Directory of Distraction-free Writing Tools

By jeremy | November 22, 2011

(2009 June: added two no delete editors)

Editors

A working list of tools to reduce writers’ distraction. I’ve been using some of them for a while; I was inspired by Cory Doctorow’s latest post on the matter to collect what I could together. All are free unless otherwise stated.

No backspace/delete editors

Typewriter “All you can do is type in one direction. You can’t delete, you can’t copy, you can’t paste. You can save and print. And you can switch between black text on white and green on black; full screen and window.” Freeware, all OS.

Momentum Writer Same idea, really. “Momentum Writer is the ultimate tool for distraction-free writing. Like a mechanical typewriter, users are prevented from editing previously written text. There are no specific formatting options, no scrolling, deleting, or revisions. Momentum Writer doesn’t even allow you to use the backspace key. Momentum Writer forces you to write, to move forward, to add new words. It halts the temptation to linger, revise, and correct. Momentum Writer is a typewriter for your PC.” Freeware, for Windows.

Multiplatform

JDarkroom (works on Windows, Macs and Linux, thanks. Tris): “simple full-screen text file editor with none of the usual bells and whistles that might distract you from the job in hand.”

Windows

TextEdit (there seems to be a Mac product of the same name. The Windows website is under reconstruction so I can’t grab a description, but downloads are available.)

NotePad ++ “a generic source code editor (it tries to be anyway) and Notepad replacement written in c++ with win32 API. The aim of Notepad++ is to offer a slim and efficient binary with a totally customizable GUI.”

EditPad “a general-purpose text editor, designed to be small and compact, yet offer all the functionality you expect from a basic text editor. EditPad Lite works with Windows NT4, 98, 2000, ME, XP and Vista.” Lite is free; Pro is $50

PSPad code editor

And some so-called ‘dark room apps’ which blank out the outside world:

WestEdit “a full screen, old-school text editor and typewriter. No fuss, no distractions – just you and your text.”

Dark Room: “full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text.”

Q10: “a simple but powerful text editor designed and built with writers in mind.”

Mac

TextMate: “TextMate brings Apple’s approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.” ($54)

The Mac dark room is WriteRoom “a full-screen writing environment. Unlike the cluttered word processors you’re used to, WriteRoom is just about you and your text.” ($25)

GNOME etc

gedit

Distraction reducers

Write or Die: “web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences.”

Another Online Banking Hole

By jeremy | November 22, 2011

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(Update: corrected a few things. You can’t see the person’s bank account number. But you can see anyone’s phone bill, whether or not they’re a customer of that bank.)

—

Here’s a hole in Internet banking that allows anyone with an account at a bank to look up other ~~customers’~~ people’s bills–tax, water bill, Internet bill, landline, cellphone—so long as they have that person’s account or phone number.

This means, for example, I can enter a telephone number and—so long as that person ~~pays their phone~~ has an unpaid bill ~~at that bank~~—I can find out their name. Think of it as a reverse phone book.

~~Not only that: I get their bank account number.~~

It needn’t stop there. If I was the social engineering type, I could then call up the phone company and give them enough information—the name, phone number and bill amount—and persuade them to send me the itemised bill.

The same is true, I’m told, of all bills that can be paid at that bank.

In short, this kind of access gives me enough personal information to socially engineer all sorts of attacks. The mind boggles.

The bank is a well-known Indonesian one—making this sort of attack particularly dangerous–but it’s probably not alone in failing to ensure a validation procedure for its customers. I’ve not had the chance to explore it; most banks, I believe, would require not a phone number but a bill reference number to access this kind of information.

The problem here is that the people who set up the service didn’t imagine that someone might enter a telephone number or bill number that wasn’t their own. Techies need to think like thieves and real people when they set these things up.

Us ordinary folk? We need to stay on our toes and yell at banks that compromise our personal data in this way. I believe the bank in question knows of this breach but as of the time of writing, it’s not yet fixed.

Technorati Tags: banking,security,social engineering,breach

The Conflict of Interest of CO2

By jeremy | November 22, 2011

4 Comments

Quite a hoo ha over one of those weekend type stories whose headline in the Times of London says it all:

Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches

Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea

The article liberally quotes Wissner-Gross “a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon.” Lower down the storiy It also says “Wissner-Gross has submitted his research for publication by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and has also set up a website www.CO2stats.com.”

