Download “The Elements of Style” for Free

By Matthew Guay on March 15, 2011 in Books, Quick Tips

One of the most celebrated texts for writers is William Strunk, Jr.’s The Elements of Style. If you’ve ever taken a writing class or done any extra studying about writing, you’ve likely seen this short book quoted or listed as recommended reading. Written initially as a short handbook for his students in 1918, Strunk’s work has remained a standard handbook of English writing ever since. It’s a brief book, but includes some of the best advice on correct English rules of usage, commonly misused and misspelled words, and

In the years since its original publishing, The Elements of Style has been updated numerous times, and in 1935 E. B. White contributed to the updating, causing the book to generally be known as Strunk and White. You can still purchase the most up-to-date version as a paper book from Amazon today, though oddly enough the latest editions are not available as eBooks. Both the Kindle Store and iBooks include copies of The Elements of Style, but they’re actually just reformatted copies of the original edition from others.

Since the original was published in 1918, though, the original Elements of Style is out of copyright in the US and most other countries. Thanks to that, the book was published fully on Wikisource, Wikipedia’s site for public domain books. You can read it online there, and since the chapters are quite short, it’s a great reference to keep bookmarked so you can check whenever you’re writing. Alternately, you can also download The Elements of Style in nicely formatted PDF, mobi, or ePub files from Feedbooks for free. These copies are great to save to your eBook library so you can read the whole book from your computer, iPhone/iPad, Kindle, or other device anytime you want.

Original 1918 edition of The Elements of Style in iBooks

The Elements of Style is definitely still a useful handbook for English writing, and I just read through the first section this afternoon as part of my required reading for my current technology communications class. Interestingly, it’s also a great companion book to the new book from A List Apart, The Elements of Content Strategy, which is written to help writers craft online content that’s as high quality as is demanded of traditional writers.

It’s amazing how timeless the advice in The Elements of Style is for it to still be relevant all these years later. Whether you’re a full-time writer or just need a few pointers to make your writing flow better, it’s a great guide that’s quick and easy to read. For free!

Download The Elements of Style in PDF, ePub, or mobi format from Feedbooks

Comments { 2 }

Wunderlist | To-do List Awesomeness on Every Platform

By Matthew Guay on March 11, 2011 in Featured, iOS Apps, PC Software

There’s so many to-do list apps today for all of the major computing platforms that you can quickly get overwhelmed trying to choose one. Most to-do list apps on Windows are old and clunky, while many iOS to-do list apps are an island to themselves and don’t let you sync or share tasks. It’s enough sometimes to make you just want to go back to just using a pad of paper. But wait: that surely can’t be the best solution. It’s the 21st century; can’t we have our tasks on any platform, synced, and shared with anyone we need? Can it really be that hard?

Enter Wunderlist. Wunderlist is an awesome new to-do list app that’s beautiful, feature filled, and amazingly, free! Actually, it’s is as much of a platform as it is an individual app. With to-do list apps for Windows, OS X, Android, iPad, iPhone, Android, and the web, you can keep up with everything you need to do no matter where you are or what device you’re using. While there are many beautiful and functional to-do list apps on OS X and iOS, Windows typically hasn’t had many modern to-do list apps that are both easy to use and stylish. Wunderlist’s Windows app alone makes it a winner, but add in the apps for other platforms, and it’s even better.

It contains all the features you’ll need to keep up with your tasks. You can add lists to organize to-dos, add a star to prioritize them, add a date to make sure you don’t forget when your task is due, and add notes to remember more about the task. Need to rearrange tasks? Simply drag and drop them to get them in the correct order. Then, find your tasks with the integrated search box, or reorder them based on priority or due date from the bottom buttons. You can even customize the app with a number of high quality background images. Best of all, you can share lists with others so your family, team, or business can stay connected in a simple Wunderlist to-do list. I’ve used this to share ideas with coworkers and editors over the past month, and it’s worked amazingly flawlessly.

Wunderlist works almost the exact same on every platform, but contains the small touches it takes to integrate great with particular platforms as well. On Windows, it uses a standard window and tray icon; on iPad, you’ll see iOS style pop-overs and inertia scrolling. You can enter tasks with keyboard shortcuts in Windows, OS X, and the webapp, while the mobile apps let you swipe to delete tasks and pull down to refresh a page. The same great features are there in each of the apps, though: contact syncing, sharing, organization, and a beautiful, easy to use experience. Best of all, if you’ve signed in with the same account on all of your devices, your tasks will automatically stay in sync. No more manually syncing or copying tasks between apps; you’ll just stay connected to what you need to do.

