A round-up of sites, links and other interesting tidbits I’ve seen and heard lately.
Random Photo Generator
http://photo.net/photodb/random-photo?category=NoNudes
This is a great site for random inspiration or just for finding odd, stunning photos. Because it randomly selects the next photo to look at, you avoid browsing or searching for your usual favourite topics. It circumvents your habits.
Some great photos, too!
Grammarly Plug-in for Office, Word.
http://www.grammarly.com/office-plugin/
If you don’t like the spell checking and grammar checking that Office provides by default (and I admit that their Office 365/Windows 8 spell checker seems to be several steps backwards), then you can beef them up with this plug-in.
Whoa, momma!
I thought this was a really good idea until I looked into it further.
1) This is a pay-for application, but they don’t tell you that anywhere until you go to sign up for the account you need to run the program. It’s not cheap, either!
2) You get a seven day trial…once you hand over your credit card information. There are reviews (complaints) out there saying that once they have the card info, they charge you whether you cancel or not…and trying to get them to cancel the account is apparently a nightmare — one review says they won’t cancel until the BBB is brought into the matter. That’s a sad way to run a business.
3) The grammar checking isn’t great. I read two comparison reviews, comparing Microsoft Office spelling & grammar checker with Grammarly, and another stand-alone grammar checker. All miss 5 out of 8 corrections. The human editor picked up all of them.
Grammarly is therefore an “interesting” site, but not in the positive way I usually report in these posts!
Freestyle Tarot Spread – Tarotlore
http://www.tarotlore.com/tarot-reading/freestyle/
The Tarotlore site is a good site if you’re just getting started with Tarot, but if you’re ready to move beyond the basics, this freestyle spread reader is very useful if you’ve left your personal deck at home, or if you want to flip just one card for a quick answer to a question. The cards come with definitions, too.
Outliner Software for MS Word-| Outline and organize your large writing projects
http://writingoutliner.com/index.php
Great for mind-mapping, and idea dumping and sorting. This plug-in for Word lets you outline using the index card method of sorting that Hollywood has made famous.
If you outline using paragraphs (like me), then this is not for you – Word’s paragraph and text outlining functions are very advanced, and nothing more is needed. But if you like the visuals that pushing index cards around the screen gives you, you might find this useful.
Font Finder
There’s a lot of font management and font generator programs out there, but this one is another Office plug-in, that enhances Office’s functionality directly. You can manage your installed fonts from within Office. If you’re a font-whore, like me, you’ll like this.
Coupons for Kobo Readers
http://www.therawfeed.com/stores/kobobooks-com
If you’re a fan of the little Canadian bookstore that could, then you’ll like this page – coupons for ebooks at Kobo. ‘nuff said.
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