as an exam­ple (LinkWithin’s results appear at the bot­tom).

How did LinkWithin “see” the con­nec­tion between our cats’ heat-seek­ing behav­ior and a yoga retreat in Provence?

Well, it turns out the yoga retreat took place dur­ing a heat wave in south­ern France. There was no A/C in the yoga stu­dio or in the 16th cen­tury hotel where we stayed. Tem­per­a­tures hov­ered in the high 90s and above for more than a week.

LinkWithin must have detected words relat­ing to heat in both posts, even if their sub­ject mat­ter is largely unre­lated. Both posts were writ­ten with a some­what wry tone, although I doubt LinkWithin could detect that sub­tle aspect to the con­tent.

See what you think…

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

Recent Posts

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