The iPhone app is especially handy since you can view and add tasks on the go. Wunderlist can even notify you when your tasks are due with standard iOS alerts and icon indicators. If you have an Android device, you can use the new Wunderlist Android app as well. Or, if you want, you can add new tasks by emailing them to me@wunderlist.com from your account email address, and can choose to be alerted via email when tasks are due. This way, even if you don’t have the latest mobile device, you can still keep up with your Wunderlist account on the go.

And, now, Wunderlist is equally at home in your browser! The newly released Wunderlist webapp brings all of Wunderlist’s features to any browser, so now you can use it from your Ubuntu computer or Chrome netbook. Or, if you don’t want to install a new program without knowing if you’ll like it, you could just give it a try in your browser. If you like it, then install it on your Mac, PC, or mobile device. Everything works almost the same as it does in Wunderlist’s Mac and PC apps; you can create new lists, drag and drop tasks to rearrange them, search across all of your tasks, and more. You can even change the background just like you can in any of the other apps. Whether on the web, an iOS device, your PC, or almost any other device, the Wunderlist experience is the same. This is easily one of the best cross-platform apps we’ve seen that merges your mobile device, PC, and browser experience.

But, hey, we could talk all day about getting organized with awesome to-do list apps, but that doesn’t help us get everything we need to do, done. Usually it’s a tough decision whether or not you should spend money on yet another productivity app. You have to decide if you need your tasks on your smartphone, PC, or online, and whether you can live without everything in sync or not. Today, Wunderlist has made these decisions obsolete. Wunderlist gives you synced, shared, and scheduled to-dos on almost any platform, for free. The only problem I’ve had is that the Wunderlist apps are somewhat slower than fully native apps that are built specifically for one platform. That said, recent updates have really improved the performance, and the iOS app now runs just as fast as Things or other similar apps. Plus, it lets me share and sync tasks, something few other apps even offered. There’s no reason not to give it a try on your browser, PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android phone or tablet today. So go download it today, quit saying you’re going to find the perfect to-do list app, and just give it a try.

At least that’s one thing off your to-do list!

Checkout Wunderlist’s Awesome website and download it for your platform

Or, just Get started directly online with the Wunderlist Web App

Download Wunderlist for iPhone or Wunderlist HD for iPad

Comments { 2 }

Sorted for iPad: Task Management, iWork Style

By Matthew Guay on March 9, 2011 in iOS Apps, Reviews

Apple has set a high bar for iOS apps with their own iPad apps. The bundled apps, including Calendar and Contacts, are nicely designed, but their iWork apps really set the bar with full-featured office programs that are easier to use than most desktop apps but offer much of the same power. The new GarageBand and iMovie apps for iPad 2 take this even further and bring features you’d be hard pressed to replicate on a traditional computer.

That said, hundreds of 3rd party developers have taken the iPad as a canvas for their best work, and have created beautiful and useful apps for the most popular tablet computer today. Sorted for iPad is one such app. It brings iWork’s style to task management, and lets you easily create lists of the things you need to do and stay organized from your iPad. Simple to use with an elegant interface, it seems like it might be what Apple would have created if they’d made a todo list app for the iWork suite. Best of all, the latest version is a universal app that you can use from your iPhone or iPod Touch as well!

Get Your Tasks Sorted

Sorted is a simple and elegant to-do list app that makes it easy to keep up with everything you need to do. It uses a document based interface to organize tasks, unlike many apps that keep all of your tasks together. Its interface works like many apps including the iWork apps; your documents are listed on the main screen, and you can open one by tapping it from the home screen.

Sorted includes a default task list to help you get started, or you can go ahead and create a new list to organize your tasks. Just enter your list’s title, then double-tap on any line to enter a new task. This is much quicker than opening a New Task dialog like you have to do in many apps.

Your default tasks are just a plain text to-do, but Sorted lets you add much more info if you want. Just tap the blue arrow on the left of a task to add a due date, reminder, and select a color to prioritize your tasks. Swipe up to add a note to the task as well. Once you’ve added extra info, you’ll see it in a smaller font under your task. If you’re not fond of the default priority colors, you can change them from Sorted’s main settings as well.

Sorted’s interface is very easy to use. You can rearrange tasks just by dragging them by the three line handle on the right; no need to tap edit or change anything else. Once you’ve finished a task, you can swipe it with one finger to check it off as completed. Alternately, swipe with two fingers to delete a task.

You’ll use the main List view by default, but Sorted can also display your tasks organized by priority or date. Alternately, select Completed to see all the tasks you’ve finished. If you accidentally swiped a task but aren’t actually finished with it yet, just swipe it again here and it’ll go back to your main list.

