write

Best Android notepad apps for students

Run a quick search for "notepad" on Google Play, and you'll see that there are at least 1,000 apps claiming to fit the bill. The good news is, we've taken the time to show you a few notepads that are absolute must-haves, especially for students just getting back into the groove of school.

Evernote (free) These days, the all-powerful Evernote feels more like a platform than a single, independent app. It has a full menu of companion downloads like Skitch, Evernote Food, and Evernote Hello available, and tons of developers are racing to integrate its … Read more

Better blogging with MarsEdit

MarsEdit makes blogging easier, letting you ditch clunky browser-based editing in favor of a full-featured, fully Mac-powered desktop editor--an editor that also lets you blog when you're offline. You get a rich editing interface for working with text (including HTML-free formatting tools and cool markup macros that save you from repetitive typing), but what makes MarsEdit really useful is its easy uploading tools, two-way syncing, AppleScript support, tight integration with Flickr, and compatibility with an impressive variety of blog services (including improved support for WordPress tags), text editors, and even photo management software (like iPhoto and Lightroom).

With nice … Read more

Better free text editor

Bean is a free, compact, easy-to-use text editor that occupies the middle ground between bare-bones apps like TextEdit and more full-featured (and more expensive) word processors.

Bean launches quickly and uses minimal resources, while giving you access to rich features such as live word count, tabbed documents, templates for boilerplate and automatic dates, page layout settings and in-line graphics, dictionary integration, word completion, plenty of import and export options, a search panel that can handle regular expressions, and an Inspector panel for making tweaks to text, format, and spacing.

Bean can't handle some specialized tasks, like footnotes and predefined … Read more

How to create a quote bank

Keeping track of the awesome quotes you come across can be a tedious process. You could write them down and try to keep track of where you wrote them; or you could start a Word document dedicated to being a quote bank. While both of these options are possible, they're not as useful as Quick Quote. This open-source app will allow you to input the quotes you love and easily search through them when it's time to use one.

Step 1: Download Quick Quote from Sourceforge and extract the RAR file to a convenient location.

Tip: You can … Read more

iOS word processing the Apple way

Pages for iOS may not be as sophisticated as other desktop word-processing apps, but it packs plenty of punch when you just want a way to produce nice-looking documents on the go. After only a few minutes playing around with the controls, we were able to create documents with stylized text, imported images, tables, and graphs, and make formatting changes on-the-fly, all using the touch-screen keyboard. The program comes with 16 Apple-designed templates to start from, including standard letters, letters with photos, resume layouts, project reports, and many more. With Apple's keyboard dock connected, Pages performed much like a … Read more

Handwriting recognition comes to Kindle Touch, thanks to Puzzazz

Amazon's Kindle Touch is getting handwriting recognition, but it isn't being delivered by the company you think.

A new puzzle-focused technology startup called Puzzazz has developed a Kindle Touch-exclusive product called TouchWrite. The technology, which GeekWire's Todd Bishop tried out, enables users to write numbers and letters with a finger, and then TouchWrite converts them into digital on-screen versions.

For now, Puzzazz's technology is limited to a couple of Sudoku e-books available in the Kindle Store. However, the company's founder, Roy Leban, told GeekWire that he believes TouchWrite is "the future of books."… Read more

Kwaga sifts address-book info from Outlook, too

Kwaga, which got its start with its WriteThat.name tool to transfer contact information from Gmail e-mails to your address book, has launched an equivalent tool for Outlook.

WriteThat.name for Outlook 2007 and 2010 is a plug-in, in beta testing for now, that harvests data from e-mail signatures so you don't have to laboriously copy and paste it yourself.

"A study of WriteThat.name users conducted by Kwaga clearly identified Outlook as the next necessary step for the evolution of this product," the company said in a statement yesterday. Paris-based Kwaga just raised $1.5 million in funding … Read more

How technology puts pressure on the written word

When my great engineer friend George tries to find a girl, the first thing he does is write a profile on some subtly tawdry dating site.

When he finds a girl and hopes to keep her around, he has to text her--or, perish the concept, Facebook her--the right thing at the right moment in order to maintain her fascination.

He is destroyed when she doesn't text him the right thing at the right moment back. Yes, he's a sensitive engineer, but still. So much of his interaction with humans in both love and work occurs through letters and … Read more

Tech news site ReadWriteWeb acquired by Say Media

ReadWriteWeb, a popular tech news site, has been acquired by San Francisco-based Say Media.

The site's editor, Richard MacManus, announced the deal this morning, explaining that RWW will join Say's Technology channel, giving it access to more than 75 million monthly readers:

ReadWriteWeb is going to get bigger and even better. Our plans include widening ReadWriteWeb's editorial scope and expanding our team. That starts from today, with the addition of SplatF's Dan Frommer to our team as an editor-at-large. We will also be doing a redesign, utilizing the sophisticated designers at SAY Media. With SAY's … Read more