I discovered Ommwriter, while reading this article by @supermoonman. A Mac-only application, Ommwriter is all about removing distractions and bringing its users back into FOCUS. I’ve got to tell you, I’m loving this text editor. Here’s a list of  my favorite features:

1. Full-screen Scenery

The text editor takes up the entire screen with a background of your choosing. Get yourself in the zone. No more menu bars, no more docks, no more pop-ups, just you, your words, and a pretty picture.

There are only 3 backgrounds to choose from which is both good and bad. Bad because you’ll have to settle if you don’t like any of the the 3, but good because you won’t spend coprious amounts of time picking the “perfect” background to work to.

My favorite? Hand’s down, the gorgeous snowy landscape. Check it out:

2. Mood Music

I don’t work well to music, normally. In fact, I’m the trouble-maker who asks her co-workers to turn down their music. But after using Ommwriter, I realized it’s music with words and heavy rhythmic beats that distract me. The 7 music options in Ommwriter are more like soothing sounds. I found the music not only easy, but surprisingly helpful in keeping me focused while I write. Oh, and the best part, you can turn the music off, if it’s just not working for you.

3. Keyboard sounds

When I watched the intro-video, I wasn’t sure I’d like hearing a  sound every time I typed a letter. There are 7 sound options, and I picked one that reminded me of water drops. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it and it helped me concentrate on what I was writing. The best part? When you’re on a roll you can literally hear yourself typing to a beat.

My only suggestion? It’d be nice if you could add backgrounds of your own.

Got some serious writing to do? I highly recommend giving Ommwriter a try. It’s simple, it’s free, and it’s inspiring. Go ahead, watch the 2 minute  intro-video.

Twilk takes the profile pictures of the tweeps you follow and turns them into your background. The result is a pretty sweet looking collage. There are a couple cool tweaks you can make to the default setting, like only displaying your followers pictures in your background or only photos of the people you follow and who follow you back.

I think it’s a great idea because…

Twilk adds a personal touch that includes your network.

I can’t say it enough, Social Media is about CONNECTING, not just broadcasting your own thoughts, ideas, and news. To really engage, you have to interact, build relationships, listen (the most important element of the bunch). While using a Twilk-like design as your background isn’t ground-breaking relationship building, it says a lot about what you value. You know the old cliche about a picture and a thousand words. Yeah there’s some truth to it.

That’s my two-cents. But what do you think? How important is your Twitter Background? What does it say about you?

What’s it do?

Compete allows you to get site statistics on any Website, (this parts the kicker) even if it’s NOT YOUR OWN. Although the statistics you can see on any website are limited in the free version, I still think the information you can get is pretty powerful:

• The number of unique visitors for the last year available in 3 month view, 6 month view, and 1 year view
• All the sites you looked up nicely displayed on the same graph
• The percent monthly and yearly change in unique visitors for each site
• The ability to download the data in CSV format so you can run your own analysis
• The top search terms for each site
• The top referral sites
• The top sites visited from this site
• And then you can embed these cool graphs anywhere! Check it out:

Is that not cool?

How to Use it

My favorite part of Compete.com is how EASY it is to use. Anyone who knows how to get on the internet can figure this out. Here are the “complicated” steps to use it:

1. Go to Compete.com
2. Enter the web addresses you want to compare metrics for.
3. Click Compare

That’s it! No really, that’s all. Pretty quick and dirty, huh? But effective. The possibilities for this are endless…

There are also plenty of other services that do this (both free and paid). Which one are you using? Are you using one at all? Let me know in the comments.

Who is Chris?

Chris Anderson is the Long Tail guy. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you need to get yourself over to the Long Tail blog and learn about it now because this concept, my friends, is what new media is all about. I’m pretty excited about the release of Free and this idea that Freemium is the sales model of the future. I can’t wait to dig in!

