hosted4results.com» Tools

Visual Thesaurus – A writer’s tool

Nigel Ball — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:52:38 +0000

When I first came across Visual Thesaurus I thought “cute, but is it better than the alternatives?”. After trying it out I decided that it does have advantages and I find it a quick and effective tool to use when writing, particularly for sales copy when looking for alternative words which have more impact than the first one that comes to mind.

Whilst there are other on-line thesaurus tools, Visual Thesaurus makes it

easy to see the alternatives in a wider context
make quick decisions about the likelihood of finding and alternative
follow a line of thought without viewing new pages
get s clear printed answer to a question

In brief, Visual Thesaurus is well worth trying, particularly if you do (or should) use a thesaurus when writing. At just $USD19.95 per year it’s good value, and there are many options for subscribing/buying.

Hosted Mind Maps

Nigel Ball — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 03:11:48 +0000

I often make use of Mind Maps to gather, record and sort my ideas on subjects that I am researching or writing about. On my workstation I use Freemind which is (as the name suggests) a free Mind Mapping application which runs on all platforms.

Freemind is a pretty serious application and is well suited to organising information. However, sometimes the major requirement is the mapping or diagram of the subject. This is where Bubbl.us comes in.

Bubbl.us is a simple and free web application that lets you build mind maps online.

With Bubbl.us you can:

Create colorful mind maps online
Share and work with friends
Embed your mind map in your blog or website
Email and print your mind map
Save your mind map as an image

Example

Here is a partial map of our Internet Properties prepared with Bubbl.us…

You can also embed the Mind Map in a web page.