The nicest touch is the stamp on the top corner of the extra pages; it looks just like it was done with a real rubber stamp and ink. The little design touches such as the leather background behind the paper and the torn off paper edge at the top really make Sorted a pleasure to use. Combine that with fast operation and multitouch gestures, and Sorted definitely feels like it was built specifically for iPad much more than most other todo list apps.

Back on the main screen, you can add as many lists as you want to keep up with everything. Best of all, you can duplicate lists you’ve already created to make new lists. I really like this feature, since you can, for example, create a standard todo list for, say, a college class. Then, just duplicate it for each class, and add the info that’s important for that particular class. Once you’ve added a lot of tasks, it might be easy to lose them. Don’t worry, though; just tap the search button at the top to locate anything in your lists. Then, if you want to share your lists with others, you can email a plain text version right from Sorted. The developers plan to add the ability to sync your lists between devices in a future update; this will be especially nice if you have an iPhone and an iPad, since Sorted is already a universal app.

Conclusion

Sorted is a very simple todo list app that makes it quick and easy to keep up with everything you need to do. You can organize your tasks in separate lists, prioritize everything, and mark off the things you’ve done with multitouch gestures. It’s definitely a todo list app that feels like it’s been designed from the ground-up to work great on iPad. To me, it feels like a great addition to the iWork suite of apps! Best of all, it’s only $0.99, which is much cheaper than most iPad todo list apps. If you’ve used Sorted on your iPad, or on your iPhone since it’s now a universal app, let us know how it’s worked out for you!

Our Rating: 9/10

Download Sorted from the App Store | $0.99 – Universal app – iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad

Sorted’s Official Site

Comments { 0 }

Essay App | Beautiful Rich Text Editing on iPad

By Matthew Guay on March 4, 2011 in Featured, iOS Apps, Reviews

The iPad is often referred to as a consumption device, and it is great for reading and watching videos. But your iPad can be a serious productivity tool, too, and I use mine all the time for writing. We recently looked at iA Writer, which is still one of the best apps for writing plain text in a distraction free environment. Sometimes, though, you might want to be able to add more features to your text without having to resort to a full word processor like Pages.

Until recently, there were no rich text editors in the App Store that made it easy to just write rich text without a full Office program. The new Essay App cures this problem. It’s a rich text editor that’s already been featured by Apple in the App Store even though it’s only been out for little over a month. We were excited to get the chance to review Essay for iPad, so let’s take a look and see what’s so great about Essay to get this much attention!

Rich Text Editing Made Simple

Essay App serves a simple purpose: it makes it easy to create and edit rich text on your iPad. There are tons of plain text editing apps, and then there are Office apps like Pages and QuickOffice. Essay sits right in the middle; it gives you a way to create beautifully formatted text without creating a new Office document. Best of all, Essay is both simple and elegant. When you launch the app, the following splash screen appears for a moment.

The editor interface then slides in, and you’ll see a new Welcome document ready for you to read. As you can see, the document includes headings, italics, and bold text; this is just a sample of what you can do with the app. The left pane stores all the documents you create, while the middle is the main editor interface, and the right holds the editing tools. The interface is very smooth and delightful to use; the panes slide into position, and when you open a new file, it slides in on top of your previous file. It’s little touches like this that go a long ways towards making an otherwise boring task exciting.

All files you create are saved in HTML format, and can be printed or emailed directly from the app. You can also save them to your Dropbox account so you can access them from anywhere. Just press the settings gear icon and link your Dropbox folder. By default, your files will be synced to a /Essay folder on the top of your Dropbox, but you can change this if you wish. If you want an easy way to publish formatted basic HTML documents from your iPad, you could even set your Public folder as your linked folder. Then, just open the Dropbox app and copy the link, and you’ll have an essay ready to share with the world!

Writing in Essay

Writing a new document in Essay works just as you’d expect from many text editor apps. Press the plus button on the left to add a new file, then enter your title at the top. Then, just press Done or tap in the white editor area to start typing.

As you’re writing, you can maximize your editing space by pinching to zoom out. This closes the left and right panes, letting you edit in full screen mode. Alternately, swipe in from the right to open the editor pallet. Here you can choose to make your selected text bold, italicized, underlined, striked out, or highlighted with the ! button. If you have an external keyboard, you can also enter press Alt+Space and then use standard function keys such as b and I to change text to bold or italics just like you would on a PC. This is a nice touch that most apps don’t include.

