I remember as a kid writing long stories with a fountain pen, adding a few drawings and then binding all the sheets of paper together in brown parcel paper tied down the middle with wool. I was an author at eight years old and nobody was going to tell me any different! It’s funny but I never sold any copies but my mother still has them in a box somewhere and they come out now and again when the subject of me writing for a living comes up, bless! Read more
Well there are certainly some fun ways to get youngsters reading and writing these days and if this one doesn’t get them hooked then I don’t know what will. It could be quite a laugh to use as an adult too if you want to get a point across in a comic style. The mechanics are simple and once you log in you are taken on a step-by step guide to creating a comic strip page complete with characters and text. The first thing you have to do is choose the layout of your page from a selection of boxes and once ... Read more
If you can’t afford that PA to pop your day’s agenda on your desk every morning then this could be a cheaper option. You won’t have to buy birthday and Christmas presents for it either! ContactMe looks simple enough but it will do a thorough job in getting your busy schedule organized. Once that’s sorted it can then move on and make you so much more contactable by people who just might want to spend money. Read more
Poor employees, gone are the days when you could finish a shift and forget about the boss until the next one. Once upon a time you could even ignore the ringing of the telephone just in case it was him with a desperate invitation to do some more hours. I’m being a little unfair perhaps. Although Enigmai does give business owners a greater chance of success at contacting employees out of hours that’s not all it can do. As a scheduler it not only manages shifts but can monitor attendance as well as acting as a useful employee management system. Read more
If you've ever been in a situation at work where you have been the paymaster you will know what a time consuming and thankless task it can be. Having to chase up whether Charlie worked last Friday night and figuring out if Rose really was half an hour late this morning. You never get plaudits for paying the correct amount of wages each week but you'll sure as hell hear about it if you haven't paid them enough. DeskTime is a free real-time time tracking and productivity app that will give precise and automated times on when and when not ... Read more
I’m a great believer in people writing some sort of record of their lives and I don’t just mean the rich and famous. There a far too many gravestones in the world with no story attached to them as far as I’m concerned and so getting people to jot down just some basic daily or weekly events is a start. There are wider implications of course and even though many people will consider their lives mundane and of no interest whatsoever to anyone else the generations that follow will probably see things in a different light. From a social history angle, ... Read more
Wow! If the guy’s behind this one have got their sums right there is a serious amount of cash being paid to people annually for just sitting in meetings. It wouldn’t be such a worry if a high percentage of these meetings actually achieved something but if you’re like me and have attended scores of them in your career you’ll know how unlikely that is. Read more
It used to be the case that the poor beleaguered novelist out there had to jump through the odd hoop and find a publisher in order to release their masterwork. Not only would it mean another roadblock on the path to glory but it would also mean a percentage of the takings being sliced off. However, the plethora of 'publish your own book' sites that have cropped up over the last few years has begun to change the way it works. Pandamian is a writing and book tool that acts as your publisher by covering all the techical and background ... Read more
Most students seem to meet have a money problem. There's never enough of it. Then there's the money that has to be paid back later. It all adds up. So when it comes to the text books you need to buy for your course it can easily turn into a big problem. You pay a lot of money for them, use them a little bit and then try to sell them back. It would be so much better if you could rent the chapters you want. BookStep is a textbook tool based in the cloud that let's you access the ... Read more
I love a really useful app that doesn’t need too much driving and so I’m certainly going to be signing up for this free one. If you’re an avid reader of books I strongly suggest you consider doing the same. Read more