How to create a magazine cover

June 05, 2013 in How to, Web 2.0

I have always liked presenting ideas in the form of a magazine cover. It can act as a stimulating writing prompt for other people, and it can also serve to help you focus on some key ideas. But most of all, it’s just enjoyable in its own right!

Making use of your photographs

May 26, 2013 in How to, Photography, Web 2.0

If, like me, you enjoy taking photographs, then why not use them in your blog posts. An easy way to do so is to open a Flickr account, upload your photos to it, and then use them when you need to.

Flickr is, to be honest, looking a bit long in the tooth, although its recent innovation of displaying very high resolution photographs by default is, shall we say, striking. But it is still a great service in my opinion, and for the writer a much better one than, say, Facebook.

How to incorporate media into your blog or website

January 06, 2013 in How to

The act of incorporating actual pictures, videos or sound recordings or other media – as opposed to just links to them -- into your blog or website is known as 'embedding'.

You've almost certainly already seen examples of embedding. Go to any website where there's a video clip on the page, and you're looking at it in action. In other words, embedding is simply the act of inserting code into a web page or blog that puts the object right there on the page. This 'object' might be a video, a presentation, a document, a picture -- just about anything, in fact.

How to create a blog

January 03, 2013 in How to, Website writing

If you’ve decided that you’d like to blog, or at least that you’d like to dip your toe in the water and see if blogging is for you, you’ll be pleased to know that you don’t have to expend a huge amount of time or effort – or money.

How to recover lost files

December 31, 2012 in How to

In this day and age we are a lot more fortunate than in times past, because we can store manuscripts on a computer, print them out, and make multiple backups. But what if, despite everything, you accidentally delete your prized magnum opus?

How to convert videos to audio files

December 26, 2012 in How to

Let’s face it, a lot of videos don’t have a lot going on in terms of visual stimuli. True, there are those dreadful videos which consist purely of people holding up handwritten notices, accompanied by some awful dirge, and unfortunately you have to watch them if you want to learn what they have to say.

How to remove Babylon from your Firefox browser

December 25, 2012 in How to

Babylon is an insidious program which, once installed, is a devil of a job to get rid of. An online translator, its website boasts “100 million downloads and counting”. I wonder how many of those were intended.

Because the problem is, as you may have had the misfortune to discover from personal experience, is that if you’re not careful you can install Babylon by accident. And once you’ve done so, it can be extremely irritating because one of the effects of having it on your system is that it makes itself the default search engine in the address bar of your browser.

Using the right search engine

June 26, 2012 in Handy hints, How to, Technology

What’s the right search engine to use? The answer is: there isn’t one. Different search engines typically give different results from each other, so your best bet is to carry out the same search in several search engines, not just one.

4 Ways to Write Quickly

November 24, 2011 in How to

“Well, just bash it out. Even if you have to do it all in bullet points and stitch it up later.”

That was Elaine’s response to my comment that I had, in effect, only a few hours in which to write a comparative review of two educational technology products, obtain all the specs, and come up with ratings and an incisive conclusion, and all in 1500 words.

My cup of tea froze halfway to my lips.

“Bash it out?! Stitch it up? I’m not some hack who just churns the stuff out like a machine. I’m a craftsman. Each article is a work of art, each word carefully selected having been hand-picked from the millions of words available. The result is a thing to be admired, savoured, treasured even.”

“You mean like haute couture?”

“Indeed. Exactly so.”

Making your email links more user-friendly

November 01, 2011 in Handy hints, How to

All websites should have easy-to-find contact details. It’s been found that the average time a person will wait for a web page to appear is 8 seconds, before giving up and moving on to another site. If the same holds true for locating information, you need to make sure that visitors can find your details in under 8 seconds.

Bad headlines

February 14, 2011 in How to, News & views, Professional writer

If there’s one thing that really annoys me it’s chapter headings and article headlines where you can’t tell what the subject matter is until you read it. Who needs a situation in which you don’t know if you want to read something until you have read it? The way I look at it is that if the author can’t even be bothered being clear when he’s trying to entice you to read his stuff, why should you be bothered to oblige him by reading it?

How to find all articles in a series quickly

February 06, 2011 in How to

If you have come across one of the articles in a series, liked it, and decided that you would like to read the others in that series, you don’t have to go hunting all over the place for them!

Using video for creative writing

December 21, 2010 in Creative Writing, How to, News & views, Video

I always carry a pocket camcorder with me. It enables me to take both photos and videos. I use the videos as a potential basis for creative writing.

I try to make the videos only about 30 seconds long, because I like the idea of being minimalist – as you may have gathered from my article about using Twitter.

10 attributes of professional writers -- #4: Make it readable

December 21, 2010 in How to, Professional writer, Useful websites

"This is on the level of an 11 year old." That was the verdict of an article I'd written as part of a writing course I'd been invited to attend by a magazine I was writing for at the time.

My blogging toolkit

December 14, 2010 in Handy hints, How to

What do you require in order to blog? Obviously, the list will be depend on what device you use, and its operating system, but here is the set of tools which I find invaluable.

How to write an article in 30 minutes or less

December 11, 2010 in How to

I think a lot of people, myself included, work most efficiently when they’re up against a tight deadline. This phenomenon has been observed both by Aesop (the fable of the tortoise and the hare), and Parkinson (“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”)

How To Write An Online Review

November 25, 2010 in How to, Video

This video has a few useful hints and tips about writing online reviews. It’s more about the writing than the technology, but even so it contains information about

13 Things You Didn’t Know About Word: Repeating Yourself

November 02, 2010 in How to, Word

This is a very quick tip, but one that is remarkably useful. As you may know, Word has a ton of keyboard shortcuts which can make life a bit easier. But sometimes, if they’re really convoluted, they can make life difficult.