From the archives: How will Virtual Reality reportage affect our experience of the news? What are the ethical issues involved?
Read More
Technology
The scream by Terry Freedman.jpg
A rather annoying side effect of scanning a typed document and converting it to text
in Technology
It was my intention to provide you with a guide to style guides. But...
Read More
Robot reporter, by Terry Freedman
Can artificial intelligence be used to write blog posts?
I decided to find out! In this post I show the results of:
Asking AI to create some personas, ie target readers.
Come up with some blog post ideas.
Write an outline for one of them.
Write an article for one of them.
Calling all writers: a free gift!
If, like me, you write a lot, or you have a blog or a newsletter that features guest writers, you might like this free spreadsheet.
Read MoreCan ChatGPT Create Good Course Outlines?
I’ve been experimenting with using ChatGPT to write course outlines, and for one of the courses I compared the result with the outlines I had already written (and taught to). The results were interesting.
Read More
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
I asked an artificial intelligence bot to write advertisements for my newsletter
I asked ChatbotGPT to write an advertisement for my newsletter in various styles. Here’s what it came up with…
Read MoreGetting your ideas down
Did Samuel Pepys, for example, carry a quill and an inkwell around with him?
Read More
Filler text, by Terry Freedman
Creating filler text
in Technology
You can, of course, create text for use as filler text, or recycle an existing document. A better approach, because it’s faster, is to use a random text generator. The remainder of this document looks at a few options available to you.
Read MoreI, The Dictator
in Audio, Technology
One of the few good things about fracturing my right elbow on the 21st of August 2021 was that I was finally forced into experimenting with dictating articles instead of writing them.
Read MoreUsing a points system to incentivise you
Sometimes even the most ardent writers among us just don’t feel like writing. What to do? An article on the Problogger website has made what I think is a great suggestion.
Read MoreFrom the archives: Publishers discover e-learning!
UPDATED With a correction! Why are ebooks priced at almost the same level as printed books? (I’ve actually seen a Kindle book priced higher than the print version.)
Read More
The Raygor reading level graph
The Professional Writer: Make your text readable
What is readable by a particular age group today may not be readable by that same age group tomorrow.
Read More
hazardous area by Terry Freedman
The basics of good technical writing
Technical writing may not sound like the most exciting thing in the world, but (a) there’s a great need for it and (b) a huge degree of satisfaction is gained from writing user manuals that ordinary mortals can understand.
Read More
NOT the camera I used! Photo by Terry Freedman
Testing a camcorder for interviews
A few years ago I thought I would test the capabilities of a pocket camcorder I’d been asked to review
Read MoreA Zoom poem
Karina Vidler has penned a great poem about “zooming”!
Read MoreExperiment: Using a gif rather than an image
in EiS, Technology, Oulipo, The lighter side
An experiment was carried out to determine whether or not the Image Block in the Squarespace Editor would accept an animated gif rather than a static jpg or png image.
Read More
podcast-ai Screenshot, by Terry Freedman
Turn Chrome browser tabs into podcasts
A Chrome extension called Podcast.ai enables you to convert browser tabs to podcasts. Sometimes.
Read More
Graphic by Terry Freedman
Anatomy of a blog
in Technology
What does a typical blog consist of?
Read MoreHow to have more than one Gmail address
If you have a Gmail email address, did you know that you can use it as the basis for even more addresses?
Read MoreOn this day #3: Technical support
in On this day, Technology, How to
The drawback of being a freelance writer is that if something goes wrong with your computer equipment, you’re likely to be the one who has to fix it. What can you do to make this as painless as possible?
Read More