Alternately, choose Section or Subsection for H1 or H2 headlines in Helvetica, or Paragraph for standard paragraph formatted Georgia text. You can also insert a blockquote that will be indented and italicized. This covers almost everything you’ll need to create beautifully formatted text, and you might even start writing your homework essays in Essay! Plus, the developer plans to add support for bulleted lists, links, and more in future updates.

If the fonts feel too small for you, just tap the A button under the printer to choose from three font sizes. The highlighted A shows the current size choice. The largest size makes Essay app a nice reading app, too!

As mentioned before, you can print or email your documents right from Essay App. Mail on iPad doesn’t include any text formatting options, so this is a great way to create more formatted emails than you could otherwise. And the included font choices look great in print, too.

Conclusion

After using plain text editors for so long, you can get used to living without rich formatting for standard note taking and writing on iPad. Essay proves how useful the basic formatting options can be, and brings them to iPad in an elegant yet simple interface. It’s no wonder Essay has already gotten so much recognition! Whether you need to write real essays on your iPad, are looking for a better way to jot your thought down and keep them formatted, or want to email fully formatted messages, Essay is a great app to cover all this and more. Plus, it’s just getting started; with future updates, it’ll be even more useful for writing rich text wherever you are!

Our Rating: 9/10

Download Essay App for iPad from the App Store | $3.99

Essay App’s Official Site

Comments { 3 }

Learn to Create Tumblr Themes the Easy Way

By Matthew Guay on February 25, 2011 in Books, Reviews

Would you like to make a customized theme for your Tumblr site, or create new Tumblr themes to sell? While there are many reasons a WordPress blog is more versatile and powerful, Tumblr is still one of the easiest blogging systems to use. If you just want an easy way to publish your pictures, videos, thoughts, and more, Tumblr makes it easy to do. Best of all, it’s much easier to create new themes for.

That’s where the Rockable Press eBook Theme Tumblr Like a Pro comes in. This 138 page eBook, along with around 3 hours of included tutorial videos, takes you though everything you need to learn to start designing themes for Tumblr. You can learn to create beautiful themes for your own use, or to sell to the more than 14 million Tumblr users that have blogs online today! Even major theme developers like WooThemes have created themes for Tumblr, and there’s over 30 different Tumblr themes for sell today on ThemeForest by freelancers and small businesses. There’s a huge opportunity to create and sell new themes on marketplaces like ThemeForest, and this eBook will teach what it takes to go from zero to hero.

What’s Included?

The book first teaches about Tumblr’s origins, and the basics of designing themes for the service. It then progresses through the different types of posts in Tumblr, and how to customize your theme for each of them. Next, you’ll be able to take your theme knowledge to creating static pages, as well as adding customization options so your customers can tweak the font’s colors, fonts, and more. Finally, it progresses to more advanced topics, including how to create AJAX enabled themes, utalize the Tumblr API, and much more.

Throughout the text, you’ll see blocks of code to help you understand what’s being explained, as well as images of what the result should look like on your site.

As you’re reading, you’ll see markers that let you know when you should switch to the video. Just like a self-study course, you’ll be immersed in learning to theme Tumblr blogs with both the detailed text and the accompanying videos.

The videos themselves are very informative; you’ll see the most important parts explained directly, and then see the code in action on Tumblr. All together, Theme Tumblr Like a Pro is more like a mini-course on creating Tumblr themes than a traditional eBook. It takes the best of both worlds, and really makes coding a theme seem simpler than you might have thought.

Conclusion

Tumblr is actually amazingly simple to create themes for, and if you’ve found it daunting to create WordPress themes then you’ll be refreshed by Tumblr’s simplicity. Even though it’s simple, you’ll still need to learn the ropes before you can dive in and start creating world-class themes. Theme Tumblr Like a Pro is a great book to get you started. Far from simply teaching the basics, it’ll help you create advanced, dynamic themes. In fact, after reading it, I’m thinking that I should try creating a Tumblr theme even though I don’t use Tumblr myself anymore. I could always sell it on ThemeForest…

Theme Tumblr Like a Pro is available from Rockable Press for $29. For this, you’ll get the eBook in PDF format, as well as the sample theme with the source code and PSD files. You’ll also get around 3 hours of tutorial videos. All together, you’ll be fully equipped to learn everything you need to start coding themes. It’d be best if you knew at least some HTML and CSS before getting started. With everything included, it’s definitely a reasonable price, and if you can go sell new Tumblr themes when you’re done, all the better!

Don’t forget … if you do make a new Tumblr theme after reading this book, be sure to leave a comment here and let us see the results!

Get more info and purchase Theme Tumblr Like a Pro today!