I recently installed a new operating system on my netbook. A nifty feature of this operating system is that is leverages a piece of software called Prism to bring Web applications to the desktop.
The folks behind the operating system have a large repository of pre-configured Prism bundles that you can install — some for well-known Web apps like Gmail and Twitter. Others for apps you might not have heard of.
While poking around the repository, I noticed a bundle for something called My Writing Nook. Intrigued, I installed it. Here’s a quick look at My Writing Nook.
The concept
It’s simple: an easy-to-use tool for writing just about anything, no matter where you are. My Writing Nook is a Web-based application; you need an Internet connection to use it. The focus is on writing and not formatting.
As the developer says:
My Writing Nook provides a simple, uncluttered writing workspace. However, uncluttered doesn’t mean feature-poor. Whether you’re jotting down quick notes or writing a novel, all the essential features are there.
The features
There aren’t that many (and that’s a good thing), but what’s there is useful and surprising. Here’s a quick rundown:
- A list of documents, which can be individual articles, essays, or blog posts; or chapters of a book.
- Download a document, which saves a text file to your desktop.
- Send to email, which sends the document that you have open to your email address. The developer states that this is a great way to back up a document. I tend to agree.
- Word count, which needs no explanation …
- An interface to an online dictionary and thesaurus, which gives you instant access to definition and synonyms.
As I said, there’s not a lot there. But the focus of My Writing Nook is on getting your words down and not on bells and whistles.
Going mobile
There are iPhone/iPod Touch and Android applications that will work with your smartphone. I haven’t tried them — mainly because I don’t have a compatible device — but they look interesting. Not sure if I want to be typing on a phone or a iPod Touch for any length of time, though.
The (subjectively) bad
This depends on who you are, and what you expect from your Web applications. First off, you’ll need a Google account to log into My Writing Nook. If you have a Gmail account, then you’re set. But I know more than a couple of folks who don’t have one.
There’s no formatting available. My Writing Nook is more like a text editor than a word processor. I’m of two minds about this. A lot of writing doesn’t involve complex (or even simple) formatting. Which is why I like tools like Textroom and Writeboard. They let me get my thoughts down quickly, and I can insert formatting later. On the other hand, I know writers who will only work in a word processor.
While you can download your documents, you can only save them as text files. This goes back to what I wrote in the previous paragraph about no formatting. You’ll have to add that by hand in a word processor.
Final thoughts
My Writing Nook can be a useful tool. It’s simple, and lets you write no matter where you are or what computer you’re using. It’s a cut above similar online tools like Writeboard.
I’m not sure that I’ll continue using it — I still prefer to use a wiki or Google Docs. Still, it’s always good to know that something like My Writing Nook is out there. You never know when you might find it useful.
While I like Google Docs a lot, there are a few things about it that I’m not really keen on. One is the way in which documents are organized. I should say how they’re organized when you first set up your Google Docs account.
As part of a larger personal project, I’ve been shifting more and more of my day-to-day computing to the Web. Aside from the project I mentioned in the last sentence, there are a number of other reasons why I’m doing this. Reasons that I won’t go into right now.
As you may or may not know from reading this space, I generally advocate using wiki, 
I generally don’t put a lot of stock in grammar or style checkers. In my experience, they’ve tended to be a bit too wedded to strict rules. These kinds of checkers don’t take into account personal writing quirks and attempts at trying to make your writing a bit more original and fresh. Two aspects of writing that I think set you apart, and make your writing more interesting and readable, if done properly.