True. Though what it doesn’t say is that the website—and Wissner-Gross–directly benefits from this kind of research. C02Stats offers clients plans, ranging from $5 a month to $100, to calculate their websites total energy consumption, make it more energy efficient, and then neutralizes their carbon footprint by buying renewable energy from wind and solar farms.

The startup is funded by Y Combinator, which specializes in giving modest funding—about $10,000—to small startups. Indeed, Wissner-Gross, an environmental fellow, has set up four such companies.

Now, the research may well be right. (Some doubt it.) And the idea of certifying websites is not a bad idea. But I guess what troubles me is that an academic is able to publish research which tries to prove a point which would benefit the same academic’s business which offers green certification which depends upon a service which the business sells.

I’m sure it’s not the only example, but it strikes me as quite a compromise going on there.

Technorati Tags: green tech,environment,co2,co2stats,google

Radio Australia Stuff, Jan 9 2009

By jeremy | November 22, 2011

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For those listening to my slot on Radio Australia’s Breakfast Show, here’s what I was talking about:

Palm (remember them?) come up with an iPhone killer: the Pre.
Cameras finally get connected: The Sony Cybershot G3 can surf the web.
Sacrifice one unhealthy habit for another: Burger King rewards Facebookers who delete friends with a free Whopper.

Clint, Veganism, and Maligning the Net

By jeremy | November 22, 2011

6 Comments

Great interview in the International Herald Tribune/NYT with Clint Eastwood, but once again, it’s old media slagging off new media and ending up looking the worse for it.

The interviewer, presumably, asks Clint to confirm that he’s a vegan. Turns out he’s not. Apparently the writer did his research on Wikipedia, because that’s what he cites as a source:

Despite what you might have read on Wikipedia, Eastwood is not a vegan, and he looked slightly aghast when told exactly what a vegan is. “I never look at the Internet for just that reason,” he said.

Trouble is, the source is not Wikipedia. As anyone who uses Wikipedia knows, any information on there must be sourced. A glance at the actual Wikipedia page would reveal that the source for this ‘fact’ about Clint is, in fact, a fellow old media source, The Los Angeles Times:

People ask him to autograph rifles, but Eastwood is no Charlton Heston. A vegan, he was distressed to hear Hillary Rodham Clinton boast recently about bagging a bird.

This piece was subsequently run in the San Jose Mercury News, the Providence Journal and PressDisplay.

In fact, you won’t be able to see this on the Wikipedia page anymore because it’s been removed. That’s because some new media moves faster than old media: on December 11, the day the NYT piece was first published, a Wikipedian spotted the reference and prompted a discussion, and the removal of the reference on the grounds that a direct denial from Eastwood trumps an LAT piece. (You can see the discussion here.)

In other words, from what we can judge, the journalist involved researched Clint on Wikipedia, and was ready enough to accept that as a source on which to base his questions. When the fact in question turned out to be wrong, he allowed Clint to make a familiar sideswipe at the Internet, and not further research the origin of the myth.

But the story doesn’t stop there. The LA Times doesn’t cite a source. But there are plenty of them—apparently. Clint is quoted on dozens of sites as saying

“I try to stick to a vegan diet—heavy on fruit, vegetables, tofu, and other soy products.”

Sites like GoVeg.com have been happy to include him in their Animal-Friendly Celebrities (although, to their credit, they seem to have removed him. Compare this page with this cached version.)

What’s perhaps most intriguing is the source of this quote. I’ll admit I can’t find it. But it’s been bouncing around the net for a couple of years; this forum cites it in September 2006. I found a piece in Glasgow’s Daily Record on May 23, 2006 that also listed Clint as vegetarian, although the web site does not seem to contain a record of it. The oldest reference I can find is in the Miami New Times, on October 13 2005, which lists Clint among a number of (supposed) vegans.

In other words, a myth arose on the net, without any straightforward way of establishing its provenance or authenticity, which was then happily picked up by websites, businesses, and organisations whose purpose it served, then found its way into a mainstream news article, before finally being authoritatively quashed.

So yes, in a way Clint and the NYT reporter are right. The Internet isn’t reliable. But Wikipedia is. Or at least, it’s no less reliable than the sources it cites. Which in this case, happened to be old media itself.

Lesson? As a journalist I guess I might too have fallen into the trap of trusting the LA Times. But it’s a timely reminder that there’s no fact too small or apparently established that it can’t stand to be fact-checked.

Just don’t blame the net if you get it wrong. It’s cheap and it’s old wave.

The veteran power of Clint Eastwood – International Herald Tribune

Technorati Tags: wikipedia,msm,journalism,newspapers