On the other hand, while I like the concept of this free “Free” book, I don’t like that I have to sit in front of my computer if I want to read it for free. I already spend a lot of time in front of my laptop. The last thing I want to do is spend MORE time staring at this screen (so I’m going to download it). According to the latest post on the Long Tail blog, we’ll be seeing a kindle an iphone e-book release within the next week.

It also looks like the dudes at ChurchCrunch may do another group blogging project to Free, which would be awesome! So if that’s something you’re interested in, post a comment at ChurchCrunch letting them know you’re interested. They’re finishing up a GBP to Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith and it’s been insightful.

How Are You Going to Read It?

So are you going to read it and how? Audio? Print? Computer? Kindle? I’m going to listen to it in my car to and from work. I should be done in three days

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

Highly Recommended Because…

The playbook walks you through setting up a social media strategy from A to Z. Although it’s meant for businesses, I think Church’s can get just as much out of this playbook. It’s an important read for anyone considering building an effective and comprehensive social media presence for their ministry.

Below is a screenshot from the discussion on mapping a blueprint for your brand’s “online footprint” in Section 2:

Checklists

My absolute favorite part of this e-book (aside from the fact that it’s free) is the overviews, insight summaries and checklists they provide for setting up your brand on any of the major social media platforms. From YouTube to Twitter, they cover it all!

Below is a screenshot of the Facebook checklist:

It’s Free!

Best of all it’s free, so why wouldn’t you give it a try?

This was dual-posted on my BCM/D Media in Ministry blog

What is it?

It’s your life in pictures! Snap a photo with you computer’s camera. Add a short blurb (or not). Press submit, and voila! You’ve just added to your life in pictures memory log.

Your Dashboard

Your personalized homepage…

Follow your friends

Just like Twitter, you can follow your friends’ pictures. When they post a cool new picture…comment on it. Any comments your friends make on your pictures or someone else’s, will show up in your minifeed (your dailybooth homepage).

Find new friends

Click “Go Advanced” next to the search bar in the top right corner, and find new people you might want to follow, but not in a stalkerish way.

The Best Part!

Okay, so there’s no rss feed (at least that I could find) f0r your minifeed (a.k.a your updates). There’s also no way to post via email, text, or via another means (but you can push your updates to Twitter). Yeah yeah…but I’ll forgive them (mostly) because you can still do some really cool stuff with your feeds. Ahem, check this out!

This is my “3D Stack.” I created it by clicking the “Manage Widgets” link on my dashboard (a.k.a. my homepage). I can put it anywhere I want, because they give me the embed code. They also make videos of your pictures and post them to YouTube with one click! How simple is that?!?!

Follow me

Follow me! I’ve only got two followers. Let’s do this! Show me some love!

HT to ijustine

Yammer heard me! Yammer heard me! Well maybe not just me, but they heard someone, somewhere say it and they came up with a great solution. They took the Twitter concept, and made it a free app for ANY organization to use privately amongst their employees. Employees join their organization’s private Yammer network and answer the question, “What are you working on?” throughout the day, maybe even adding a link or attaching the file their using at the time. What a great way to encourage productivity and share new ideas/resources faster and farther. Best of all, I don’t have to write any newsletter (so not my thing)!

There seem to be more features, but I haven’t had much time to play with Yammer yet. Let me know as you discover cool things Yammer can do.

To sign up your organization, just create an account using your work email. That’s it. No really, that’s all.  After that, anyone who creates an account with an email address ending with @your-business-name is automatically added to the business’ private Twitter, err Yammer network.

Just type your post before or after the link in the browser, click the little dot at the end of the bar and viola! The link to that awesome new optimal home locator you read about on Lifehacker will be displayed in all it’s tweet-glory!

*On a side note: Can I just say, I love my google reader. How did I ever get by without it?!? Now if I could just find some people I know to share my amazing finds on my reader! If I posted every awesome link I rss my way across on twitter, I wouldn’t be twitter tupperware anymore; I’d just be a town-crier! So if you use your google reader and need someone to share with…friend me on gmail at room1012.

Thanks to Cory Miller of iThemes for finding the link!